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Stop By

Formerly Also Titled: Nice Cry

Stop By. I've published at least one recent (2016) romantic, sentimental novel. I've got more on the drawing board. More info coming soon.

Marian Charles is a beautiful but tragic young war widow. Richard Moyer is a hard-working young millionaire with a rocky background and a brilliant future. Each is between loves—alone in life, and quietly sailing toward the unknown. After her husband Tommy Charles dies in a far-away war, Marian finds refuge as a small-town New England librarian. She is far from her home and parents in Oklahoma, now alone in Tommy's home state of Connecticut where they settled to build a life together.

That is all gone now. Her specialty at the library is reading fairy tales to K-2 children from the grammar school next door to the little Emery Township Library. We find her innocently telling the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty and the handsome Prince who comes to waken her from her deep sleep.

The story of Rick and Marian becomes a mirror of this classic fairy tale, with a mix of humor and tragic undertones. She may be a Sleeping Beauty, and Rick may be her Prince, but they have a thorny path filled with surprises before they come to their happy ending.

Rick's life these days consists of racing races between New York City and other financial centers, closing pricey business deals. He has a bitter, cruel divorce behind him, which shattered his trust in women. Handsome and wealthy, smart and decisive in business, he can have any woman he wants. As he dates glamorous New York City socialites, he thinks of them as 'elevator music'. Something is seriously missing in his life, and he knows it--but what? He doesn't believe in romance any longer, having been badly burned.

The day before they met, Marian was actually going to end it all by driving into Lake Emery near her house. Blinded by tears, she thought the ghost sitting beside her was that of Tommy. But it wasn't. The ghost of a man she had never met persuaded her - a man in her future, who loved her more than anything in the world - wordlessly, with powerful eyes - to go back home and pick up her life again, because happy ever after endings do come -- when those who are shattered overcome their grief and anger, courageously pick up the pieces, and move forward.

Strangely, the very next day, Rick Moyer stops into the library on a blistering hot summer day to get some relief in the air conditioning while his broken-down car is being fixed down the street. He'd driven through this little valley many times and never stopped here until today.

When Rick and Marian come face to face for the first time, each is gripped by emotions so powerful it changes their lives instantly. Have they met before? Neither has any idea. She's still deeply shaken from her brush with mortality.

Beautiful in so many ways, the tragic young goddess sweeps Rick Moyer off his feet--and he brings Sleeping Beauty back to life. But there are obstacles--first of all, the fears and uncertainties Rick and Marian bring to the affair from their difficult past; and Rick's father, who wants to manage the family fortune his own way; plus a mysterious enemy who seeks to sabotage the blossoming romance of Rick and Marian.

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