Bøger af Carolyn Brown

A niece's inheritance comes with family secrets, new romance, and sweet Texas strawberries in a refreshing and warmhearted novel by New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.Returning home to Ditto, Texas, is bittersweet for Lila Matthews. Her dear and feisty aunt Gracie has passed away, leaving Lila her estate. That includes a centuries-old house, a field of the freshest strawberries in Atascosa County, more money than Lila can count, and a secret Aunt Gracie took to her grave. All the angels in heaven won't be able to pry it out of her.For more than eighty years, generations of folks in Ditto have whispered and gossiped about what the secret could be. When Lila inherits Aunt Gracie's legacy, ears perk up and tongues start wagging. As Lila reacquaints herself with locals, finds warmth in family--extended and otherwise--and cozies up to a handsome new neighbor, she begins collecting clues to the past. They're revealing an Aunt Gracie nobody knew--and a life of rebellion, broken hearts, and selfless love that affected more people than anyone realized.Whatever reason Aunt Gracie had for leaving Lila the secret, will it now be Lila's secret to keep?

"Angela Marie has spent all of her thirty-five years on Meadow Falls, the farm that's been in her Texas family for generations. It wasn't her plan. It was an obligation. Now that her parents-less loving kin than strangers-have passed, the whole shebang belongs to Angela. And a legacy she never wanted is hers to uphold. She can't forsake it now. Her beloved nanny, Mandy, who was always more of a mother, needs a caregiver herself. And Mandy's great-granddaughter, as close to Angela as a sister, has returned to roost. When a handsome veteran arrives seeking work as a farmhand, Angela thinks the future might not be half-bad after all. But it's the past that proves enlightening. Mandy is revealing secrets Angela never knew about her parents. As the clouds on her family history begin to part, the inheritance feels more like a precious gift, and Meadow Falls more like the home Angela's been looking for her whole life"--

"Christmas has always been a special time of year in Spanish Fort, Texas, but this year love and magic fill the air like fairy dust. Endora Simmons is in love with Parker Martin, preacher of the town's only church and as Endora plans her wedding, she's delighted to have all six of her sisters living nearby. The last two sisters, Rae and Bo, have come home and Endora figures if she keeps them busy they won't have time to think about leaving again. What with the wedding and the excitement of the holidays, Endora can use all the help she can get. Endora talks Rae into teaching Sunday school for the six- to nine-year-old class. Rae's a former policewoman so surely she can corral the rowdy kids-the most high-spirited being Sheriff Gunner's twin daughters--into making Christmas decorations for the upcoming pageant. Bo helps out by taking over the community Christmas program. Bo also has been working with Aunt Bernie on her new venture, a monthly speed dating at a bar just over the river in Oklahoma--and boy, does she have her eye on that handsome bartender. With all the Christmas preparations in high gear, will Rae and Bo still find time to fall in love?"--

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Brown sends readers on a wild ride in this enemies to lovers romance between a rugged rodeo cowboy and a fierce competitor who thinks it's time for a woman to take the crown.Gemma O'Donnell was incensed when she wasn't the first woman to win the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Championship Association) buckle for bronc riding. This year, she heads out on the PRCA ProRodeo Tour burning to be the second.First stop is Cody, Wyoming where her stiffest competition is Trace Coleman, who already has a jump on her. A tall, dark-haired cowboy with a sexy grin and a swagger, he doesn't really give a damn about the trophy belt buckle-he wants the purse to buy a ranch he has his eye on. He damn sure doesn't have time for a sassy bit of Irish baggage who can evidently ride anything with four legs and make anything with two legs want to take her to bed.Gemma wins a few; Trace wins a few. In the end they both qualify for the final cut in Las Vegas. But when it comes down to the wire, only one can win the bronc-riding competition and take home one helluva prize. But in this competition, it just might be loser takes all...

A restless woman discovers the comforts of small-town Texas--and more--in a bighearted novel about the next chapters in life by New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.Unsure of the future but ready for risks, Libby O'Dell trades big-city life for whatever the back roads hold. In this case it's the small community of Sawmill, Texas, where Libby's taken a temporary job putting an antique store in order. Her new boss, Benny Taylor, a handsome charmer with a three-legged dog named Elvis, isn't a bad change of scenery, either.Across the street Benny's surrogate grandmothers--the widows Minilee and Opal--are ready with homemade corn bread, sweet tea, and an invitation for Libby to join their book club. Even if it is mostly a gathering for local gossip and meddling. The ladies' main agenda: find Benny a wife. Except Benny's not looking, and Libby's only passing through until she decides what direction she's headed next.Truth is, Sawmill is starting to feel pretty nice. Benny, even nicer. Time will tell if this meantime job in a stopover town is just what Libby's been looking for--and where she belongs.

