The Complete List of Diane Chamberlain Books in Order
Diane Chamberlain is a critically acclaimed wordsmith of contemporary fiction whose work evokes a sense of profound emotional turmoil, probing deep-seated human relationships while exploring the intricate nuances of moral quandaries. With more than 25 novels bearing her name, Chamberlain's literary oeuvre has succeeded in beguiling global audiences with its spellbinding storytelling, enshrining her position as a literary maverick garnering a devout following and a plethora of literary accolades. If your literary predilection inclines toward the works of Diane Chamberlain, then a thorough perusal of her compendium of publications in a sequential order may be of particular interest to you. From her inception as a writer to her most recent masterpieces, each novel in the anthology serves as a testament to Chamberlain's artistry as a storyteller, characterizing a diverse array of captivating personas and broaching thought-provoking themes that will linger in your mind long after the book is finished.
Private Relations
Welcome to the Chapel House, the old oceanfront mansion where a group of close friends share their hopes and dreams . . . and where love is sometimes an unexpected guest.
Secrets at the Beach House
Welcome to the Chapel House, an old oceanfront mansion where a group of close friends share their hopes and dreams . . . and where love is sometimes an unexpected guest.Recovering from her recent divorce, Kit Sheridan finds a safe haven in the grand Jersey shore mansion. But her stay there soon becomes complicated when she falls for Cole Perelle, a young doctor staying at the beach house. Working in the public relations team at the hospital brings her into constant contact with him both at home and at work.Cole, however, has set his heart on another. Estelles beauty and high-flying ways are difficult to compete with, but as secrets from the past come to the surface, the lives of the Chapel House residents are about to change forever . . .
Lovers and Strangers
With their perfect marriage being torn asunder by their mutual grief, blame, and guilt over the death of their little girl, Shawn and David Ryder journey to the jungles of Peru, where they are forced to confront their intense feelings for each other.
Secret Lives
Actress Eden Riley's decision to make a film about her mother plunges her into a shattering confrontation with her own past, irrevocably altering her life and the lives of those she loves. Her mother, Katherine Swift, was a renowned children's author who died when Eden was very young. Now Eden, recovering from a divorce and disillusioned with her glamorous life, returns to the childhood home of the mother she barely knew. She moves in with her uncle, archaeologist Kyle Swift, and his wife, Louise. Eden gets more than she bargained for when Kyle gives her the journal her mother had kept from the age of thirteen until her death. Eden is spellbound by the powerfully written, intimate diary that chronicles a life of hardship, madness, and tragedy. But her fascination turns to horror when she discovers the shocking truth about her mother's life. Eden turns for comfort to Ben Alexander, Kyle's colleague, not knowing that Ben has a secret of his own that could ruin Eden and her career. Now Eden must make a heartbreaking decision as she struggles to lay the ghosts of the past to rest and come to terms with her own future. Shifting gracefully between Eden's world and Katherine's, Secret Lives seduces with the power of its images and the lyricism of its prose.
Keeper of the Light
Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is—Annie O'Neill. The woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with.When Annie dies on the operating table, she leaves behind three other victims. Alec O'Neill, who thought he had the perfect marriage. Paul, whose fixation on Annie is unshakable. And Olivia, who is desperate to understand the woman who destroyed her marriage.Now they are left with unanswered questions about who Annie really was. And about the secrets she kept hidden so well.
Fire and Rain
The images were vivid, the sensations powerful, and the more she tried to fight them, the more they drew her in. Claire leads a busy, fulfilled and happy life, a life she wouldn't trade for anything …and one that is about to change forever. When Claire fails to prevent a disturbed young woman's suicide, the incident seems to trigger something in her - forgotten images of a long-lost sister and a childhood she had always remembered as being close to perfection. Realising that this was not the case, Claire runs the risk of uncovering the dark secrets that are locked away in her memories. Caught in a complex struggle between the present and past, between the man who wants to help her and the husband who cannot, Claire must discover the terrible truth for herself.
