This is the Way the Story Ends [Book 5]
The sequel to “Something I’m Supposed to Do“
When writer Charlie Hudson (CK Hudson to her adoring readers) finished her great-grandmother’s unfinished manuscript and published, she thought she had the story right. But when she discovers the real people behind the characters in her great-grandmother’s story, Charlie knows she has to listen.
It’s 1989, and Antonia St. John has a single goal. To crash through that glass ceiling created by 1960s Madison Avenue advertising men. Then, the one thing she never saw coming threatens to derail her plans until she can find a solution. She never planned on having a baby―especially a baby who turns out to be a ballet dancer, something Antonia cannot get her head around. But the baby is just the beginning of Antonia’s journey into family life.
When she learns her baby’s father, Tim, has a secret buried in his past―a secret so big it changes everything― Antonia has to dig deep within herself to find the courage to see it through to the end and to find her place in the family. With an unlikely ally in her mother-in-law, Grace, who never liked Antonia, she finally begins to learn the lessons that families―even dysfunctional ones―have to offer. Figuring out where you fit into a family―and the world―may be the ultimate challenge.
Something I’m Supposed to Do [Book 4]
CHARLOTTE (“CHARLIE”) HUDSON has a problem she never saw coming. She has too much money and no idea what to do with it.
As she searches for what she’s supposed to do, she faces her great-grandmother’s unfinished book manuscript and finds herself drawn into the 1980s and a romance that might teach her something about the interconnectedness of life events. If only she can figure out what it is.
The Inscrutable Life of Frannie Phillips [Book 3]
After 12-year-old Frannie Phillips survives the sinking of the Titanic, surely, she could be forgiven if she expects her parents to indulge her one dream―to become a dressmaker and designer. But this is too common for their British upper-class taste.
Driven by her desire to rebel against everything they represent and a chance encounter on the train from Oxford to London with American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frannie makes a single mistake that alters her life forever. She flees to Paris where she is plunged into the clashing worlds of haute couture and literature.
When she is faced with the ultimate choice between two very different life paths, she chooses the one that forces her into a life of secrecy even as she moves between her Paris home, London, New York, and ultimately Canada where her great-granddaughter finds her diaries. Frannie Phillips always knew she would never find her life by searching for it―so she created it.
Kat’s Kosmic Blues [Book 2]
The Prequel to “The Year I Made 12 Dresses
In the year after her mother Katherine (“Kat”) Hudson’s death, Charlie thought she had learned every secret her mother had. How could she have been so wrong? When Charlie discovers her mother’s diary, it’s as if Kat is right there, telling Charlie her story. Kat’s story begins in 1965 when she’s 19 years old―the beginning of the journey that teaches her that her life will only ever be as much as she is willing to settle for. She discovers that she is willing to settle for nothing less than her dream to become a fashion designer, regardless of the obstacles along the way.
The Year I Made 12 Dresses [Book 1]
After her mother’s unexpected death, struggling writer Charlotte (Charlie) Hudson moves into her family house after her older, mostly absent sister Evelyn instructs her to empty the family home of objects and memories to ready it for sale. When Charlie stumbles on a dusty old sewing machine hidden away among the clutter of detritus in the basement, she has no idea of the journey it will take her on, or of the secrets it might reveal about her mother, her family, and herself. If only she will let it. With the help of an enigmatic fabric guru named Al, Charlie discovers how little she really knows about anyone―especially herself.
Other Fiction…
Something More Than Love
What is something more than love? It’s complicated. While teaching at a Canadian university, ex-pat American English professor Sean O’Hara stumbles on the diary of his great-great-great-grandmother, Bridget Ryan. With a doctorate in English literature based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Sean is deeply drawn into Bridget’s story when he discovers that she and Poe were contemporaries, friends and perhaps…something more?
When the diary begins in 1825, 16-year-old Bridget’s one passionate desire is to follow in her widowed father’s footsteps into medicine. The medical school, however, has never admitted a woman and has no intention of changing that policy for Bridget. Thus, Bridget is faced with discovering another path for her life, a path that leads her to her life’s work with impoverished women in early-twentieth-century Baltimore and an abiding link to Edgar Poe. Bridget’s story sweeps us into her life in Boston and Baltimore, as we begin to unravel the mystery that, to this day, continues to surround the final few days of Poe’s life.
Available on Amazon and all other major online retailers.
Plan B
When your life hits a major roadblock, sometimes your Plan B is more than a detour – it just might be your real life.
JENN POSTMAN, a lifestyle writer for a B-list women’s magazine never thought that such mundane things as recessions or inflation or job loss could hurt her until the day her world comes crashing down when the magazine folds. Jenn finds herself back in her childhood home, a boomerang kid, working at the only job she can get– in her father’s booming gourmet grocery business. Her life changes the day someone finds a tarantula in the banana shipment.
Available on Amazon and other fine book retail sites
The Body Traders
The media turned him into a medical God. It will take only one reporter to turn heaven into hell.
Set against the backdrop of this search for immortality by developing patchwork people, The Body Traders is the story of a young newspaper reporter, Eve Cochrane, who is assigned to write a series of public relations pieces about the local university medical center’s transplant program. Facing a crossroads in her own career as a journalist, Eve finds that her nice little feature story might be more interesting than she had first thought.
When Eve discovers a tie between the so-called International Body Replacement Society and a large, international pharmaceutical company, things begin to unravel.
Grace Note: In Hildegard’s Shadow
To most people, it would have seemed like an obscure article in an obscure academic journal. To author Patricia J. Parsons, it was a challenge. The article called into question the authorship of music attributed to twelfth-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen.
This is the story of two women, Hildegard and her childhood friend Lysanor of Rupertsberg, both ahead of their time in many ways. Hildegard becomes a twenty-first-century saint and icon. The other is but a grace note – an embellishment of secondary importance. But their lives intertwine in ways that challenge both of them, taking them into experiences they could never have imagined. And both, in their own ways, have left a legacy to the generations that followed.
This is Lysanor’s own story about her life and the life of her friend, the mystic.
Buy now on Amazon
Confessions of a Failed Yuppie
Secrets…they’re the stuff of everyone’s life. But most of us are not confessing!
Thirty-something Alex Harvey has secrets. With her tenth wedding anniversary party looming large, she begins to reassess her choices and her depressingly predictable Yuppie life – a lifestyle heartily embraced by her fastidious dentist husband, Eric. But failing as a Yuppie is only one of her secrets. The other one is even more delicious: unbeknownst to any of her friends or family, Alex has been writing fabulously successful women’s erotica for years, and occasionally her characters invade her life. On the occasion of her tenth wedding anniversary one sticky June night, the secrets begin to emerge. By the time the party is over, life will never be the same again…for anyone. Join Alex for a hilarious romp toward complete candour, and raise a martini glass to being who you are!
Buy Confessions…now on Amazon
Patricia J. Parsons 