The Cottage Next Door (10 page)
Read The Cottage Next Door Online
Authors: Georgia Bockoven
You’re invited to revisit the beach house, as Georgia Bockoven’s Beach House series continues.
Coming soon from William Morrow. . .
Read on for a sneak peek at the story!
And don’t miss the other Beach House books!
The beach house is a peaceful haven, a place to escape everyday problems. Here, three families find their feelings intensified, and their lives transformed each summer.
The moving and powerful story of four families, the conflicts that tear them apart . . . and the house that brings them together.
Over the course of one year, in a charming cottage by the sea, eight people will discover love and remembrance, reconciliation and reunion, and beginnings and endings in this unforgettable novel.
In the next Beach House novel . . .
A
FTER YOU’VE
GIVEN
your baby to strangers, how do you answer when someone asks if you have children?
The beach house that has harbored and healed troubled hearts for decades opens its door once again for a powerful emotional story that spans an entire summer. The first lost soul who arrives is an achingly lonely woman who sees herself as little more than a placeholder in a life as empty as a champagne bottle at a wedding reception.
Fourteen years ago, Melinda Campbell was fifteen and a half, pregnant, and terrified the baby’s father and grandfather would find out. Melinda’s father, critically ill with black lung disease, sends his daughter to stay with her aunt until the baby is born. Torn between trying to take care of her baby or her father, Melinda chooses adoption.
Now, thirteen years later, she is living the life her father struggled to give her, college educated and moving up the corporate ladder in a state a thousand miles from West Virginia. Her cupboards are filled with food that didn’t come from a food bank, her closet has shoes that equal her father’s yearly income. So what if her smiles are empty or if she sees the world through haunted eyes—or if when she goes home at night her only company is a silver and white shelter cat?
Jeremy Richmond knows the beach house the way a painter knows his canvas, intimately and focused on detail. He is a strong-willed passionate man whose life revolves around his adopted daughter, Shiloh. She owned his heart the moment his wife, Tess, put her into his arms. For three years they were the picture-perfect family, the one advertisers use to sell everything from cars to cameras. Then Shiloh was diagnosed with pediatric lupus and Tess walked away, saying she wanted no part of taking care of a critically ill child.
Jeremy’s life becomes narrowly focused between his contracting business and Shiloh. He convinces himself it is enough for both of them when Shiloh opens a door to a world Jeremy had no idea she inhabited.
With heartbreaking calm and devastating acceptance, Shiloh tells Jeremy she’s tired of fighting her illness and wants to meet her biological mother before it’s too late. Desperate to give Shiloh something to live for, Jeremy agrees to do what he can to find someone he has no desire to meet.
Bestselling author Georgia Bockoven is at her powerful and emotional peak telling the story of three deeply wounded souls who come together at the beach house. Distrust and anger keep them apart; only understanding and love can heal them . . .
G
EORGIA
B
OCKO
VEN
is an award-winning author who began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalist and photographer. Her books have sold more than three million copies worldwide. The mother of two, she resides in northern California with her husband, John.
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An Unspoken Promise
Far From Home
Alone in a Crowd
Moments
A Marriage of Convenience
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE COTTAGE NEXT DOOR
. Copyright © 2015 by Georgia Bockoven. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780062389879
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062431639
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