Christy Awards

In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper: a rallying cry for hope, purpose . . . and rocks. Its message? Send me a rock for the person you lost, and I will build something life-giving. When the poem spreads farther than he ever intended, Robert Bliss's humble words change the tide of a nation. Boxes of rocks inundate the tiny, coastal Maine town, and he sets his calloused hands to work. Decades later, Annie Sawyer is summoned back to Ansel-by-the-Sea when she learns her Great-Uncle Robert, the man who became her refuge during the hardest summer of her youth, is now the one in need of help. But what greets her is a mystery: a wall of heavy boxes hiding in his home. Memories of stone ruins on a nearby island ignite a fire in her anthropologist soul to uncover answers. Together with the handsome and enigmatic postman, Annie uncovers the story layer by layer, yearning to resurrect the hope GrandBob once held so dear and to know the truth behind the chasm in her family's past. But mending what has been broken for so long may require more of her and those she loves than they are prepared to give.

After Annie Jacobson's older brother is deployed to Vietnam during the war, tragedy at home brings their estranged father home without welcome. As tensions heighten, Annie and her family must find a way to move forward as they try to hold both hope and grief in the same hand.

A reclusive bookstore owner hoped she'd permanently buried her family's sensational past with a new name. But when the novels she once shared with an old crush begin appearing in the mail, it's clear her true identity is about to be revealed, threatening the new life she has painstakingly built.

Zara Mahoney was enjoying newlywed bliss until her life is upended by her estranged sister, Eve, and Zara must take custody of her children. Eve's struggles lead her to Tiff Bradley, who's determined to help despite the past hurts the relationship triggers. Can these women find the hope they-and those they love-desperately need?

Reeling from her parents' deaths, Lucy Claremont discovers an artifact in their London flat, leading her to a seaside estate. Aided by her childhood friend Dashel, a forensic astronomer, they start to unravel a history of heartbreak, sacrifice, and love begun 200 years prior-one that may heal them both.

Murphy Shepherd lives alone, doing maintenance work for a church that no one attends and trying to heal from scars gained rescuing others who dwell in the margins. His specialty is finding young girls bought and sold in the flesh trade, and leading them from brokenness to freedom, but Shepherd thinks he has given everything he has and it may be time to retire. His hermetic healing process is interrupted when he rescues a woman named Summer in Florida's Intercoastal Waterway and gets drawn into a hunt after a gang of international human traffickers.

For decades, three generations of women of Old Depot Grocery have been keeping secrets from each other. When Sarah returns home with hopes of running the store, the long-buried past will be brought into the light and threaten not only to destroy the family business but sever the family ties.

He shows up when all hope is lost. Murphy Shepherd has made a career of finding those no one else could - survivors of human trafficking. His life's mission is helping others find freedom. But then the nightmare strikes too close to home. When his new wife, her daughter, and two other teenage girls are stolen, Murphy is left questioning all he has thought to be true. With more dead ends than leads, he has no idea how to find those he loves. After everything is stripped away, love is what remains. Hope feels lost, but Murphy is willing to expend his last breath trying to bring them home

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980 Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness. Scratching out a living on the family's tobacco farm is as tough as it gets. When a few random acts of kindness help to ease the Fosters' hardships, Austin finds herself relying upon some of Magnolia's most colorful citizens for friendship and more. But it's next to impossible to hide the truth about the goings-on at Nolia Farms, and Austin's desperate attempts to save face all but break her. Just when it seems she might have something more waiting for her-with the son of a wealthy local family who she's crushed on for years-her father makes a choice that will crack wide-open the family's secrets and lead to a public reckoning. There are consequences for loving a boy like Vance Cumberland, but there is also freedom in the truth.

This is a contemporary novel about a young man whose big plans are derailed when an accident brings him into contact with a dying woman who pulls him into her quest to finish off her bucket list.

Allie Massey's dream to use her grandparents' estate for equine therapy is crushed when she discovers the property has been sold to a contractor. With weeks until demolition, Allie unearths some of Nana Dale's best-kept secrets--including her champion filly, a handsome man, and one fateful night during WWII--and perhaps a clue to keep her dream alive.

