Mary Ellen Taylor books in order

A gripping novel about family secrets…and coming home for the first time.

Still grieving the loss of her wandering, free-spirited mother, Lucy Kincaid leaves Nashville for the faded town of Cape Hudson, Virginia. She goes to see the house she’s inherited―one she never knew existed, bequeathed to her by a woman she’s never even met. At the heart of this mystery is the hope that maybe―just maybe―this “Winter Cottage” will answer the endless questions about her mother’s past…including the identity of her birth father.

Rather than the quaint Virginian bungalow Lucy expected, Winter Cottage is a grand old estate of many shadows―big enough to hold a century of secrets, passions, and betrayals. It also comes with a handsome and enigmatic stranger, a man next in line to claim Lucy’s inheritance.

Now, as Lucy sifts through the past, uncovering the legacy of secrets that Winter Cottage holds, she’ll come to discover as much about her family history as she does about herself. In searching, she could finally find the one thing she’s never really had: a home.

The lives of two women, generations apart, converge in this enthralling novel of love, mystery, memories, and secrets.

Pregnant and still grieving the death of her fiancé historian Megan Buchanan is forging ahead on a dream project: to restore to its original glory the landmark hunting lodge her own great-great-grandfather built on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. With the help of her fiancé’s caring best friend, it’s sure to draw much-needed tourist revenue to Cape Hudson, a town rich in southern history.

However, it’s Spring House, the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds, that holds the most intriguing history for Megan. In a cache of old letters, she’s drawn into the captivating life of a young woman who embarked on her own dream adventure a century ago. With each one, Megan is swept away into her enthralling world―and all its secrets. But Megan has secrets too.

Now, as one woman’s past unfolds in each revealing letter, Megan will discover more about herself and about the emotional tides of family that can be weathered with those you love and trust the most.

A moving story about profound loss, hard truths, and an overgrown greenhouse full of old secrets.

Adrift in the wake of her father’s death, a failed marriage, and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it’s also a distraction from her profound pain.

When asked to photograph a wedding at the historic Woodmont estate, Libby meets the owner, Elaine Grant. Hoping to open Woodmont to the public, Elaine has employed young widower Colton Reese to help restore the grounds and asks Libby to photograph the process. Libby is immediately drawn to the old greenhouse shrouded in honeysuckle vines.

As Libby forms relationships and explores the overgrown―yet hauntingly beautiful―Woodmont estate, she finds the emotional courage to sort through her father’s office. There she discovers a letter that changes everything she knows about her parents, herself, and the estate. Beneath the vines of the old greenhouse lie generations of secrets, and it’s up to Libby to tend to the fruits born of long-buried seeds.

A sweeping saga that interweaves the past and present in an epic tapestry of love, war, and loss.

As a hospice nurse, Zara Mitchell has already seen more death than most people will experience in a lifetime. So when her older sister asks her to help care for their ailing grandmother, Zara agrees―despite strained family relationships.

Though pale and tired, Nonna has lost none of her sharp mind. She’s fixated on finding something long forgotten, and she immediately puts Zara to work cleaning out the attic. Unexpectedly, amid the tedium of sifting through knickknacks and heirlooms, Zara also reconnects with a man she’s attracted to but whose complicated past makes romance seem impossible.

But then Zara finds what Nonna was looking for: a wooden chest, an emerald broach, a leather-bound journal. As she immerses herself in stories of heroism and loss set against the backdrop of war-torn Italy in 1943, Zara finds answers to questions she didn’t know she had. And they change everything she thinks she knows about love, regret, and seizing the day.

One woman’s journey to discover the hidden stories of her family’s seaside resort.

When a shipwreck surfaces, old secrets are sure to follow.

Or so goes the lore in Ivy Neale’s hometown of Nags Head, North Carolina. When Ivy inherits her family’s beachfront cottage upon her grandmother’s death, she knows returning to Nags Head means facing the best friend and the boyfriend who betrayed her years ago.

