Bøker av Tina Martin

Donovan Sharper's heart is in shambles, shattered by the rejection of Shayla Kline, the only woman who has ignited his soul since the loss of his beloved wife five years ago. Desperate to mend her son's despair, Donovan's mother urges him to embark on a journey aboard a fun cruise, away from the chaotic demands of his life. Little does he know, this getaway will unveil a captivating chapter in his life. Amidst the azure embrace of the ocean, Donovan meets Kamila Jenkins. With her infectious zest for life, she compels Donovan to shed his inhibitions and embrace the magic of the present. As Donovan finds solace in Kamila's company, he must confront a choice that could reshape his future. Will he untangle the entwined threads of his heart, relinquishing his attachment to Shayla? Or will he allow Kamila to slip through his fingertips, forever regretting the untapped possibilities?

A guilty conscience is holding him back, but how much longer can he resist her? Two months ago, Carter made the decision to cut ties with Shayla Kline, a woman who he nursed back to health. A woman - the only woman - he'd ever fallen in love with. A woman whom he later found out was his brother, Jacob's ex-fiancé. It was bad enough that Jacob had committed suicide, leaving a note written specifically for Carter to take care of Shayla. It was even worse when Carter felt himself longing to be with her. Deciding to be loyal to his brother and not his heart, he goes on to live his life without her but soon finds that his very soul aches for her closeness. Shayla is convinced that Carter doesn't love her. And there is no way she can force herself to stay where she's not wanted, even after he makes a pop up visit to her job and takes her out to dinner. Having had enough of his mind games, she decides to leave Charlotte and move to Norfolk, Virginia where she has a new job lined up and ready to make a fresh start. With the help of her intelligent, debonair boss, Donovan Sharper, she just might have enough distractions to take her mind off Carter. Carter worries constantly about Shayla being away. He knows if he's going to win her back, he has to tell her about how he really feels for her. Still, he doesn't have the courage to reveal that Jacob was his brother. He knows that sooner or later he would have to tell her, but he loves her too much to break her heart yet again. That is until his secret begins to eat away at him and makes him feel so horribly guilty, he can hardly function. Now he knows he must tell her about Jacob. The problem is, he doesn't know if she'll forgive him for keeping this secret.

A chance encounter that has the potential to change lives or destroy them... Carter Williams crosses paths with a homeless woman on the way to work. Completely out of character for the usually self-centered bachelor, he stops to assist this woman who's clearly in need of medical attention. He even spends a few nights with this woman in the hospital. He feels a calling to her. A likeness. He has no idea why. That's when he makes a life-changing discovery. This isn't just any woman. She's no stranger at all. She's the fiancée of Jacob, his estranged brother. While he couldn't save his brother, he feels like he can save Shayla. After all, one of his brother's final wishes was that Carter look after her. The last thing Carter expected was to fall in love. Now, he's faced with a dilemma - does he follow his heart and love the only woman who's ever meant anything to him, or take a step back and let her go? To make matters worse, she has no idea who he is. Yet...

What do you do when you like someone...like REALLY like someone, but the timing is all wrong...?Gemma has always been Gianna's chief priority, but now Gianna feels guilty for allowing her involvement with Ramsey to come between her close bond with her sister. Drowning amidst her own internal conflicts with her mother whom she resents so much while continuously caring for her ill sister, Gianna doesn't know what happiness is anymore. Scratch that. She does! She's found happiness with Ramsey. She likes being with him, and he seems to enjoy being with her. But how on earth is she supposed to give her heart to, and fall in love with, a man whom she knows can't love her back? She knew he was looking for companionship from the beginning - not love. Why would a man who can have anything he wants, any woman he wants, tie himself down to her? Yeah, definitely not love.But what if...What if Ramsey St. Claire can finally face his past and come to terms with losing Leandra? Will that free up his heart for endless possibilities with Leandra? He can't very well move on into a new relationship with Gianna when he's still holding on to the past, can he? If he's still harboring deep-rooted pain? Still grieving after fifteen years? He's a man - a smart, alpha. He realizes that he must let go of Leandra if his relationship with Gianna has any chance of survival. But knowing and doing are two completely different things. Besides, maybe he can string Gianna along long enough for her to accept their relationship for what it is - mere companionship.Nah, he couldn't do that to the sweet, cupcake lady, could he? *The Boardwalk Bakery Romance is a three-part continuation series: Book 1 - Baked With LoveBook 2 - Baked With Love 2Book 3 - Baked With Love 3

