Laura McNeal

Nineteen-year-old Aldine McKenna is stuck at home with her sister and aunt in a Scottish village in 1929 when two Mormon missionaries ring the doorbell. Aldine’s sister converts and moves to America to marry, and Aldine follows, hoping to find the life she’s meant to lead and the person she’s meant to love. In New York, Aldine answers an ad soliciting a teacher for a one-room schoolhouse in a place she can’t possibly imagine: drought-stricken Kansas. She arrives as farms on the Great Plains have begun to fail and schools are going bankrupt, unable to pay or house new teachers. With no money and too much pride to turn back, she lives uneasily with the family of Ansel Price—the charming, optimistic man who placed the ad—and his family responds to her with kind curiosity, suspicion, and, most dangerously, love. Just as she’s settling into her strange new life, a storm forces unspoken thoughts to the surface that will forever alter the course of their lives. Laura McNeal’s novel is a sweeping and timeless love story about leaving—and finding—home.

The Practice House

When Thisbe Locke is last seen standing on the edge of the Coronado Bridge it looks like there is only one thing to call it and the town prepares to mourn the loss, but her sister Ted, and Fen, the new kid in town, are not convinced and they set out to figure out what happend on that bridge and find Thisbe.

The Incident on the Bridge

Tom McNeal

Two ninth graders, Clara and Amos, suddenly find their lives turned upside down by their families, by each other, and by the two meanest brothers in town.

Crooked

A tender and engrossing historical novel by a former National Book Award finalist about the unlikely love affair between two great 19th-century poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, even as their families were determined to keep them apart. On January 10, 1845, a struggling, middle-class English poet named Robert Browning wrote a letter to a famous and wealthy invalid few people had ever seen. "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," he wrote, "and I love you too." For the next five months, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett corresponded about each other's poetry, she insisting that he could not possibly love her, dreading the moment when he would see her as she truly was, although privately she composed a series of sonnets about her love for him. On September 12, 1846, knowing that her family in particular was opposed to the union, they married in secret and left, as her doctor had long recommended, for the unpolluted air of Italy, risking death, disinheritance, and near-certain poverty. In her bag, she carried drafts of the sonnets and all 286 of Robert's letters. Many writers have fallen in love with and married other writers, and most of those relationships ended horribly--see Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. McNeal brilliantly tells the story of how Robert and Elizabeth first fell in love with each other's words, and once they met face-to-face, they became even more devoted to one another. Although her family doubted his intentions and worried over Elizabeth Barrett's health, and her father never spoke to her again after their union, the Brownings overcame all of these barriers to be together. Sensitively and lyrically written, as rich as the lovers' own poetry, The Swan's Nest will sweep up readers in this triumphant story of these two historical figures holding steadfast in the truth and strength of their love.

The Swan's Nest

Henry is generally well-behaved, but he is occasionally arrogant and vain. Henry is at heart a hard worker, but his frequent bouts of illness hinder his work.

Zipped

Seventeen-year-old Audrey's life is turned upside down when she falls in love with a mysterious newcomer and a vicious gossip sheet exposes the secrets of both students and teachers at her school.

Crushed

Living in a cottage on her uncle's southern California avocado ranch since her parent's messy divorce, fifteen-year-old Pearl Dewitt meets and falls in love with an illegal migrant worker, and is trapped with him when wildfires approach his makeshift forest home.

Dark Water

Audrey and her best friends Lea and C.C. have just arrived at Jemison High from the one-room private school where they spent grades six through ten, where they performed Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, where they adored Edith Wharton. They’re a nerdy little trio, so everyone is shocked when the handsome new guy, Wickham Hill, asks Audrey out. Audrey is soon so smitten that she hardly pays any mind to the vicious underground newspaper at school–or to that strange lurking guy in World Cultures. Before long, it seems everyone at Jemison High is worried about getting crushed–by friends, by enemies, by a mysterious reporter.

Incident on the Bridge

For sixteen-year-old Lana life is often difficult, with a flirtatious foster father, an ice queen foster mother, a houseful of special needs children to care for, and bullies harrassing her, until the day she ventures into an antique shop and buys a drawing set that may change her life.

The Decoding of Lana Morris

Three Stories of True Crime The victims in these gripping stories by Laura McNeal have one terrifying thing in common: all are betrayed by people they trust. In The Death of Judy Huscher, a 12-year-old girl is awakened in the night by her mother, who offers her a cup of hot chocolate. In The Last Meeting of the Dove Club, two friends stay for dinner even though their host is dangerously drunk. In The Toothpicks, a member of a Mexican drug cartel introduces his unsuspecting friend to the pretty girl who will lead him to a San Diego rental house stocked with guns, rope, and muriatic acid. In scene after harrowing scene, McNeal recounts every extraordinary detail of these unforgettable crimes, their prosecution, and aftermath, reminding us that in life, as in fiction, all is not as it appears. (Note that these three stories are also available individually as Kindle eBooks titled the same as shown above.) Scroll up and order your copy today.

Laura McNeal

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