Books

Running From Herself 

Who are you when things get hard? 

Small-town club singer Leah Branch welcomes her band's breakup. Tired of chasing the impossible dream, it's time to find a new life far away from music. She doesn't exactly pick tiny Chance, Wyoming. It picks her.

But music won’t leave her alone. Serving drinks in the town saloon, she falls in love with Jared, a fellow singer. And it's music that shatters their romance. When Jared gives up singing for good and the saloon's fortunes plummet, Leah swallows her pride and offers to take his place on the bandstand.

The record label’s offer strikes like a lightning bolt, and Leah grabs it. More than anything, more than even a shot at fame, it’s her chance to escape her broken heart. But in Nashville the label glamorizes her look, chooses her songs, even changes her name. Leah finds herself hating the person she’s become.

One night on tour, she's finally had enough. And that's when she runs

Fans of Daisy Jones & the Six will love this deep dive into the inner world of the music business.

Touching Home (The Still Waters Series Book 1)

 

Is home a place or a feeling?

Some women are content to stay in the place they were born. Some can’t wait to escape. In Touching Home, meet four women who are searching for the exact right place to call home. They learn that home isn’t a three-bedroom ranch or a penthouse apartment . It’s having someone special to share it with.

Touching Home features four complete novellas, with four very different women who embark on a road that’s bumpy, filled with dead ends and wrong turns, romantic mistakes and impulsive decisions.

Drea returns home reluctantly to run the family business and runs smack into a mysterious stranger. Ashley becomes the prime suspect in her new boss’s murder. Karen finally finds the rundown motel she plans to refurbish, but someone in town wants her gone. Everyone tells Carrie to move away from her one-stoplight village, but she won’t go, even after the love of her life has turned his back on her.

All four are looking for that place—that feeling—looking to finally touch home. 

 

 

 

Leaving Home (The Still Waters Series Book 2) 

Sometimes you have to leave home in order to find it.

Saying goodbye is never easy, but the four women in Leaving Home would never have met their true selves if they hadn’t uttered that word.

Leaving Home features four complete novellas of uncertainty, fear and courage; disastrous decisions, impulsive risks, falling, then rising back up.

With Kaitlyn’s career at a dead-end, she takes a position in a remote town and finds that a stagnant job was the least of her worries. Vanessa’s home literally turns to ashes, and she knows exactly who lit the match. Sabrina’s teenage self runs away in a desperate cry for attention, and after fifteen years, she still can’t accept that her family never searched for her. Sam kills a man in self-defense, but knowing she can’t prove her innocence, she runs, assumes a new identity, then discovers her terror isn’t over. 

 

 

Inn Dreams

Karen Grace has just realized her life’s dream — buying an old motel to renovate. By herself. How hard can it be? But money slips through her fingers fast, and she’s forced to find a job, where she meets the love of her life. That’s when the real trouble begins. Someone doesn’t want her in town and they’re going to make sure she leaves.

"This was another page turner from April Tompkins. I didn't want it to end."

Lies and Love

Drea hoped to only see her tiny tourist town in her rear view mirror, but now she’s back to take over the family store. Grandpa insisted and no one says no to Grandpa. When a newcomer arrives in town, Drea is immediately smitten. She knows her old high school friend has a crush on her, but she only has eyes for the mysterious stranger. Just one problem – he’s a bit too mysterious.

"Beautiful prose: it invites the readers to continuously explore."

 

 

 

The Diner Girl 

 

Carrie Peters has one big problem and a bunch of little ones. Her big problem’s name is Aunt Celia, who’s stealing Carrie’s money. The bitter crone, who’s taken Carrie in after her parents die, feeds Carrie scraps and confines her to one corner of the apartment while making Carrie turn over all her waitressing tips. Then there’s Wes, Carrie’s forever love, who leaves for school and abruptly ghosts her. Thank goodness she has the Calico Diner and its customers for refuge and care. What Carrie doesn’t yet know is that the Calico Diner will one day be her salvation.

"Lovely novella with a wonderful message to share." 

 

Bad Blood

 

Can a person be born bad? Vanessa's brother was.

 

His life's mission was to con and steal, and he didn't care how he accomplished it or who got hurt. He set fire to his late mother's house for the insurance money, and the fact that Vanessa was surely inside was but a minor detail. Except she wasn't, and he was the one who perished instead.

 

At least she's sure he did. Even the fire marshal is sure. Propriety dictates that she mourn him, but she can't. She's relieved to finally move on with her life, resume the career he shattered. She finds work with an attorney who only represents the worst of the worst; then one day, sitting behind her boss in the courtroom, she notices that the defendant beside him looks too familiar. It isn't possible. Is it?       

                       

 

 

 

Shadow Song  

In a backwoods town, finding your boss’s dead body in the woods is enough to get you charged with murder. Worse, Ashley Montrose is saddled with the most incompetent attorney in the county. She only has herself and a man she loathes to find a way out of this mess.

"April Tompkins delivers a compelling narrative filled with twists and turns, emotional depth, and characters that stay with you long after the last page."

 

New Kaitlyn

Fed up with her dead-end job and dead-end life, Kaitlyn makes a rash decision: pack up and move to a small town she's never heard of and lead a group of neophytes in her company's new venture. She questions her choice at every turn, from the oddly-friendly landlord to the three bikers she meets on an evening stroll, to the universe's most detestable boss.

Then, to make everything even worse, she falls in love with a man she can never have. 

"Sweet, quirky tale of gritting your teeth while navigating the vagaries of a career lifestyle."

  

 

 

 

Once in a Blue Moon 

 

 

Jemma’s grandmother has died and it’s up to Jemma to travel back to     the farmhouse to sort her belongings. The one person who should be   there, Jemma’s mother, doesn’t even seem to care. Mom has always   been that way; distant, detached. Mom hadn’t seen Grandma in years.

Jemma sets upon the task of packing up Grandma’s memorabilia, and curious, she places an old record on the boxy stereo in the basement. That’s the moment when Jemma is no longer Jemma. She’s a young woman surviving in the midst of World War II, with a no-good husband and a lonely country existence.

Just when the woman who’s now called Maggie finally fights her way out of the tangles, a different woman steps into the picture. Her name is Beth, a child of the seventies, harboring a suspicion that batters every step of her life, and bars her from trusting anyone.

Whatever magic caused Jemma to assume these new identities, she’s about to learn some truths about love and lies.

 

Whispers in the Dark

 
Sam wasn’t always Sam, and she wasn’t always hidden away in a tiny town, spinning records in the middle of the night. She's been so careful, so anonymous. The police never found her.

But now Sam is being stalked. Nine years ago a crazed lunatic tried to murder her, until she killed him first. Then she ran. She was sure she’d killed him. She saw his body, bloody and bashed, right there on the floor. 

It’s impossible that her would-be killer is still alive and hell-bent on revenge. Isn’t it?

 

Find My Way Home

 

What if you’re lost, and no one tries to find you?

When Sabrina was fourteen, she stole away in the night with a boy she’d just met.

It was the night of the moon landing, the only event her drunken father gave a damn about, and he’d chosen Sabrina to watch it with him. But she wasn’t falling for it. The other 364 days of the year she was invisible to him—and to her mother, as well.

After one day on the road, Sabrina’s conscious got the best of her. She needed to call home to let them know she was okay. But no one answered—not that day, nor the next, nor the next.

Now she’s gotten what she always thought she wanted, a life on her own.

But for fifteen years, it’s stabbed at her heart—why did her family forget her?