Brass Ring
The bestselling author of Keeper of the Light tells of a drought-ridden California town and a man who claims he can make rain. As he works his meteorological magic, he is a catalyst for change in three people's lives. Their interlocking plights reveal secrets of the past and bring renewed hope.
Reflection
Returning home twenty years after a tragic accident that caused the Pennsylvania Dutch townspeople of Reflection to condemn her, Rachel Huber cares for her ailing grandmother despite open hostility and finds allies in two childhood friends.
The Escape Artist
A moving tale of parental love and desperation. Library JournalA custody suit filed by her attorney ex-husband throws Susanna Millers life into chaos. Defying a court order to turn 11-month-old Tyler over to his father, Susanna flees. She changes her name, dyes her hair, and leaves Boulder, Colorado without a word to anyone not even her best friend Linc Sebastian. Two thousand miles from home, she seeks anonymity in Annapolis, Maryland. And as she tries to forget her past, Susanna discovers that starting a new life is more dangerous than shed ever imagined and that the unpredictable has an alarming way of insinuating itself into a life . . .
Breaking the Silence
Visiting an elderly stranger to fulfill a deathbed promise to her father, Laura Brandon's life is violently disrupted when her own husband commits suicide and their five-year-old daughter, who witnessed the suicide, stops speaking.
Summer's Child
Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, on the beach beside her North Carolina home, Daria Cato receives an unbelievable gift from the sea—an abandoned newborn baby. When the infant's identity cannot be uncovered, she is adopted by Daria's loving family. But her silent secrets continue to haunt Daria.Now, twenty years later, Shelly has grown into an unusual, ethereal young woman whom Daria continues to protect. But when Rory Taylor, a friend from Daria's childhood and now a television producer, returns at Shelly's request to do a story about the circumstances surrounding her birth, something precarious shifts in the small town of Kill Devil Hills.The more questions Rory asks, the more unsettled the tiny community becomes, as closely guarded secrets and the sins of that long-ago summer begin to surface. Piece by piece, the mystery of summer's child is being exposed, a mystery that no one involved—not Shelly, Daria, not even Rory—is prepared to face.
The Courage Tree
Eight-year-old Sophie Donohue just wanted to be like every other little girl. Which is why her mother, Janine, reluctantly agreed to let her go on a weekend camping trip in the forests of West Virginia. But when Janine arrives to pick up Sophie after the trip… her daughter has disappeared.But Sophie is no ordinary eight-year-old. She suffers from a rare disease, and Janine has recently enrolled her in an experimental treatment as a last effort to save her life. Without her medication, Sophie cannot survive long. All her mother’s instincts tell Janine that Sophie is alive, but time is running out.Deep in the Virginia forest, another drama unfolds. Sophie finds refuge in a remote cabin inhabited by Zoe, a woman who wants nothing to do with the child. Zoe is struggling to save her own daughter from the law, and Sophie’s presence jeopardizes any chance of that happening. She is as determined to save her daughter as Janine is to save Sophie…and only one of them can succeed.
The Shadow Wife
Joelle D'Angelo's best friend, Mara, is left with brain damage after she suffers an aneurysm giving birth to her son. Alone and grieving, Joelle turns to the only other person who understands her pain: her colleague—and Mara's husband—Liam. What starts out as comfort between friends gradually becomes something more…something undeniable.
Torn by guilt and the impossibility of her feelings for Liam, Joelle sets out determined to find help for Mara, no matter how unconventional the source. Her search leads her to a mansion in Monterey, California, and into the life of a woman shrouded in mystery. Carlynn Kling Shire is a healer and, according to Joelle's parents, saved Joelle's life when she was an infant. As Joelle is guided down an unfamiliar path by a woman keeping her own shocking secrets, she discovers that while some love is doomed, some love is destined to survive anything.