"Family doesn't mean everyone has to like each other. That's the case when cousins Taryn, Anna Rose, and Jorja return to Shamrock, Texas, to help manage their grandmother's flower shop, the Lucky Shamrock. The reunion isn't exactly a beautiful arrangement -- considering they're as compatible as ranchers and coyotes. Thank heaven for a handsome go-between like Clinton, who lives above the shop. The easygoing war vet, and most eligible bachelor in Wheeler County, is now throwing romance into the mix and setting the local women to gossiping. But as the hot months wear on, hidden secrets begin to surface for the temperamental Irish trio. And it's bringing them closer together than they ever thought possible. With a flurry of weddings, a love story in the making, a surprise baby, and crazy good fortune, maybe that shamrock painted on the window does bring luck. Because for Taryn, Anna Rose, and Jorja, this could be the summer that'll change their lives forever."--

"Ophelia Simmons is back home at the Paradise--the former brothel where her mom raised her and six sisters--contemplating her next career move and dodging Great Aunt Bernie's matchmaking attempts. She is about to meet her match in Jake Brennan, the ruggedly handsome owner of a local winery where Aunt Bernie convinces her to take a job for the summer. At first Ophelia and Jake's personalities clash, but soon enough sparks start flying. Meanwhile, older sister Tertia Simmons also returns home to look for a new job. Tertia never thought she'd work for, let alone fall for, Noah Sullivan-the boy who once taunted her when they were kids. But when he offers her the job of her dreams in his new cafâe, Tertia finds herself torn between her head and her heart. As the sisters navigate the ups and downs of love and career with the help of their outrageous great aunt and the rest of the close-knit family, they learn that love can be found in the most unexpected of places--including their own hometown"--

"Angela Marie has spent all of her thirty-five years on Meadow Falls, the farm that's been in her Texas family for generations. It wasn't her plan. It was an obligation. Now that her parents-less loving kin than strangers-have passed, the whole shebang belongs to Angela. And a legacy she never wanted is hers to uphold. She can't forsake it now. Her beloved nanny, Mandy, who was always more of a mother, needs a caregiver herself. And Mandy's great-granddaughter, as close to Angela as a sister, has returned to roost. When a handsome veteran arrives seeking work as a farmhand, Angela thinks the future might not be half-bad after all. But it's the past that proves enlightening. Mandy is revealing secrets Angela never knew about her parents. As the clouds on her family history begin to part, the inheritance feels more like a precious gift, and Meadow Falls more like the home Angela's been looking for her whole life"--

He's a tempting heap of Texas trouble...Mercy Spenser promised her friend and roommate she'd spend her vacation in west Texas for a charitable mission-she didn't agree to the oppressive heat, massive spiders, or the rowdy cantina next door drowning out her gospel singing. She's not the type to sit idly by, so when she clashes with the sexy-as-hell man who runs the place, her temper is hot enough to nearly burn down the entire town.Despite refusing to turn down his jukebox and inviting Miss Mercy to leave his cantina alone, Hunter Wilson can't get that gospel singer with the ice-blue eyes out of his mind. Finding her again in their tiny town isn't the problem. Convincing her that he's interested-well, that's another story. But if Mercy will give Hunter one more chance to show his true feelings, they just might find the love of a lifetime.Praise for Carolyn Brown:"Brown's characters easily inspire readers to care what happens to them."-Publishers Weekly for Bride For a Day"A sweet story about building family out of what life hands you."-Kirkus Reviews for Talk Cowboy to Me"Fresh, funny, and sexy tale filled with likable, down-to-earth characters."-Booklist for Love Drunk CowboyPreviously published as An Old Love's Shadow.

"The oldest of seven sisters, Ursula Simmons has followed in her mother's footsteps as a novelist. With a bad case of writer's block, she brings her notebooks and computer home to the old brothel called Paradise where they all grew up, in the hope that being home for the holidays will inspire her--and since it's Christmas, all her sisters will be there too. The sisters take the holidays very seriously, and as soon as they've celebrated Thanksgiving, it's on to decorating for Christmas. As all pitch in to make the spirits bright, younger sister Endora is dismayed to find some of the handsome men who've come to help doing more flirting than anything else. She's determined to show her sisters that no relationship is worth the heartbreak. But it might be Ursula who reminds the family that Christmas is a magical time, and finding new love is always a gift"--

Losing a loved one is difficult for anyone to deal with. For a child, death can be especially challenging. Matthew was very close to his Pa when cancer took him away. Pennies, Pictures, and Pancakes is a short story sharing some of the special memories Matthew had with his Pa and how he uses those memories to cope with the loss now.

