Showing results by author "Shari J. Ryan" in All Categories

My best friend disappeared twenty years ago. I thought she was dead. But today I’ve received a message that makes my heart stop. It says it’s from Izzy. And she’s blaming my new husband for her disappearance… I stare at the email in horror. I’ve only just managed to put what happened to Izzy behind me. My life is so different now. I have two perfect children, and the perfect husband at last.

The cattle car is dark, except for the light filtering through the boarded windows. There are too many of us to count, crushed up against each other. The air is stuffy, carrying the scent of our terror—none of us know what awaits us when this train stops. I cling onto Mama’s hand and Nora, my twin sister, clutches Papa’s.

Very few people can say they were born inside a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Disease, starvation, and much worse, prevented most prisoners from surviving. I shouldn’t be alive. As a child, I didn’t know my life was different from that of others. I had nothing to compare it to, and I had no insight about the day I was born...until the moment I overheard the truth. In a split second, I became a stranger to my reflection, my name, and my reason for being. I felt utterly alone in a foreign world, but that changed when I met another person who was lost, like me.

They warned me the first few days of motherhood would be exhausting, but I’m so deliriously happy, I don’t mind one bit. Smiling, I glance at the baby blue blanket I crocheted. I’ve never knitted a thing in my life, but I was determined to make my newborn his very first blanket—a one-of-a-kind welcome-home gift. I tug the rocker closer to me, unable to resist peeking at my beautiful baby boy. I pull back the blanket. It feels like my heart flatlines. He’s not here. Sweat beads on my forehead, and my limbs turn to ice. “Where is he?” I cry, my whole body trembling, the wind knocked out of me.

When Matilda’s childhood sweetheart, Hans, is in danger, she doesn’t hesitate to hide him in her attic. Protecting him from her parents and the soldiers downstairs, she smuggles him food and communicates in whispers. For months, they exist by candlelight. But how long can they survive?

Paris, 1943. German soldiers drag me out onto the cobbled street and push me toward the waiting truck. I force myself to face forward as tears stream down my cheeks. If I look back, they’ll know. I can’t let them find my baby girl....

I’m in shock. This is impossible. Because earlier this evening when the Smiths left for their fancy charity gala—Lara in high heels and a floor-length gown, Corbin in a tux—they never mentioned a baby. And they certainly didn’t show me this nursery room, up in the eaves of their sprawling, beachfront mansion.

In the mountains of Bohemia, Mila, a Romani, works as a maid for an aristocratic Jewish family. They have no idea that she and their son Ben, with his amber eyes and kind smile, are madly in love—it is expressly forbidden. In the arms of one another, Mila and Ben try to forget that their village is close to the German borders—and could be invaded at any second. But as they huddle around a crackling radio, ice runs through their veins as news of the war gets grimmer by the day.

Amelia - 1942: The inside of my closet held the last bit of my freedom before I was torn from my home and shoved onto a dark train. Our destination was even darker. "Women and children to the right. Men to the left," they shouted at us. Everything was taken from me, leaving only the smoke-filled air, piercing screams, and soul-burning cries. I was slowly starved and weakened to the bone, but there was a man - a Nazi - who brought me extra food. He called himself a prisoner too, but he scared me, and I wondered if he was the enemy I should fear the most.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, Sofia cannot look her father in the eye. Sofia’s mother, her papa’s cherished wife, is Jewish—how dare he work as a doctor for the SS? She cannot forgive him, even if the bargain was made to spare their lives. In the middle of the night, Isaac emerges from a packed train with hundreds of others. Beneath Auschwitz’s barbed wire, the SS decide prisoners’ fates on the spot—and Isaac is chosen to work. Every breath feels like it could be Isaac’s last, so when he sees a beautiful auburn-haired girl peering out of the farm window, it feels like a dream.

Dachau, 1942. Emilie has been told she's here to nurse evil men. But the first patient she sees in the cold, dark room is hauntingly familiar. Her first love is not wicked. He couldn't be. What is he doing here? Emilie's heart stops as she takes in her childhood sweetheart hunched in a tattered prisoners uniform, the light lost from his face. Her new husband, Otto, said this was a camp for criminals. He should know, he's the doctor. But Danner would never have broken the law.