Kiss River
Kiss River’s historic nineteenth-century lighthouse has all but fallen into the sea, taking with it the huge Fresnel lens that once served as its beacon. Gina is desperate to find a way to raise the lens; the glass holds the key to her future, her fortune and her only chance to save the one person who matters to her.Clay O’Neill lives in the old light keeper’s house, a home he shares with his sister, Lacey. When Lacey invites her to stay with them, Gina eagerly accepts. As Gina begins her quest to raise the lens, Clay finds himself drawn to her struggle, and to Gina herself.But the answers lie deep below the ocean. And the lighthouse holds secrets that neither Clay nor Gina can anticipate…
Her Mother's Shadow
Annie
A loving mother and wife, Annie O'Neill was the heart of the small community of Kiss River. But her generous nature hid a darker side that remained secret for years after her tragic death.
Lacey
When Lacey O'Neill finally learns the shattering truth about the mother she's spent a decade emulating, the foundation of her life begins to crumble. Then her close childhood friend dies, leaving her teenage daughter, Mackenzie, in Lacey's care, and Lacey unwillingly finds herself in the role of mother.
Mackenzie
Uprooted by her mother's death, Mackenzie resents her new home of Kiss River. She wants nothing to do with the father who never knew she existed—and especially not her mother's oldest friend. But the person who could understand her best might be the one she resents most: Lacey.
The Bay At Midnight
Her family's cottage was a place of innocence for twelve-year-old Julie Bauer - until her sister was murdered. It's been many years since that August night, but Julie's memories of Izzy's death still haunt her. Now someone from her past is asking questions about what really happened that night. About Julie's own complicity. About a devastating secret her mother kept from them all. About the person who went to prison for Izzy's murder - and the person who didn't. Julie must gather the courage to revisit her past and untangle the complex emotions that led to one unspeakable act of violence on the bay at midnight.
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth, and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies…
Before the Storm
Fifteen-year-old Andy Lockwood is special. Others notice the way he blurts out anything that comes into his mind, how he cannot foresee consequences, that he's more child than teenager. But his mother sees a boy with a heart as open and wide as the ocean.Laurel Lockwood lost her son once through neglect. She's spent the rest of her life determined to make up for her mistakes, and she's succeeded in becoming a committed, protective parent—maybe even overprotective. Still, she loosens her grip just enough to let Andy attend a local church social—a decision that terrifies her when the church is consumed by fire. But Andy survives…and remarkably, saves other children from the flames. Laurel watches as Andy basks in the role of unlikely hero and the world finally sees her Andy, the sweet boy she knows as well as her own heart.But when the suspicion of arson is cast upon Andy, Laurel must ask herself how well she really knows her son…and how far she'll go to keep her promise to protect him forever.
Secrets She Left Behind
What if you did something so devastating, you regretted it for the rest of your life?
Nineteen-year-old Maggie Lockwood spent a year in prison for her part in a fire that cost three lives. The scars carried by the surviving victims – inside and out – are still raw and Maggie’s release from jail does nothing to free her from the guilt.
Returning home, Maggie hides herself away, too afraid to see Keith, the boy she grew up with, played with as a child – and recently learnt is her half-brother.
Keith nearly lost his life in the fire and the emotional and physical wounds he carries have changed him forever. With childhood innocence gone, Maggie and Keith must learn to come to terms with their new lives, but trying to move forward will have deadly consequences…
The Lies We Told
Maya and Rebecca Ward are both accomplished physicians, but that’s where the sisters’ similarities end.After a devastating hurricane hits the coast of North Carolina, Rebecca urges Maya to join her in the relief effort. It turns out to be just what Maya needs—but then her helicopter crashes into raging floodwaters, there appear to be no survivors.Forced to accept her sister is gone, Rebecca turns to Maya’s husband Adam—first for comfort, then in passion. Unaware that, miles from civilization, Maya is injured and trapped with strangers she’s not certain she can trust. Now Maya must find the courage to save herself—unaware that the life she left has changed forever.
