Alumni Books

The relics of St. Nicholas are among the most divine and prized possessions in the Christian world, said to hold the power to heal the most incurable diseases and protect those who come in contact with them. Biblical archeologist Maggie Shepherd has the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to extract and study one of these priceless artifacts buried in the tomb of the man who is now known as Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, the Pope will present the venerated relic of St. Nicholas to the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow in the hope of reuniting East and West after a 1,000-year schism.

French Letters: Virginia’s War is the story of Virginia Sullivan and Sandy Clayton, the 12-year-old who is infatuated with her, as World War II lands heavily on small town America. While Sandy is mesmerized by stories of daring pilots and the return of a war hero, Virginia is expected to be chaste, wait for her boyfriend who is away in the war, and live under the iron rule of her father, who runs not only the local newspaper but also the local black market for ration coupons, hard-to-get tires, and gasoline cards.

A landing beach in France, exploding under fire and littered with wounded men. Grim surgeries performed in a captured pillbox, in an orchard, inside a Calvados distillery barn. A crumpled glider falling out of a hedgerow. And Géraldine Dupré, a young French woman who was not pretty, not exactly, but pleasant enough to look at. This is the war of Will Hastings, a green Army doctor, five thousand miles away from Virginia Sullivan, his former girlfriend who had not written in months, and from Tierra, the little town that seemed to have forgotten him. This was his war in Normandy in 1944.

Children of a Good War, set in 1985, is a novel of the hijacking of an airliner in the middle east, of a nun in Ireland who has taken the vows of silence for more than 40 years, and of sibling rivals Peter, a Pan Am pilot, and Frank, a journalist. Their brotherly enmity equals the fiery feud between the Biblical Jacob and Esau, sons of blind Isaac and scheming Rebekah. Peter, in particular, believes that Frank is not his true brother but instead is a bastard who their father brought back from World War II France. Frank believes that first-born Peter always was given preference by Virginia, a doting mother who ignored Peter’s cruelties at Frank’s expense.

When Southern golden boy and heir-apparent to a multigenerational legacy Jake Goodloe dies tragically, his best friend Maggie Carlton does what she always does in the face of pain … she writes. But Maggie’s effort to define Jake’s past has unintended consequences that force Maggie to re-evaluate their friendship as well as her most closely held values.

Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of Truviv’s CEO means their boss, Ames, likely will take over the entire company. Each of the women has a different relationship with Ames, who has always been surrounded by whispers about how he treats women. Those whispers have been ignored, swept under the rug, hidden away by those in charge.

Batten Down the Belfry is the fourth in the delightful cozy mystery series from Diane Kelly set in Nashville, Tennessee—where the real estate market is to die for.

When a man who isn’t who he claims to be befriends Patrick Flint and his son during a wilderness excursion with movers and shakers from across the globe, it puts the father-son duo dead in the bullseye of a murder target. To stop a gang of ruthless killers, the Flints must unriddle the mystery man’s identity before the killers put a stop to them all.

A Texas oilman. A brilliant female archaeologist. An unknown world underneath the Vatican. In 1939, a team of workers beneath the Vatican unearthed an early Christian grave. This surprising discovery launched a secret quest that would last decades — a quest to discover the long-lost burial place of the Apostle Peter.

A love story with an unexpectedly happy ending, The Actual Dance is told through the eyes and heart of a husband as he struggles with his worst fears during what everyone expects to be his wife’s losing battle to breast cancer. Determined to support the “other half of his whole,” he provides the positivity his love partner demands and the caregiving she needs. He doesn’t share his fears, even as he becomes more certain of her upcoming demise. He also keeps his visits to the virtual ballroom—where each one of us will exit into eternity—secret until he begins to wonder if he’s losing his mind.