Kieran Lucas's grandmother is slipping into dementia, and, when her memory is gone, Kieran's last tie to the family she barely knows will be lost forever. Worse, Granny Mac is being tormented by flashbacks of her mother's death and the loss of their home. In 1931, Rosie McCauley's Smoky Mountains home is threatened by the Tennessee Great Smokies Park Commission as they created a new national park. But Rosie vows the only way they'll get her land is if they haul her out in a pine box. When a compromise offers her and her disabled sister the opportunity to stay for her lifetime, it seems too good to be true. Ornithologist Benton Fuller arrives to conduct a bird survey for the park and the two form a tenuous bond. But their friendship broadens a rift between her and the other mountain folk who are suspicious of any government connections. Then the discovery of an illegal still in the woods near her cabin leads to a violent clash between sides that could destroy them all. Eighty-five years later, Kieran heads back to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to find answers to her great-grandmother's mysterious death and bring peace to Granny Mac before it's too late. Park Historian Zach Jensen may be the key to locating both the answers and a precious family heirloom. But just as in the past, Kieran's needs clash with government regulations. Will Zach block her from recovering what she needs and solving this family mystery?

At the age of eighteen, musician and songwriter Cooper O'Connor took everything his father held dear and drove 1,200 miles from home to Nashville, his life riding on a six-string guitar and the bold wager that he had talent. But his wager soon proved foolish. Five years after losing everything, he falls in love with Daley Cross, an angelic voice in need of a song. But just as he realizes his love for Daley, Cooper faces a tragedy that threatens his life as well as his career. With nowhere else to go, he returns to his remote home in the Colorado Mountains, searching for answers about his father and his faith. When Daley shows up on his street corner twenty years later, he wonders if it's too late to tell her the truth about his past and if he is ready to face it. A radical retelling of the story of the prodigal son, Long Way Gone takes us from tent revivals to the Ryman Auditorium to the tender relationship between a broken man and the father who never stopped calling him home.

Snow whirls around an elevated train platform in Chicago. A distracted woman boards the train, takes her seat, and moments later a fiery explosion rips through the frigid air, tearing the car apart in a horrific attack on the city’s transit system. One life is spared. Twenty-two are lost. A year later, Autumn Manning can’t remember the day of the bombing and she is tormented by grief—by guilt. Twelve months of the question constantly echoing. Why? Why? Why? Searching for answers, she haunts the lives of the victims, unable to rest. Paul Elliott lost his wife in the train bombing and wants to let the dead rest in peace, undisturbed and unable to cause more pain for his loved ones. He wants normalcy for his twelve-year-old daughter and young son, to see them move beyond the heartbreak. But when the Elliotts and Autumn are unexpectedly forced together, he fears she’ll bring more wreckage in her wake.

Adisa Johnson is living her dream of practicing law with a prestigious firm in downtown Atlanta. Then a split-second mistake changes the course of her career. Left with no other options, Adisa returns to her hometown where a few days earlier a white police officer shot an unarmed black teen who is now lying comatose in the hospital. Adisa is itching to jump into the fight as a special prosecutor but feels pulled to do what she considers unthinkable as a young black woman—defend the officer.

When an impoverished Missouri school district loses its accreditation, the affluent community of Crystal Ridge has no choice but to open their school doors. Camille Gray, the wife of an executive, mother of three, long-standing PTA chairwoman and champion fundraiser is faced with a shocking discovery that threatens to tear her picture-perfect world apart at the seams. Jen Covington, the career nurse whose long, painful journey to motherhood finally resulted in adoption, is struggling with a reality so much harder than she anticipated. Anaya Jones, a new teacher at Crystal Ridge's top elementary school, is unprepared for the powder-keg situation she's stepped into.

Allie is still recovering from the loss of her family's waterfront restaurant on Florida's Gulf Coast when she loses her second husband to a terrifying highway accident. Joseph has been adrift for many years, wounded in both body and spirit and unable to come to terms with the trauma of his Vietnam War experiences. Just as he resolves to abandon his search for peace and live alone at a remote cabin in the Carolina mountains, he discovers a mother and her two small children lost in the forest. In getting them back to their home in Florida, he returns to his own hometown-- and witnesses the accident that reunites him with his childhood sweetheart, Allie. He offers to help rebuild the restaurant-- but when a secret from the past begins to emerge, will it destroy all hope for their second chance at love?

In this richly textured debut novel, a disgraced journalist moves into her great aunt's secret-laden farmhouse and discovers that the women in her family were testaments to true love and courage in the face of war, persecution, and racism.