But then a winter gale uncovers the shipwreck of local legend―and Ivy soon begins to stumble across more skeletons in the closet than just her own. Amid the cottage’s clutter are clues from her grandmother’s past at the enchanting seaside resort her family once owned. One fateful summer in 1950, the arrival of a dazzling singer shook the staff and guests alike―and not everyone made it to fall.

As Ivy contends with broken relationships and a burgeoning romance in the present, the past threatens to sweep her away. But as she uncovers the strength of her grandmother and the women who came before her, she realizes she is like the legendary shipwreck: the sands may shift around her, but she has found her home here by the sea.

An uplifting tale of hope and love between a mother and daughter as they learn that life is a masterpiece in the making.

When artist Dani Manchester learns she’s slowly losing her vision, she becomes unmoored. Her ex-husband died only months before, leaving Dani and her preteen daughter grief stricken. Suddenly, the life Dani built for her family on the Outer Banks feels like a painful reminder of all they’ve lost.

On a whim, Dani sells her waterfront home and buys an old farm inland near the Virginia state line. But Dani’s daughter recoils at the sudden, drastic change. The Outer Banks’ sun-swept beaches, pink dawns, and savage storms are all she’s ever known.

But Dani is resolute, and the pair move to Virginia to embark on a challenging renovation. That summer, their efforts to turn a run-down silo into an art studio bring forth new friends, new loves, and new challenges.

As mother and daughter navigate the fiercest storm of their lives, they learn that instead of waiting for the skies to clear, they can withstand the wind and rain, so long as they do it together.

After a childhood filled with conflict and loss, Addie Morgan is determined to live a very different kind of life, she deserves stability and happiness, doesn’t she? Addie finds just what she’s looking for when she gets a job at a vineyard in the country. And maybe she’s found more than peace and contentment with the vineyard owner, Scott.

But Addie’s ties to the past intrude when she gets a call telling her that her sister has just given birth and she is wanted at home to help the family she tried so hard to forget. Now, as she returns home, she faces an impossible choice – should she abandon the picture-perfect future she planned or to return to the past.

When a car accident took her sister’s life, Rae McDonald’s life was turned upside down. She made some reckless choices in that first year and one of them resulted in pregnancy at sixteen. She knew she couldn’t handle that responsibility on top of her grief and found a loving family to adopt the child but her sister’s death and now the loss of the child she loved instantly is overwhelming. The only way she can go forward is to bury her emotions.

Lisa Smyth, her sister’s friend, had survived the accident that night but never did tell the truth about what happened. The weight of that guilt is almost unbearable when she is drawn back to Alexandria and both women must confront the past.

Daisy McCrae learns how easily life can turn on a dime… 

Suddenly without a job or a boyfriend, Daisy now lives in the attic above her family’s store, the Union Street Bakery, while she learns the business. It doesn’t help that, as the only adopted daughter, her relationship with her sisters has never been easy.

When an elderly customer dies, Daisy is surprised to inherit a journal from the 1850s, written by a slave girl named Susie. As she reads, Daisy learns more about her family—and her own heritage—than she ever dreamed. Haunted by dreams of the young Susie, who beckons Daisy to “find her,” she is compelled to explore the past more deeply.

What she finds are the answers she has longed for her entire life.

Daisy McCrae knows that change can be sudden—and devastating. And while it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, change has the power to turn your whole world upside down....

Running the family bakery and living in the store’s attic might not be Daisy’s dream life, but she’s beginning to understand what being content feels like. And then she gets some unexpected news. In one moment, Daisy’s calm existence turns into chaos. Now she’s struggling to keep it together, especially with renovations at the bakery spiraling out of control.

But when a box of recipes and mementos is found hidden behind a wall in the bakery, Daisy suddenly has something to cling to—a mystery that echoes her own troubles and gives her the opportunity to figure out what she really wants out of life....