The Midwife's Confession
Dear Anna,What I have to tell you is difficult to write, but I know it will be far more difficult for you to hear, and I’m so sorry…The unfinished letter is the only clue Tara and Emerson have to the reason behind their close friend Noelle’s suicide. Everything they knew about Noelle—her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her friends and family—described a woman who embraced life.Yet there was so much they didn’t know.With the discovery of the letter and its heartbreaking secret, Noelle’s friends begin to uncover the truth about this complex woman who touched each of their lives—and the life of a desperate stranger—with love and betrayal, compassion and deceit.Told with sensitivity and insight, The Midwife’s Confession will have you turning pages late into the night.
The Good Father
A beloved daughter. A devastating choice. And now there's no going back.Four years ago, nineteen-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he's never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe.But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he's worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble….Then a miracle. A job in Raleigh has the power to turn their fortunes around. It has to. But when Travis arrives in Raleigh, there is no job, only an offer to participate in a onetime criminal act that promises quick money and no repercussions.With nowhere else to turn, Travis must make another choice for his daughter's sake.Even if it means he might lose her.
The First Lie
The First Lie gives readers an early glimpse into the life of thirteen-year-old Ivy Hart. It's 1958 in rural North Carolina, where Ivy lives with her grandmother and sister on a tobacco farm. As tenant farmers, Ivy and her family don't have much freedom, though she and her best friend, Henry, often sneak away in search of adventure…and their truest selves. But life on the farm takes a turn when Ivy's teenage sister gives birth—all the while maintaining her silence about the baby's father. Soon Ivy finds herself navigating the space between adolescence and adulthood as she tries to unravel a dark web of family secrets and make sense of her ever-evolving life in the segregated South.
Necessary Lies
It is 1960 in North Carolina and the lives of Ivy Hart and Jane Forrester couldn't be more different. Fifteen-year-old Ivy lives with her family as tenants on a small tobacco farm, but when her parents die, Ivy is left to care for her grandmother, older sister, and nephew. As she struggles with her grandmother's aging, her sister's mental illness, and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County's newest social worker, she is given the task of recommending which of her clients should be sterilized without their knowledge or consent. The state's rationalization is that if her clients are poor, or ill, or deemed in some way "unfit" they should not be allowed to have children. But soon Jane becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her new husband and her supervisors. No one understands why Jane would want to become a caseworker for the Department of Public Health when she could be a housewife and Junior League member. As Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm―secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing a life-changing battle.
The Silent Sister
Riley MacPherson has spent her entire life believing that her older sister Lisa committed suicide as a teenager. It was a belief that helped shape her own childhood and that of her brother. It shaped her view of her family and their dynamics. It influenced her entire life. Now, more than twenty years later, her father has passed away and she's in New Bern, North Carolina, cleaning out his house when she finds evidence that what she has always believed is not the truth. Lisa is alive. Alive and living under a new identity. But why, exactly, was she on the run all those years ago? What secrets are being kept now, and what will happen if those secrets are revealed? As Riley works to uncover the truth, her discoveries will put into question everything she thought she knew about her family. Riley must decide what the past means for her present, and what she will do with her newfound reality. Told with Diane Chamberlain's powerful prose and illumination into the human heart and soul, The Silent Sister is an evocative novel of love, loss, and the bonds among siblings.
The Broken String
As seventeen-year-old Riley MacPherson rushes to the side of her brother who has been gravely injured in Iraq, she recalls their growing up years when he was her protector and best friend. Why did that relationship fall apart? She longs for a second chance to connect with her brother, not realizing that family secrets may prevent them from ever having that closeness again.
