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Susan Meissner

Biography

Susan Meissner

Susan Meissner is a former managing editor of a weekly newspaper and an award-winning columnist. She is the USA Today bestselling author of ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL, THE NATURE OF FRAGILE THINGS, THE LAST YEAR OF THE WAR, AS BRIGHT AS HEAVEN, A BRIDGE ACROSS THE OCEAN, SECRETS OF A CHARMED LIFE, A FALL OF MARIGOLDS and STARS OVER SUNSET BOULEVARD, among other novels.

Susan Meissner

Books by Susan Meissner

by Susan Meissner - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

California, 1938. When she loses her parents in an accident, 16-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however: Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness, she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment she lets down her guard and ends up pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Rosanne believes she is bound for a home for unwed mothers. But she soon finds out she is not going to a home of any kind, but to a place far worse than anything she could have imagined.

by Ariel Lawhon, Kristina McMorris, and Susan Meissner - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

The Philippines, 1941. When U.S. Navy nurse Eleanor Lindstrom, U.S. Army nurse Penny Franklin and Filipina nurse Lita Capel forge a friendship at the Army Navy Club in Manila, they believe they’re living a paradise assignment. All three are seeking a way to escape their pasts, but soon the beauty and promise of their surroundings give way to the heavy mantle of war. Caught in the crosshairs of a fight between the U.S. military and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of the Philippine Islands, the nurses are forced to serve under combat conditions and, ultimately, endure captivity as the first female prisoners of the Second World War. As their resiliency is tested, they strive to keep their hope --- and their fellow inmates --- alive, though not without great cost.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant who answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a San Francisco widower named Martin Hocking, a man she knows nothing about. She quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. The fates of Sophie and two other women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake of 1906, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa 14-year-old in 1943 --- aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than 12,000 victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction

World War II is over, and Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy, join hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to be reunited with their American husbands. But when the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark. In the present day, and facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a 70-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides --- and ultimately will lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Los Angeles, Present Day. When a hat worn by Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind ends up in Christine McAllister's vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie. Los Angeles, 1938. Violet Mayfield goes to Hollywood after her dream of having a family falls apart. There, she meets enigmatic Audrey Duvall, a once-rising film star. Their adventures together among Hollywood's glitterati enthrall Violet...until each woman's deepest desires collide.

by Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction, Romance

Newlywed Matthew Zook is expanding his family’s tack and feed store when a surprising property dispute puts the remodel on hold. Decades earlier, the same building housed a clock shop run by a young Amish clockmaker named Clayton Raber, who was arrested for the murder of his beloved wife (although the charges eventually were dropped). The only way Matthew can solve the boundary issue and save his family’s business is to track down the clockmaker. But does this put him on the trail of a murderer?

by Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction, Romance

Apprenticed blacksmith Jake Miller is skeptical of Priscilla Kinsinger’s innate ability to soothe troubled horses, especially when he has own ideas on how to calm them. Six years earlier, Priscilla’s mother died in an awful accident at home, and Priscilla’s grief over losing her mother was so intense that she was sent to live with relatives in Indiana. She has just returned to Lancaster County.

by Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction, Romance

New from bestselling authors Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner, THE AMISH GROOM (Book 1 in The Men of Lancaster County series) explores the men of an Amish community in Lancaster County, how their Amish beliefs play out in their unique roles, and the women who change their lives.

by Susan Meissner - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction

Meg is fed up after a broken engagement, the disappearance of her irresponsible father, and the loss of a promised heirloom. When her missing father sends her a ticket to Florence, Meg assumes he will meet her there. Instead, she meets Sofia, a memoir-writer who claims she's the last Medici and that the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance speak to her. As Meg tours Florence, her perspectives on what is real --- and what she wants to be real --- are challenged.

by Susan Meissner - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction

Leaving a life of privilege to strike out on her own, Lauren Durough breaks with convention and her family’s expectations by choosing a state college over Stanford and earning her own income over accepting her ample monthly allowance. She takes a part-time job from 83-year-old librarian Abigail Boyles, who asks Lauren to transcribe the journal entries of her ancestor Mercy Hayworth, a victim of the Salem witch trials.