Ramsey knows what he wants. He wants the cupcake lady...Ramsey does his best to condition Gianna before Felicity, owner of Wedded Bliss, presents Gianna with his offer of marriage. Ramsey wants Gianna more than he wants his next million. He can't see himself without her and would do whatever it takes to make sure she's eventually his. But is he moving too fast for a woman who likes to take things slow. She has no experience with relationships. He's hoping to change all that.Gianna is still confused as to why a man like Ramsey St. Claire has set his sights on her. She doesn't have time to devote to him - no, not when she has Gemma to worry about. Still, she can't help but love the way her stomach flutters whenever Ramsey is within a few feet of her. Whenever their eyes connect. Whenever she sees that brilliant, sexy smile of his. For the first time in her life, she actually likes a man and is experiencing all the tingly, pulse-racing sensations that comes along with it. But is she ready for a permanent attachment to a man she hardly knows?

Ramsey St. Claire can't understand the pull he has to visit The Boardwalk Bakery - that is until he actually goes inside and meets the quirky, timid bakery owner, Gianna Jacobsen. There's an instant...'something'. Not love, though. He doesn't believe in love at first sight. But there is...'something'. Since recently taking a sabbatical from work, he has all the time in the world to figure out what that 'something' is.When he starts to peel back the layers of Gianna, he quickly becomes addicted to more than just her delicious, mouth-watering cupcakes. He wants to know her in ways he never thought he wanted to know a woman again. And Ramsey St. Claire always gets what he wants.

Royal St. Claire was drawn to Gemma Jacobsen from the start. It was an instant connection that he'd never had with another woman. When she was on her sickbed, he stayed by her side, helped to nurse her back to health and the two became the best of friends. Then that friendship grew into something deeper. Something Royal, the picky bachelor, couldn't deny. Something he didn't want to deny. It evolved into LOVE. Doubts about the relationship and herself plague Gemma's thoughts. She tries to force the negativity away but Royal's a great guy, so the thoughts linger at the forefront of her mind. A hard life and a caring sister has taught her what true love is - when you love someone more than you love yourself. It's how she feels for Royal - how she thinks Royal feels for her, but how can he when, in her eyes, he's the personification of male perfection while she's just - well - the lighthearted, short-haired sick girl. Their worlds are blended, but their hearts collide in this friends-to-lovers story. When there are no limits to a man's love, is there anything a woman can do to convince him that she's not his ONE?

Tamera Alexander is a restaurant health inspector - not a job she loves, but it pays the bills. Writing is her passion - more like writing about food. A part-time writer for Charlotte Magazine, she roams the city, seeking restaurants to review, always on the grind, never taking a moment to relax. She likes it that way. Staying busy doesn't give her time to think about the life she could've had if she'd married the right man. Her work is her life now. She's brainwashed herself into believing she likes it that way.Then she makes a mistake...Her life of all work and no play is interrupted when she writes a bad review for Central Grub House, a restaurant owned by Serenity Michaels, sister of Preston Michaels 'the' Preston Michaels, founder and chief editor of the second largest magazine in the city - Charlotte Recreational. Preston feels he has to come to his sister's defense when he reads Tamera's article in Charlotte Magazine and he wastes no time doing so. Approaching Tamera with a bold face-to-face ultimatum, he threatens to expose her career-ending secret unless she removes or amends the review she wrote about his sister's restaurant. He wasn't prepared for an instant attraction to Tamera - the enemy...Tamera didn't expect to lose her mind over Preston, a handsome man she hardly knew. She made that mistake once. She couldn't afford to make it again. She needed to get away from Charlotte for a few days, and fast! She makes her great escape by taking on a weekend assignment at a beautiful beach on the North Carolina coast. She didn't expect her drop-dead, gorgeous nemesis to be hot on her trail.

