The Secret to Happiness by Suzanne Wood Fisher

 

The Secret to Happiness by Suzanne Woods Fisher, due out in May, is the second volume of the Cape Cod Creamery series. The setting is Cape Cod in an ice cream shop, not in high demand when the story begins in late January.  

 

The mother-daughter duo of Marnie and Dawn Dixon has made a second start with their lives when Marnie purchases an ice cream shop in Chatham. Dawn has the talent for making ice cream, as she had done at home in Needham with her father until he died. Marnie needs to up her game in the ice cream making department so that her daughter can feel secure enough to leave the shop long enough to get married and go on an African safari.

To do this, Marnie attends Penn State’s Ice Cream Short Course for a 3-day workshop for ice cream store owners. She is surprised to see her niece Callie Dixon carrying a tray of ice cream cups because the last she knew, Callie was the executive chef at a convention hotel in Boston. Marnie invites Callie to join her and Dawn in Chatham on the Cape at their ice cream store, where they have an apartment upstairs. Dawn is not particularly happy about the invite as she and Callie were once so competitive which led to a breakdown in their cousinship.

Callie, fired from her dream job when she made a huge mistake in the kitchen causing 200 people at a conference to develop food poisoning, is beside herself, floundering as she attempts to find a new job. She is also keeping a big secret about her health.

Callie’s addition to the store apartment makes for close quarters, and Callie ends up spending too much time wasting away in bed. Dawn, always one to take charge, drags Callie to a community class run by Bruno Bianco, author of a book about attaining happiness. Bruno singles out Callie as a special project as she resists his approaches to turn her thinking inside out.

As Callie tries to start anew, she finds her niche in the ice cream shop that turned coffee-muffin shop to supplement to store’s business in the winter. Dawn has been making the muffins but Callie quickly identifies what makes Dawn’s muffins rubbery and unappealing, and Callie throws them out each night after the others have gone to bed and bakes fresh, delicious muffins from Dawn’s recipes. Baking and working with Bruno are just the beginning steps to putting Callie back together.

While this is the second book in the series with a third soon coming along, this book can be read as a standalone as the author offers quick summaries of events in the first book, The Sweet Life.

Suzanne Woods Fisher’s bread and butter has been in the Christian fiction market with a specialty in Amish fiction and nonfiction. Her interest in the Amish came from a grandfather who was raise Plain. She lives in California with her family and raises puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Lucy Hart, whose childhood was one of neglect and loneliness, found her comfort in books, her favorites being the fictional Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. In The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer, coming out at the end of May, readers learn that Lucy and several other children ran away from home hoping to live with the author on his private Clock Island off the coast of Maine.

If this seems far-fetched, in 1987, a 15-year-old boy actually hopped a plane from New York to Florida in hope of living with his favorite author, Piers Anthony. In this debut novel, Lucy, now 26, along with three of the other runaways, are invited to attend a special event on the island.

Lucy is a kindergarten teacher’s aide who longs to adopt a student named Christopher who has been scarred by the overdose death of his mother and father. But in a minimum wage job, Lucy can barely provide for herself, sharing an apartment with roommates from whom she  must borrow a car if she needs to go somewhere.

The Clock Island contest will allow the winner to receive the only copy of Masterson’s latest book in the Clock Island series. Lucy must compete along with three other former runaways to win the rights to this book which would provide enough money for her to give Christopher a proper home. The other runaways have equally important wishes: Dustin’s wish is to pay off his student loans that allowed him to become a doctor, Andre’s wish is to find a kidney for his ailing father, and Melanie’s wish is to keep her independent bookstore afloat.

Masterson along with his lawyer have devised a series of riddles and games each contender must play. The one who earns 10  points will receive the one and only copy of the writer’s new book. While Lucy wins the first round, she soon finds herself neck to neck with the now two contenders as Dustin was dismissed for breaking the rules and being rude to Lucy when she wouldn’t go along with him.

Hugo Reese, the handsome illustrator of the Clock Island books, is on hand to help guide the contenders in their challenges. He has been living on the island for some time as almost a surrogate son of Masterson’s, but he wants to leave the island now and strike out on his own.

Of course, the question is, who will win the coveted new Clock Island book? If Lucy can pull it off, the funds from selling the book rights to a publisher would pay her way to obtaining custody of Christopher, her greatest wish. But what happens if she loses? The contest is more than a game for her. Winning could change her life—and Christopher’s-- completely.

This is definitely the book for fans of Willie Wonka, Dorothy in Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Harry Potter, young adults and grownups alike.

Meg Shaffer is a part-time creative writing instructor and a full-time MFA candidate in TV and Screenwriting at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. The Wishing Game is her debut novel.

The Senator's Wife by Liv Constantine

 

The Senator's Wife is Sloane Chase who lost a husband and his cousin on the same day two years ago in a murder suicide. Sharing grief with the cousin’s widower, Senator Whit Montgomery, the two eventually marry, giving themselves a second chance at love in this thriller from the sister team, Liv Constantine, due out in late May.

Sloane has long suffered from lupus, an auto-immune disease, that may be the cause of her need for a hip replacement. As an active D.C. philanthropist, Sloane doesn’t like the idea of being sidelined with a six-week recovery. Her husband puts in place the health care worker/personal assistant, Athena Karras, to assist his new wife with both her physical recovery and her work in a charitable foundation she created with her late husband Robert.

Under Athena’s care, Sloane seems to go downhill as her lupus flares in response to her recent surgery. Athena is always making her teas and smoothies, and Sloane is reacting in such a way that leads her to believe that Athena is trying to poison her, especially when she learns Athena is dining with Whit each evening in Sloane’s place as she takes her meals in her room and goes to sleep early since she is so ill.

Sloane starts wondering if Whit’s late wife was right about Whit being a philanderer, and she eventually thinks that Athena and Whit are working together to get rid of Sloane so that Whit will inherit her fortune. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth! Readers will not see this ending coming.

This unputdownable thriller moves quickly, and the twists are shocking, just what you would expect from these authors. Liv Constantine is the pen name for Lynne and Valerie Constantine who spend hours plotting their novels using Facebook and email as they live three states apart. The Senator’s Wife is one of their best yet.