Lu Xun, a founder of modern Chinese literature, lived through a pivotal moment in Chinese history. Schooled in the old order, he matured during its symbolic collapse the end of the dynastic system and lived through the wrenching transition into a new order that had not yet come into view. The Chinese state, weakened by massive internal rebellions, faced unprecedented military, commercial, and diplomatic pressure from Western powers. Devastating challenges in the material realm brought into question fundamental premises of Chinese identity. Why was China so weak and what could be done about it? Initially inclined to look to the material realm for solutions, Lu Xun early rejected a medical career and staked his future on a conviction that literature offered a promising arena from which to convert minds and hearts to new ways of perceiving, ways that were better adapted to the current crisis. Yet when prompted to write short stories that might forward that agenda, he wrote the stories of Call to Arms and Wandering, which instead gave symbolic expression to the ambiguities and complexities that he experienced within himself. Although he came to doubt the power of literature to contribute to the urgent need for cultural transformation, the stories from these collections comprise an essential part of his legacy. His deep concern about human suffering and his commitment to truth-telling are underlying pre-occupations that run throughout his evolving understanding of this moment in China s history. Lu Xun attributed his motivation for a career in literature to his desire to cure the spirits of the Chinese people. Given Lu Xun s explicit ambition to address China s historical crisis, scholars have addressed in great depth his contributions to Chinese intellectual and literary history and probed his short stories as expressions of his ambition to help solve China s crisis. He has been perceived as both an agent of change and an embodiment of his time. Yet generally scholars have not queried the psychological dimensions of his self-appointed task. If he imagined that curing spirits might even be possible, it would seem that he might have had at least an implicit psychological model of the disease, its causes, a process for healing it, and a vision of the cured state. Did he? Scholars who study Lu Xun s modern short stories have usually focused on the content and used the stories to understand Lu Xun the writer or to sheds light on his times; they have attended to the structure only to the degree that it illuminates these concerns. This study executes a reversal, decentering the content and focusing on the structure as a primary means to understand the texts, and it seeks to understand the Lu Xun who presents himself through his work, not Lu Xun the full human being. The structure that emerges from a close reading of the stories does indeed present an implicit therapeutic model. Carl Jung s theories of the normative human self articulate with some precision Lu Xun s implicit vision of spiritual cure. Jung, one of three key founders of modern Western psychology, grounded his understanding of the human psyche in personal self-scrutiny and extensive clinical practice, and so his theories offer a validated psychological model for interpreting the textual evidence. Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung thus deploys a new methodology and proposes a new model for interpreting Lu Xun s two collections of modern short stories. The study demonstrates that in fact Lu Xun had a clear but implicit model of spiritual healing and cure. He began with the assumption that this psycho-dynamic paradigm might apply in all arenas of Chinese life and so tested out this premise imaginatively through his stories. The conclusion embedded in his fiction is that in the domains of nation and community, healing would not be possible without revolutionary change, but that healing was possible, although hardly likely, within the confines of family and the self. Viewing the stories of Call to Arms and Wandering through this lens often yields important new insights about individual stories. Even when it does not, the approach draws attention to the commonalities disguised by the great variety of plots, characters, and narrative strategies. Further, this approach incorporates and generalizes the more limited way of viewing the stories in terms of class analysis, and it complements the historical and biographical discussion of these works. Perhaps more important is that understanding Lu Xun s psychological model opens new ways of imagining the relevance of his stories to timeless human concerns. Contemporary scholars increasingly ask about Lu Xun s value now that the overt subjects of his concerns have receded into the past, and they have also looked to understand his role in the context of the international intellectual currents of his time. Although not primarily concerned with the sources of Lu Xun s creativity, this study does suggest resonances between the structure of his thought as revealed in the stories and that of key nineteenth-century European philosophers and writers. Even while being firmly grounded in his own times, Lu Xun evoked universal themes and archetypes of the human condition. This book will appeal to scholars in Asian studies, comparative literature, and psychology.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Brown reminds us that family is forever in this heartwarming and hopeful story featuring: Three cousins who've grown apart The love of a grandmother that brings them back together A fresh start they all deserveUpon inheriting their grandmother's home and family bait shop, three cousins-Lanie, Jodi, and Becky Cornell-return to Catfish, Texas, hoping to find the fresh start they all need. Turns out living as roommates in Granny Lizzie's tiny two-bedroom house and running the Catfish Fisherman's Hut isn't at all like the idyllic summers they spent as children on the banks of the Red River. The days are long and hot, the tourists demanding and rude. And then there's Chris Adams, a local river guide who seems to have eyes only for Becky.But Lizzie's death has set in motion a chain of events that will cause a new generation of Cornell women to come together. And thanks to this chance inheritance, some local fishermen, and the love of their grandmother, the Cornell cousins discover that sometimes an ending is really the beginning of a brand-new happily ever after.Praise for Carolyn Brown:"Fans...will flip for this charming small-town tale."-Woman's World for The Sisters Café"Fresh, funny, and sexy."-Booklist for Love Drunk Cowboy"Sassy and quirky...this fast-paced holiday romp brims with music, laughter...and plenty of Texas flavor."-Library Journal for Darn Good Cowboy Christmas

