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THE GOODBYE CAFÉ
Mariah Stewart
The Hudson Sisters series, Book 3
On sale March 26, 2019
Trade Paperback • Price: $16.00 • ISBN: 9781501145124
eBook • Price: $7.99 • ISBN: 9781501145162
Book
description
California girl Allie Hudson Monroe can’t wait for the day when the
renovations on the Sugarhouse Theater are complete so she can finally collect
the inheritance from her father and leave Pennsylvania. After all, her life and
her fourteen-year-old daughter are in Los Angeles.
But Allie’s divorce left her tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, so to
keep up on payments for her house and her daughter’s private school tuition,
Allie packed up and flew out east. But fate has a curve-ball or two to toss in
Allie’s direction—she just doesn’t know it yet.
She hadn’t anticipated how her life would change after reuniting with
her estranged sister, Des, or meeting her previously unknown half-sister, Cara.
And she’d certainly never expected to find small-town living charming. But the
biggest surprise was that her long-forgotten artistry would save the day when
the theater’s renovation fund dried up.
With opening day upon the sisters, Allie’s free to go. But for the
first time in her life, she feels like the woman she was always meant to be.
Will she return to the West Coast and resume her previous life, or will the
love of “this amazing, endearing family of women” (Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author) be
enough to draw her back to the place where the Hudson roots grow so deep?
About
the author
Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA
TODAY bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas and
short stories. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives with her husband
and two rambunctious rescue dogs amid the rolling hills of Chester County,
Pennsylvania, where she savors country life and tends her gardens while she
works on her next novel. Visit her website at MariahStewart.com, like her
on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorMariahStewart, and follow her on Instagram
@Mariah_Stewart_Books.
Excerpt
Allie swung her bag over her
shoulder, preparing to start her descent, thinking how much her life had
changed since she’d arrived in Hidden Falls. There were days when she felt like
a different person from the one who’d boarded the plane at LAX and flown to
Scranton, Pennsylvania, rented a car, and driven to this tiny nowhere town. At
first she’d hated it. Now she was growing accustomed to the slow pace and the
fact that everyone in town knew who she was and where she came from simply by
virtue of her being Barney Hudson’s niece.
She dropped one leg over the side,
singing softly to herself, “Don’t look down, girl, just don’t look down.
Everything’s okay as long as you don’t look down,” when she did exactly that.
She bristled at the sight of the man
who stood at the foot of the scaffold staring straight up.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for Des. I stopped
over at the house but no one answered.” His arms were crossed over his chest,
and instead of wearing his usual chief of police uniform, Ben Haldeman—the very
bane of Allie’s existence, the gigantic thorn in her side—was dressed in cutoff
jeans and a light blue tank top, flip-flops on his feet. He didn’t bother to
smile at her—why pretend he liked her any more than she liked him?—but he
didn’t blink when she stared down at him, either.
“I’ll let her know when I see her.”
“Then I’ll just leave this little
guy here and you can take him home with you. How ’bout I just tie his leash up
to the scaffold?”
“What little . . .” Allie leaned
over the side of the platform, just far enough to make her head spin and her
stomach flip. She pulled back, but not before she saw the little black dog on
the red leash that Ben was tying to the bottom rung. “Wait, where’d that dog
come from? You can’t leave it here.”
“Found him out on the highway
running loose. Tell Des to give me a call.” Ben patted the dog on the head and
turned toward the door.
“Wait. Ben. No, don’t . . .”
He waved as he walked away. “Have a
nice day.”
With a deep sigh of exasperation,
Allie sat back on the platform.
