Autumn Spring [Paperback]

Bree Principal and Linda Morton have sacrificed their personal lives for career and family. Now, in her late sixties, Bree is forced to return to her hometown in East Texas, where she begins to discover things about herself she has refused to acknowledge for fifty years. Do both she and Linda—who is finally out and proud—have the courage to claim the type of life they’ve never allowed themselves to embrace?

Shelley Thrasher, world traveler and native East Texan, has edited novels for Bold Strokes Books since 2004. With her PhD in English, she taught on the college level for many years before she retired early, and still teaches one fine-arts course online. She has published numerous poems and several short stories and essays, as well as one scholarly book. Shelley and her partner Connie, with their two dogs, cat, and parrot, live near Dallas in the piney woods of East Texas, where her first novel, The Storm, is set.

Thrasher’s unique and exquisite take on romance in a small town offers a new and welcome perspective on mature relationships....The focus on the empowerment of older women serves to underscore both the charm of life at a slower pace and the sweetness of new relationships. Readers will find it deeply refreshing to see female characters who are defined as much by their kindness and grace as by their chosen roles in life. —Publishers Weekly, 7/6/2015