Sunset Beach

When Macy Dillon was five years old her father encouraged her to draw a picture in the guestbook of a Carolina beach house. The next year, Macy returned to discover a drawing by an unidentified little boy on the facing page. Over the next eleven years the children continue to exchange drawings...until tragedy ends visits to the beach house altogether. During her final trip to Sunset, Macy asks her anonymous friend to draw her one last picture and tells him where to hide the guest book in hopes that one day she will return to find it - and him. Twenty-five years after that first picture, Macy is back at Sunset Beach - this time toting a broken family and a hurting heart. One night, alone by the ocean, Macy asks God to help her find the boy she never forgot, the one whose beautiful pictures touched something deep inside of her. Will she ever find him? And if she does, will the guestbook unite them or merely be the relic of a lost childhood?

In the tradition of Nicholas Sparks, Marybeth Whalen's novel “The Wishing Tree” treats us to a story about the wishes we make for love, and the surprising turns those wishes can take. As Ivy Marshall helps prepare the wishing tree for her sister's wedding, she must examine her own hopes for the future and decide what love should be. In “The Wishing Tree”, Ivy Marshall, a savvy, determined woman, finds out her husband has cheated on her on the same day her sister's perfect boyfriend proposes on national television. When Ivy's mother asks her to return to her family's beach home to plan her sister's upcoming wedding, she decides to use the excuse to escape from the pain of her circumstances. When her return to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, brings her face to face with her former fiancé, old feelings rise to the surface, and she wonders if there is a future for them. However, her husband has started tweeting his apology to her and doesn't want to give up on their marriage. As she helps prepare the wishing tree for her sister's wedding, she must examine her own wishes for the future and decide what love should be.

A surprise gift from her late husband will give a young widow the chance to do the hardest thing in the world... move on. On their honeymoon, the new Mr. & Mrs. Ryan Shaw made a pact: No matter the sacrifices along the way, one day they would return to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, this time to buy their own home. But that dream was not to be. Seven years into a beautiful marriage, Emily is left a widow, heartbroken, and way past caring about anything. Until a man approaches her, claiming to have something left to her from Ryan. Something secret. Unsure if she can ever embrace a new life without her husband, but even less sure about continuing to stay where she is, Emily heads to the coast to keep her end of the promise she once made. Without delay, she becomes immersed in the lives of the locals, including the reclusive bridge tender with an unexpected past. As the community debates over building a new bridge, Emily must decide whether she will build a bridge of her own, one that will take her out of a painful past and into the new life, and new love, that her lost love made possible. A surprise gift from her late husband will give a young widow the chance to do the hardest thing in the world... move on. On their honeymoon, the new Mr. & Mrs. Ryan Shaw made a pact: No matter the sacrifices along the way, one day they would return to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, this time to buy their own home. But that dream was not to be. Seven years into a beautiful marriage, Emily is left a widow, heartbroken, and way past caring about anything. Until a man approaches her, claiming to have something left to her from Ryan. Something secret. Unsure if she can ever embrace a new life without her husband, but even less sure about continuing to stay where she is, Emily heads to the coast to keep her end of the promise she once made. Without delay, she becomes immersed in the lives of the locals, including the reclusive bridge tender with an unexpected past. As the community debates over building a new bridge, Emily must decide whether she will build a bridge of her own, one that will take her out of a painful past and into the new life, and new love, that her lost love made possible.