Sarah Pekkanen is the author of Skipping a BeatThe Opposite of Me, and the short story All is Bright – all published by Atria Books (a division of Simon & Schuster). Her books have been featured in RedbookPeopleEntertainment WeeklyHarpar’s BazaarUSA TodayThe Washington Post and more. Sarah lives in the Washington D.C. area and is currently working on her next novel.

about YOU ARE NOT ALONE

The electrifying number one New York Times best-selling authors of The Wife Between Us and An Anonymous Girl return with a brand new novel of psychological suspense.

Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.

Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better. Shay would die for them to like her. She may have to.

BookSparks is working in conjunction with MacMillan Audio on this audiobook.

about THESE GIRLS

Sarah’s third novel, THESE GIRLS, will be published on April 10. “Sarah Pekkanen’s latest celebrates the healing power of female friendship for three very different young women sharing a New York City apartment. By turns bittersweet, laugh-out-loud funny, and painfully real, you’ll want to move in with these girls” ~ NYT bestseller Jodi Picoult.

about LOVE, ACCIDENTALLY

From the author of The Opposite of Me and Skipping a Beat, an original eBook short story that shows whom we fall in love with may be the biggest—and happiest—accident of all.  Ilsa Brown wasn’t expecting a little, injured dog to lead her to the love of her life. But within months of their first meeting on a street corner in L.A., she and Grif, the dog’s owner, are engaged. Things between them are so blissful that Ilsa is stunned by the tension that erupts during their visit to Chicago to meet his parents, where she discovers that Grif’s old girlfriend, Elise, is still woven into his family. What Ilsa needs to know before she can walk down the aisle is whether Elise is still in Grif’s heart, too.

Featuring a character from Sarah Pekkanen’s original eBook short story All Is BrightLove, Accidentally is surprising and heartfelt. It’s a story about taking chances and choosing hope, and discovering what it means to love someone—and to let go of someone you love.

about SKIPPING A BEAT

Julia Dunhill, a thirty-something party planner, seems to have it all: Married to her high school sweetheart and living in a gorgeous home in Washington D.C., she imagines her future unfolding very much as it has for the past few years, since she and her husband Michael successfully launched their companies. There will be dinner parties to attend, operas to dress up for, and weddings and benefits to organize for her growing list of clients. There will be shopping sprees with her best friend, Isabelle, and inevitably those last five pounds to shed. In her darker moments, she worries that her marriage has dissolved from a true partnership into a façade, but she convinces herself it’s due to the intensity of their careers and fast-paced lifestyle.

So as she arranges the molten chocolate cupcakes for the annual Opera benefit, how can she know that her carefully-constructed world is about to fall apart? That her husband will stand up from the head of the table in his company’s boardroom, open his mouth to speak, and crash to the carpeted floor… all in the amount of time it will take her to walk across a ballroom floor just a few miles away. Four minutes and eight seconds after his cardiac arrest, a portable defibrillator jump-starts Michael’s heart. But in those lost minutes he becomes a different man, with an altered perspective on the rarified life they’ve been living and a determination to regain the true intimacy they once shared. Now it is up to Julia to decide — is it worth upending her comfortable world to try to find her way back to the husband she once adored, or should she walk away from this new Michael, who truthfully became a stranger to her long before his change of heart?

about THE OPPOSITE OF ME

Reminiscent of Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes and Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed, this smart, funny and poignant debut novel explores the desire to have it all, the relationships that define us, and the complicated, irreplaceable bonds of sisterhood.

Twenty-nine year old Lindsey Rose has, for as long as she can remember, lived in the shadow of her devastatingly beautiful fraternal twin sister, Alex. Determined to get noticed, Lindsey is finally on the cusp of being named Creative Vice President of an elite New York advertising agency, after years of 80-plus hour weeks, migraines, and profound loneliness. But during the course of one devastating night, Lindsey’s carefully-constructed life implodes.

Humiliated and desperate, she flees the glitter of Manhattan and retreats to the time warp of her parents’ Maryland home. As her sister plans her lavish wedding to her prince charming, Lindsey struggles to maintain her identity as the smart, responsible twin, while she furtively tries to put her career back together. But things get more complicated when a long-held family secret is unleashed that forces both sisters to reconsider who they are and who they are meant to be.

about ALL IS BRIGHT

Thirty-year-old Elise Andrews couldn’t bring herself to marry Griffin, her childhood friend-turned-sweetheart, so she let him walk away. Eight months after their break-up, she arrives in her hometown of Chicago on Christmas Eve and hears a voice from the past calling her name in the grocery store. It’s Griffin’s mother Janice, who invites Elise over for a neighborhood gathering of eggnog and carols.

Walking into Janice’s house sends Elise tumbling headlong into memories of her relationship with Griffin — and with Janice, who exudes the kind of warmth Elise ached for after her own mom passed away when she was six. But Griffin has moved on, and suddenly Elise doubts her decision to give him up, and lose her chance at being folded into his wonderful family. Confused and reeling, she goes in search of an answer to a universal question: How do we say good-bye to people we’ve loved without losing everything they’ve meant to us?

Heartwarming and witty, All is Bright is a charming story about coming home for the holidays — and finding gifts in the most unexpected of places.

Buy All is Bright on Amazon.