Secrets at the Aviary Inn
About this ebook
Sophie Groenveld needs an escape from the tension at home as much as she needs answers. Armed with only a backpack, her boyfriend and a mysterious old photograph, Sophie escapes Port Hope for a summer in England, determined to uncover the secrets of her mother’s past. She’s certain that whatever she discovers about the missing half of her family will help her figure out where she belongs, and what to do with her own life, as well as somehow heal the heartache that plagues her mother.
Sophie didn’t expect her rebellious summer jaunt to leave her stranded in York without money, her passport or her travelling companion. When her boyfriend ditches her and she has to find work to survive, the photo leads her to an old rundown inn, its mysterious proprietor with a fractured past, and a collection of new friends who carry the clues to solve the mystery.
Thus begins Sophie’s journey of discovery about her family, her legacy, and herself. At twenty-three Sophie has yet to learn whom she can trust. With life spinning in unexpected directions Sophie anchors herself to the shabby but quaint Aviary Inn in York as the new night desk clerk, curious about its role in the old photo she brought from home, and her mother’s secret family history.
Navigating complexities and roadblocks, she applies her energy and spirit to the old-world hotel and the labyrinthine lives of the eccentric but lovable staff, guests, and intriguing locals, including possible new love interests. When a surprise hotel guest provides an important road sign, Sophie must decide if she needs a guiding hand, or whether she’s ready to chart her own course.
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About the author
USA Today Best-selling author MaryAnn Clarke is a Chatelaine Grand Prize winner and Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist for The Art of Enchantment, first in the Life is a Journey series about young women on journeys abroad who discover themselves and fall in love while getting embroiled in someone else’s problems. Her Having it All series is about professional women struggling to balance the challenge and fulfillment of their careers with their search for identity, love, family and home. The first book in her newest small town steamy romance series, The Reporter’s UNLIKELY Reunion, won runner up in the 2024 Indie Writer’s Project Contest.
Always eager to fill blank pages and empty canvases with ideas swirling in her head, MaryAnn set out to write emotionally engaging stories that walk a tight rope between intelligent Women’s Fiction and heart-warming Romance.
A polymath who studied Fine Arts, Urbanism, Architecture and Gerontology at university on both coasts of Canada, she turned to her first love, writing stories, when she realized she could have more fun with fewer rules as an author, than working in an office as an architect, or in a university as a researcher. When not writing, she meditates while hiking wooded mountain trails, does yoga and Pilates to fend off decrepitude, reads eclectically, contemplates wormholes, experiments with painting abstract expressionism, kills plants and tries not to burn dinner while solving her next plot problem. Now that her chick has flown the coop, Clarke lives on beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada with her husband and cats. Although she knows she lives in Paradise, she still loves traveling the world in search of romance, art, good food and new story inspiration.