Letters of Apology for My First Memoir is a must-read for all writers of memoirs-those who've written one or plan to-to see the pitfalls, hopes, and responses through the eyes of the writers and the friends receiving copies of what they've written. (The author has asked her son to make copies of the book available as party favors at her memorial service.)It will also interest adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, and genealogists as well as estranged sisters becoming friends in their old age and to vegans and the people they annoy.In humorous, self-deprecating prose--and sometimes verse--the author deals with writing, over-writing, being read, not being read, winning and alienating friends, sharing radically different memories of the same events, aging, and dying, all while asking about life and writing: What happens, and what does it mean?"MEMOIR" is a piece of fiction in the middle of the triad that makes up the book: "Mim had written a book, and it had a bar code!...Now she could die, or so she thought."So begins the contrast between a memoirist's feeling of completion and the friends to whom she's sent a copy of her memoir: "There should be a warning label on memoirs, and it should be all in caps with an exclamation mark after the word 'MEMOIR!' Like 'MARS ATTACKS!'" A book reading at a barbecue becomes a roasting, and despairing memoirists-including the recipient of a poison pen letter and a dedicated vegan determined to state her plant-based case ("kind to animals and to the environment") and serve her favored dishes to those she's annoying -form a support group they call Dismissed Memoirists. "Finding Family We Never Knew We Had" is non-fiction ("as if any narrative we have about ourselves is really true!") describing a pandemic Christmas visit by a once-estranged sister who in the early 1980s helped the author do a search for their mother's "creation story." While exploring their own relationship over seven decades, they review their sleuthing in an era when records were not online and searches were active and interactive, making old census sheets precious and librarians heroic. "Letters of Apology for My First Memoir" is a series of letters of confession written to the men the author described in her coming-of-age Everything I Should Have Learned I Could Have Learned in Tonga soon after its publication, when she feared they might sue. ("I try to do what I think is right and apologize later," she says, conjuring up the pardon-not-permission approach to life.) She continues to apologize to just about everyone-editors, readers, her parents, the once-estranged sister, and other family members she's met and those she hasn't-for past, present, and future transgressions."Honey, you've taken that sentence in five different directions, and you've brought it back. But there will be people who won't be able to follow you," their father tells her sister, and the author knows the same applies to her. But readers who appreciate rule-breaking and artful digression will enjoy Letters of Apology for My First Memoir. Those who want a more conventional book might enjoy editing it!

For the author of Letters from Algeria, "The Day Everything Changed" came decades before September 11, 2001. Her memoir shows how her 1966 epiphany affected her response to the war on terrorism as she shares her letters from Algeria in the mid-1970s as well as those of her students after the attacks on September 11 and reflects on what led her to living in a country predominantly Arab and Muslim.Tina Martin, author of the memoir Everything I Should Have Learned I Could Have Learned in Tonga, did learn some of what she should have and could have during her two years in Algeria. Before teaching at City College of San Francisco for thirty-two years, she taught and/or trained teachers on five continents--Oceana, Europe, Africa, North America, and Asia. Her most eventful decade was the 1970s, when she lived in Tonga, Spain, and Algeria, got her MA in TESOL, got married, and had a baby, now forty-two years old. Her pieces "An Algerian Wedding" and "Crash Course in Spanish: How Getting Robbed Can Enhance Language Learning" appear in the anthologies I Should have Stayed Home (2003) and I Should Have Gone Home (2005), and "God, President Kennedy, and Me" in the anthology Even the Smallest Crab Has Teeth (2011). Her hobbies include walking all over San Francisco and reading, including 120+ books for the mother-son Jo-Mama Book Club, founded in 2007.