A brand-new heartwarming story of love and friendship from bestselling author Carolyn Brown, featuring: A bride who might be getting cold feet... Her groom-to-be who only wants to show her how much he loves her A sassy grandmother who loves to give advice The perfect family reunion that proves love can save us again and again Bonus content-two novellas to help you celebrate the seasons!A week before your wedding is one heckuva time for your ex to ride back into town, stirring up trouble. But that's exactly the predicament Darla McAdams finds herself in. Darla's on the verge of breaking up with her fiancé, Will Jackson-only a week before the wedding. Her parents would disown her, but Darla's sure that her Granny Roxie will understand when Darla tells her that her first love, Andy, has come back to town. Thank goodness for a wise granny's reminiscences of her own sassy wedding at just the right moment...Praise for Carolyn Brown:"The most difficult thing about reading a Brown book is putting it down."-Fresh Fiction"Fans of beloved Southern films, like Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, will flip for this charming small-town tale."-Woman's World for The Sisters Café

A heartwarming novel of complicated families, new neighbors, and fresh hope from a New York Times bestselling author who writes "Southern comfort in a book." -Sheila Roberts Allie Logan has her hands full with a bad breakup, a struggling renovation business, a sister who won't stop flaunting her engagement ring, and a grandmother who keeps wandering off at the most inopportune times. In fact, Granny Irene's latest habit is sneaking out to the ranch next door, where's she's convinced a lost love awaits. But when Allie goes to collect her, she finds instead a new neighbor-six-foot-plus of tall, dark, and charming. Blake Dawson is one more thing Allie can't deal with right now. But since he's hired her to help repair his rundown ranch, they're suddenly spending an awful lot of time together. And as family secrets-past and present-start to come to light, Allie finds that opening her heart might just be the fresh start her life needs.Includes the bonus novella Buttercup Farms, part of the Sunflower Ranch series-never before published!

New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown's Southern twang and inimitable sass shine through in this romantic second-chance story.Footloose Liz Hanson has finally come home to Ringgold, Texas with a hankering to settle down. All she wants for Christmas is a house of her own-and the man of her dreams. The house was easy. Now she's got her sights set on her teen crush in the form of Raylen O'Donnell, who is now her extremely attractive next door neighbor, to make her Christmas dreams come true...Perfect for fans of: Sweet and sexy, emotional love stories Fresh starts and second chances A Southern small-town setting come to life Characters that jump off the pagePreviously published as Darn Good Cowboy Christmas.

"Originally published as Love is the answer in 1997 in the United States of America by Precious Gem Romance, an imprint of Zebra Books. This edition based on the paperback edition self-published by the author in 2014"--Copyright page.

Pearl Richland is reaching the end of her rope. First she lost her job. Then she lost her great-aunt Pearlita. Then she inherited Pearlita's old roadside motel, which looks like the perfect horror movie setting. But at least running the motel means she can be her own boss. And her first order of business is to deal with the handsome cowboy who just checked in... Wil Marshall was just looking for a place to wait out a nasty storm when he took a room at the Longhorn Inn. But what's a cowboy to do when the police come knocking on his door, suspecting him of murder? Good thing the feisty innkeeper can vouch for him and set the record straight. But when more trouble comes Wil's way, it becomes clear that sticking close to Pearl is not only a good idea--it's the only option now that another storm has trapped them together, leading to some seriously hot nights... Wil didn't have plans to stay, but the inn--and Pearl--are starting to feel like home"--

When Carlene Lovelle discovers her husband has been keeping a secret, the women of Texas rally behind her in a battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.Carlene Lovelle, owner of Bless My Bloomers lingerie shop in Cadillac, Texas, has everything she's ever wanted: a loving husband, a successful small town business on Main Street that sells custom lingerie for making women feel beautiful, and great friends who never disappoint.However, that all changes when Carlene finds a pair of sexy red panties in her husband's briefcase. She knows exactly who those panties belong to-they were purchased from her very own shop! She's beginning to think her life would've been easier if she'd just opened Main Street Books and stayed away from silky underthings.Now her marriage is over and her life is in a tailspin. She's humiliated, upset, and heartbroken, but it's time to move on to the anger stage of grieving. There's no point looking backward when looking forward reminds Carlene that all she needs are the ladies of this small town to rally around and teach her that revenge is a dish best served red-hot.(Previously published as The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off and A Heap of Texas Trouble.)