The Dance Begins
In this short story prequel to Pretending to Dance, psychologist Graham Arnette longs to dance the way he used to, before illness stole his ability to walk. Graham lives on one hundred acres of family land with his daughter Molly and his wife Nora-and with Amalia, a green-eyed beauty with whom Graham shares his hopes and fears. Six-year-old Molly is the light of Graham's life. As he and his extended family turn an old springhouse into a playhouse for her, long buried hostilities emerge that lead to anger and resentment. . . and, ultimately, to the healing power of family love.
Pretending to Dance
Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She and her husband live in San Diego, where they hope to soon adopt a baby. But the process terrifies her.As the questions and background checks come one after another, Molly worries that the truth she's kept hidden about her North Carolina childhood will rise to the surface and destroy not only her chance at adoption, but also her marriage. She ran away from her family twenty years ago after a shocking event left her devastated and distrustful of those she loved: her mother, the woman who raised her and who Molly says is dead but is very much alive; her birth mother, whose mysterious presence raised so many issues; and the father she adored, whose troubling death sent her running from the small community of Morrison Ridge.Now, as she tries to find a way to make peace with her past and embrace a future filled with promise, she discovers that even she doesn't know the truth of what happened in her family of pretenders.
The Stolen Marriage
It is 1944. Pregnant, alone, and riddled with guilt, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly gives up her budding career as a nurse and ends her engagement to the love of her life, unable to live a lie. Instead, she turns to the baby’s father for help and agrees to marry him, moving to the small, rural town of Hickory, North Carolina. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows her no affection. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.The people of Hickory love and respect Henry but see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain. When one of the town’s golden girls dies in a terrible accident, everyone holds Tess responsible. But Henry keeps his secrets even closer now, though it seems that everyone knows something about him that Tess does not.When a sudden polio epidemic strikes Hickory, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. Tess knows she is needed and defies Henry’s wishes to begin working at there. Through this work, she begins to find purpose and meaning. Yet at home, Henry’s actions grow more alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle the truth behind her husband’s mysterious behavior and find the love―and the life―she was meant to have?
The Dream Daughter
When Carly Sears, a young woman widowed by the Vietnam war, receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is 1970, and she is told that nothing can be done to help her child. But her brother-in-law, a physicist with a mysterious past, tells her that perhaps there is a way to save her baby. What he suggests is something that will shatter every preconceived notion that Carly has. Something that will require a kind of strength and courage she never knew existed. Something that will mean an unimaginable leap of faith on Carly's part.And all for the love of her unborn child.
The Dream Daughter is a rich, genre-spanning, breathtaking novel about one mother's quest to save her child, unite her family, and believe in the unbelievable. Diane Chamberlain pushes the boundaries of faith and science to deliver a novel that you will never forget.
Big Lies in a Small Town
North Carolina, 2018:
Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, her dream of a career in art is put on hold―until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will get her released from prison immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to be free, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.
North Carolina, 1940:
Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and in great need of work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?
The Last House on the Street
1965
Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill, North Carolina, Ellie Hockley was raised to be a certain type of proper Southern lady. Enrolled in college and all but engaged to a bank manager, Ellie isn’t as committed to her expected future as her family believes. She’s chosen to spend her summer break as a volunteer helping to register black voters. But as Ellie follows her ideals fighting for the civil rights of the marginalized, her scandalized parents scorn her efforts, and her neighbors reveal their prejudices. And when she loses her heart to a fellow volunteer, Ellie discovers the frightening true nature of the people living in Round Hill.
2010
Architect Kayla Carter and her husband designed a beautiful house for themselves in Round Hill’s new development, Shadow Ridge Estates. It was supposed to be a home where they could raise their three-year-old daughter and grow old together. Instead, it’s the place where Kayla’s husband died in an accident―a fact known to a mysterious woman who warns Kayla against moving in. The woods and lake behind the property are reputed to be haunted, and the new home has been targeted by vandals leaving threatening notes. And Kayla’s neighbor Ellie Hockley is harboring long buried secrets about the dark history of the land where her house was built.