“Women and children to the right. Men, to the left,” I once said. From 1942 to 1944 I was what some called a Jew killer. Though, I have never hurt a soul, I was responsible for separating Jewish families, ensuring they would never see each other again. Those who were sick, were sent to their death...by me because I was forced to follow the enemy. The war stole my right of beliefs, my goals for a future, my left arm, and the love of my life.

While flying home after a phone call that left me heartbroken, a row to myself would have been ideal. Instead, I was unknowingly sitting shoulder to shoulder with a strikingly attractive single dad and ex-Marine. I could have pretended not to notice the man, but there was something familiar about him. It didn't take long before I pieced together where I knew him from or why he was back in my life.

August Taylor thought she could manage the weight of the world on her shoulders. Forcing a smile, she hid the secrets of the man she loved and pretended everything was okay. Until she found him unconscious, having chosen his addiction over her...one last, fatal time. Unable to understand the sickness that consumed him, grief rivets through August’s body. As she spirals into self-destructive behavior, she finds her life mirroring what she despises.

I have a nightmare job and a divorce at the age of 32. Then my ex-husband, Rick, moved in next door with his life-size Barbie doll. But life pitched me a curveball in the form of a retired Major League Baseball player, Logan Grier. Could life be perfect after all? Of course not. My two worlds collided. Hot temp met the ex, and a full-on bromance was born, but that’s only the beginning. The “man flu” has come out of nowhere and hit both Logan and Rick with a virus they’re claiming to be worse than childbirth. In fact, they’re pretty sure their end is near.

I got out of the Marine Corps to give my daughter a better life. I'm a strong and capable single dad. I got this, right? Not so much. The one thing my daughter wants is the hardest to find - a mom. It's not like they're selling hot intelligent women at Walmart these days, and with the amount of baggage I'm carrying around, I might be out of luck. Yeah, so. We moved from Oahu to Maui. I needed a job, a place to live, and to get us settled. I thought it would be simple, but let's just say...mistakes have been made.

Elizabeth, a young Jewish woman, is training to be a nurse in Pearl Harbor, where the turquoise ocean laps the golden sand. When she meets Everett, a Hollywood actor who has given up his glamorous life to join the Air Force on the tiny island, the breath is knocked out of her. Over a sweltering Hawaiian summer, they fall madly in love, Elizabeth getting lost in Everett’s emerald eyes. But one fateful day, sirens rend the air and warplanes fly over the harbor. Elizabeth and Everett cling to each other as the ground shakes and smoke suffocates them.

I’ve made mistakes. Some of those mistakes have ruined lives, including my own. Because of this, my past is something I have kept to myself, so when I found a woman who also wanted her past to remain hidden, it felt like the universe was pushing us together. It turns out the universe had nothing to do with that. If a person’s past doesn’t exist, the present may not unravel the way it should. I found out the hard way, when I learned that my wife is not who I thought she was…living with a past I should know about. Her continuous self-destructive behaviors let me know she clearly has a...

"You will lose your memory." That's what a doctor told me at just 29 years old. My headaches and exhaustion weren't from overexertion like I thought. It was more. A lot more. Despite my unimaginable challenges, I found love at a time I needed it most. Layne, a rising star and popular frontman, was unknowingly singing life into my soul through his allusive lyrics. I lived and breathed for the mesmeric sound of his voice. Kismet led us to a kind of love anyone would die for.

Life isn't a game. Life isn't an empty bottle of bourbon spinning on a warehouse floor as I hold my breath. I feel weak when others perceive me as strong. I'm passionate though I appear to hate the world around me. I see beauty in all ugly things. I feel pain when I laugh. No one knows the truth. Well, no one knew the truth until now. Somehow, Brody Pearson understands more about me than anyone else in my life. The severed connection should mean something significant, but I don't know if I can forget all my self-proclaimed promises.