Adoption Thriller

Thirteen years ago, Cole and Lisa Shipley were fostering an infant with hopes of adopting her. Overnight everything was turned upside down, when the child’s mother bled to death on their front doorstep. Her last words: He’s coming here…for her! Save her. Afraid, bewildered, and with a baby in their arms, they fled. The longer they hid, the guiltier they looked. Now in a small Colorado town under assumed identities, they’ve been seemingly safe.

USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Barbara Freethy writes wonderfully entertaining contemporary novels. Summer Secrets is the compelling story of three sisters and the burden of the terrible secret they share.

Foster sisters Krystal and Nichole have always been there for each other, so when Nichole is committed to a psychiatric hospital after trying to kill her husband, Krystal drops everything to defend her. Scarred by a hard upbringing, Nichole and Krystal managed to construct comfortable lives for themselves. Krystal became a respected lawyer, and Nichole was happily married to an architect - until Nichole starts raving that her husband isn’t her husband, believing that he’s an imposter.

Jack and Melissa McGuane have spent years trying to have a baby. Finally their dream has come true with the adoption of their daughter, Angelina. But nine months after bringing her home, they receive a devastating phone call from the adoption agency: Angelina's birth father, a teenager, never signed away his parental rights, and he wants her back.

Amy Linden has a loving husband, an adorable son, and a glamorous career as the hotelier of a grand mountain lodge. Then Ramona Crawford, the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty years earlier, pays her a surprise visit. Ramona wants to know the identity of her biological father—and Amy completely understands. There’s just one problem: the truth would destroy Amy’s carefully curated life.

In downtown Chicago, a young woman named Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to "My Dearest" is found among her possessions, leaving her friend and roommate, Quinn Collins, to wonder where Esther is and whether or not she's the person Quinn thought she knew....

A heartbreaking letter. A girl locked away. A mystery to be solved. 1956. When Ivy Jenkins falls pregnant she is sent in disgrace to St Margaret's, a dark, brooding house for unmarried mothers. Her baby is adopted against her will. Ivy will never leave. Present day. Samantha Harper is a journalist desperate for a break. When she stumbles on a letter from the past, the contents shock and move her. The letter is from a young mother, begging to be rescued from St Margaret's. Before it is too late.

Dani and her husband Tate’s life together is almost perfect. But Dani is haunted by guilt for causing a terrible car accident that left her unable to have children. She can’t remember why she was driving so fast that day or where she was going. Her therapist says she should try to move on.

When a recurring nightmare from his abusive childhood comes back to plague him thirty years later, a man is forced to reconcile his personal demons and confront a past that had been all but forgotten. Soon, the line between waking and sleep becomes blurred, and he is forced to decipher which reality holds the truth.

Writer Carrie Colts hopes a move to Montauk will be a rejuvenating change of pace for her family. The last thing she expects to see is her former college roommate on her doorstep. Newly widowed, and with a daughter of her own, Maya would love to reconnect. As a gesture to an old friend in mourning, Carrie extends an invitation to stay. Just for a few days. After all, there are reasons that Carrie and Maya are estranged.

Special Agent Clay Copeland lives his job. As a behavioral specialist with the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit, his days are spent traveling the country assisting other law enforcement agencies with their most disturbing and difficult cases. Clay excels at his work, maintaining an easygoing affability and sense of humor despite his frequently gruesome job. Until one case goes terribly wrong… Shaken by the loss of a young child whose death he lays at his own feet, Clay seeks refuge in the sandy beaches and plentiful feminine distractions to be found along the South Carolina coast. And ...

Kim Edwards' stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead she disappears into another city to raise the child herself.

Adopted when she was only days old, Ivy Hon knows little about her lineage. But when she’s stricken with a mystery illness, the results of a genetic test to identify the cause attract the FBI. According to Ivy’s DNA, she’s related to the Full Moon Killer, who has terrorized the Pacific Northwest for decades. Ivy is the FBI’s hope to stop the enigmatic predator from killing again.

It’s twenty years since Eva, a biracial woman, was adopted as an eight-year-old, and Cherry and Carlton "Sugar" McNeil have always been the only parents she’s wanted or needed. But when she’s dealt the double blow of Cherry’s death and her own suspension from work, Eva decides it’s time to discover who she was before she was theirs. Against Sugar’s advice, Eva joins a DNA database, desperate for a match that will unlock her identity. And when a positive hit comes, she’s excited to learn there are relations out there who might hold the key.

Marlow Fin is as famous for her beauty and success as she is infamous for her past, some of which is a mystery even to her. Is the public ready for the truth? Is she? In 1995, young Isla Baek finds an abandoned six-year-old Marlow in the woods near the Baek family’s lakeside cabin. With little memory of where she came from or how she got there, Marlow is soon adopted by the Baeks into a seemingly idyllic Midwest life as Isla’s enigmatic new sister. But no one is prepared for how unnerving and disruptive Marlow’s presence will be over the years.

Gloria Hanes is a young beautiful woman married to a sexy lawyer. She has a great job and she’s pregnant. Life is good...until her doctor reveals that her baby is dead. It can’t be. She feels it kicking. She fights and screams but no one believes her. When years later she receives a call that her bone marrow matches a child in need, she jumps at the chance to help. The little girl is the same age as Gloria's would have been, and she's adopted. Could it be her child? Or is this the same obsessive thinking that landed her in a mental hospital, causing her husband to run into the arms of ...

Claire Keller would do anything to have a child. Unable to conceive, she's overjoyed when she and her husband bond with the five-year-old girl they adopt. But Claire's hopes for a perfect family shatter when her daughter stands before her covered in blood and prophesying death.... As the child exhibits more strange supernatural abilities, the frightened Kellers find themselves caught up in a dark plot. Hunted by a shadowy organization hell-bent on claiming the girl, the family is forced on the run.

Some gifts can change your life forever... Emmett Brooks is a mute cattle farmer at the end of his rope, and he’s fine with that. After more than a decade of bad luck, he’s resigned himself to hiding himself away at his family’s languishing farm in rural Manitoba. His brother died in prison, his mother from cancer, and his father was wasting away in a nursing home he couldn’t afford. After his worst day in recent memory, Emmett is visited by a stern social worker from another province. Her message is simple: “Your brother’s daughter needs your help.” Isabelle Lamoine hides ...

In this unique book, the reader is provided with a description of the unfolding of the adoptee's personality from birth, detailing each developmental milestone along the way, followed by different methods of healing the adoptee's wounds, including inner child work, visualizations, healing affirmations, and anger management. Every chapter includes a Myths and Realities of adoption section, a summary of the chapter and exercises to do one's own.

Do you want to take a step towards confidence, acceptance, and well-being? This audiobook is my inward look at adoption trauma with some helpful tips that I have used over the past six years to help me overcome the feelings of unworthiness, anger, fear, and rejection that plagued me for 50 years.