Bøger af Diann Ducharme

She was the spirited daughter of a North Carolina plantation owner, and he was a poor fisherman who she tutored on the porch of her family's Nags Head cottage. When we last saw Abigail Sinclair and Ben Whimble at the close of The Outer Banks House, they'd overcome their differences in life stations and defied convention to begin their new life together.But now it's seven years later, and Return to the Outer Banks House finds the couple married and in hard times-riddled by poverty, miscarriages, and weakened family ties. The strong bonds that once held them together have eroded over time, and their marriage threatens to unravel, particularly when relationships from the past and ambitions for the future find their way into the mismatched couple's present predicament.Can their love survive? Or are the challenges they face insurmountable? Return to the Outer Banks House carries readers back to 1875 to answer these questions and explore the ebb and flow of a rocky marriage set against the enchanting North Carolina shoreline. Replete with history, intrigue, and plenty of maritime drama, it's an evocative tale of struggle in the Reconstruction-era South.

Genetics doctoral student and longevity researcher Ryan Abernathy restricts his calories and his social life; he is terrified of death, but his life, governed by study and exercise, is hollow. The longevity study that he works for receives a tip from an Irish doctor regarding two elderly twin sisters, Cleona and Catherine Owen, who live an a remote island off the western coast of Ireland. Ryan volunteers to investigate, hoping to get DNA samples from the women in his ambitious effort to increase lifespan and fight age-related diseases and just possibly, cure death itself.On the island, Ryan meets Cleona's beautiful great-granddaughter, Aisling, who cares for the elderly women but is able to offer Ryan no official age documentation for them. Aisling, lonely for companionship and exhausted from the care-taking of the sick women, draws Ryan into her world by telling him a story that she learned when she was young: that she and her relatives are the final known descendants of an old island clan that, through thousands of years of inbreeding and isolation, managed to achieve remarkable longevity. Ryan doesn't believe Aisling, but by asking questions of the bar man at the local pub and by stumbling across a time-worn gravestone in the old cemetery, he becomes more curious about the unusual family. As his curiosity increases, so does that of sick Irish nun, Sister Ignatius, who believes that she recognizes Catherine as a nun who disappeared from her convent 60 years ago.Both scientist and nun must grapple with their own deep-seated beliefs in order to determine the truth about the people, both past and present, of the Celtic island.

In 1875, Ben and Abby Whimble have been living apart for five years, with almost no communication between them.As an instructor at the Peabody Normal College in Nashville, Abby has traveled all over the country with her mentor Graham Wharton, visiting schools and observing teaching methods, while Ben has, after years of sadness and a near-fatal illness, at last found a vocation that suits his varied talents.Neither of them believes the marriage is viable, until Abby decides to forgo her teaching position to build, and teach in, a one-room schoolhouse on the isolated barrier island town of Nags Head. Her and Graham's unforeseen arrival brings confusion and even outrage to the entire village, especially Ben.Can Ben and Abby find their way back to one another after so many years apart? Or is coming "home to the Outer Banks" just a fairy tale written in sand, easily washed away by the ocean's relentless waves?This third novel in The Outer Banks House series explores the people and places that we yearn for, and the reasons why we choose to call them "home."