The Secrets Of Sweet Blessings Bakery By Michele Dunaway
Welcome to Sugar Gap, Tennessee. Population: complicated.
Brick storefronts, a white gazebo on the square and the scent of cinnamon drifting from Sweet Blessings Bakery.
Mariah Dyersburg used to live above that bakery. Twelve years ago she ran from it, leaving her family, and first love, behind.
Now she’s an award-winning chef in Seattle. A new name. A designer wardrobe. The freckled bakery girl is long gone.
Then her grandmother’s lawyer calls.
The terms of the will are simple. Mariah and her two estranged sisters must return to Sugar Gap and complete fifteen seasonal tasks set by their grandmother. A scavenger hunt that sends them chasing memories all over the town they grew up in.
There’s just one problem. The handsome county sheriff roped into helping is Sam Jenkins. The boy she was supposed to marry and whose heart she broke when she left all those years ago.
Fifteen tasks. Two sisters who haven’t forgiven her. One stubborn sheriff who never stopped loving her. And her grandmother’s chocolate bourbon pie . . . Suddenly Mariah finds Sugar Gap may be a lot harder to leave.
Amelia Booker, a journalist and expert in American literature, receives a photograph leading to the possible whereabouts of E. L. Swann, an author who vanished forty years ago after the success of her first and only novel. It’s too intriguing a literary mystery for Amelia not to follow.
In Santa Rosarita, Mexico, Amelia and her seven-year-old son, Jaden, meet the elderly and guarded Ella Steinbach, known to locals for riding her donkey to market, then retreating from the world again to her hilltop house. Prickly and defensive at first, Ella reluctantly concedes the truth about her identity. If not for Ella’s deep affection for the bright and introverted Jaden, she would have found the intrusion unforgivable. Instead, she grants an interview on the condition that Amelia tell no one where E. L. Swann has been found.
As days turn into weeks, and Ella reveals more than expected about her past, she and Amelia form a difficult but surprising bond. From it comes the realization that the personal struggles we endure determine the necessary choices we make to move forward. But no matter how much Amelia tries to convince her otherwise, E. L. Swann really does wish to be left alone. And only by accepting the author as she is can Amelia maintain the life-changing connection.
This book is about a determined journalist chasing the story that could define her career and discovering a far more personal journey along the way. In Come Back to the World, Catherine Ryan Hyde delivers a warm, reflective story about fame, privacy, motherhood, and unexpected connection.
Freelance journalist Amelia Booker tracks down the famously reclusive author E.L. Swann, hoping for a long-awaited interview. What begins as a professional mission quickly shifts when Amelia and her young son Jaden become unexpected guests in the writer’s secluded world. Through Jaden’s innocence and Amelia’s persistence, Swann slowly reveals the emotional cost of sudden fame and the burden of public expectation.
The novel shines brightest in its character work. Jaden is delightful and wise beyond his years, while Amelia’s struggles with divorce and parental rights add emotional weight and urgency. Hyde also explores the ethics of storytelling—who owns a story, and what readers believe they deserve from artists.
Gentle humor, thoughtful dialogue, and a slow-burn friends-to-lovers thread balance the deeper themes. Ultimately, this is a heartfelt, uplifting novel about empathy, second chances, and learning when to step back into the world.
My Sanctuary 