The Devine Doughnut Shop

For Grace Dalton, her sister, Sarah, and her cousin, Macy, the Devine Doughnut Shop is a sweet family legacy and a landmark in their Texas town. As the fourth generation to run the Double D, they keep their great-grandmother's recipe secret and uphold the shop's tradition as a coffee klatch for sharing local gossip, advice, and woes. But drama brews behind the counter, too.

Three women are torn between traditions of the past and unexpected new beginnings in a warmhearted novel by Carolyn Brown about family, romance, and the best pastries in Texas. For Grace Dalton, her sister, Sarah, and her cousin Macy, the Devine Doughnut Shop is a sweet family legacy and a landmark in their Texas town. As the fourth generation to run the Double D, they keep their great-grandmother's recipe secret and uphold the shop's tradition as a coffee klatch for sharing local gossip, advice, and woes. But drama brews behind the counter, too. Grace is a single mother struggling with an unruly teenage daughter. Heartbroken Sarah has sworn off love. Macy's impending wedding has an unexpected hitch. And now charming developer Travis Butler has arrived in Devine with a checkbook and a handsome smile. He wants to buy the shop, expand it nationally, and boost the economy of a town divided by the prospect. With the family's relationships in flux, their beloved heritage up for grabs, and their future in the air, it's amazing what determination, sass, a promise of romance, and a warm maple doughnut can do to change hearts and minds.

When Glenn Sparks was a child, his father gave up his job as an aeronautical engineer and relocated the family in order to open a doughnut shop. His father's vision was to create a "family" business. While that vision wasn't quite realized, the things that happened over the 20-year history of running a doughnut shop proved unforgettable. Now a university professor, Glenn did the arithmetic and discovered that over the 20-years, he had personally handled over 8-million doughnuts. Upon reflection, he concluded that this life statistic didn't begin to tell the story of what it was like to be in the doughnut business. There was still a story to be told and, "Rolling in Dough: Lessons I Learned in a Doughnut Shop" is that story. The book's inspiration came from Glenn's family and friends who encouraged him to write about growing up in the doughnut business after they heard him tell stories of his childhood that seemed to them almost unbelievable. While the book has the feel of a personal memoir, it is more than that. The Sparks family's venture into the world of a franchise doughnut shop is organized into a series of "lessons" that provide the chapter structure and help to organize the material. In pondering the life lessons, readers will be entertained by some hilarious stories, meet an unforgettable cast of characters, and get a view of the doughnut business that only an insider could provide. One thing is certain: after you read this book, you'll never look at a doughnut shop in quite the same way.

When Carlene Lovelle discovers her husband has been keeping a secret, the women of Texas rally behind her in a battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown. Carlene Lovelle, owner of Bless My Bloomers lingerie shop in Cadillac, Texas, has everything she's ever wanted: a loving husband, a successful small town business on Main Street that sells custom lingerie for making women feel beautiful, and great friends who never disappoint. However, that all changes when Carlene finds a pair of sexy red panties in her husband's briefcase. She knows exactly who those panties belong to—they were purchased from her very own shop! She's beginning to think her life would've been easier if she'd just opened Main Street Books and stayed away from silky underthings. Now her marriage is over and her life is in a tailspin. She's humiliated, upset, and heartbroken, but it's time to move on to the anger stage of grieving. There's no point looking backward when looking forward reminds Carlene that all she needs are the ladies of this small town to rally around and teach her that revenge is a dish best served red-hot. (Previously published as The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off and A Heap of Texas Trouble.)

The doughnut is a thing of beauty. A circle of fried doughy perfection. A source of comfort in trying times, perhaps. For Theo Bernstein, however, it is far, far more. Things have been going pretty badly for Theo Bernstein. An unfortunate accident at work has lost him his job (and his work involved a Very Very Large Hadron Collider, so he's unlikely to get it back). His wife has left him. And he doesn't have any money. Before Theo has time to fully appreciate the pointlessness of his own miserable existence, news arrives that his good friend Professor Pieter van Goyen, renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, has died. By leaving the apparently worthless contents of his safety deposit to Theo, however, the professor has set him on a quest of epic proportions. A journey that will rewrite the laws of physics. A battle to save humanity itself. This is the tale of a man who had nothing and gave it all up to find his destiny -- and a doughnut.

"Ever since childhood, Emma Merrill and Sophia Mason were bound by a passion for painting. Like all young best friends, they promised to never lose touch. But the girls came from different worlds, and their paths diverged when Emma went to an elite college and Sophie worked her way through state school. After a decade they've reconnected, both in a time of need. Emma has been struggling with depression since her college years, and she's lost herself under the suffocating influence of her controlling and manipulative mother. Sophie, under pressure to prepare for an upcoming gallery show, whisks the fragile Emma away to a small artist's colony in south Texas. It's a raw and beautiful landscape where wildflowers bloom, and perhaps Emma can bloom there, too. In the company of such nurturing and creative strangers, especially Josh Corlen, the openhearted manager of the commune, Emma allows herself to breathe again."--Back cover.