Mary Ellen Taylor

Mary Ellen Taylor moves down the street from her Union Street Bakery and stops AT THE CORNER OF KING STREET in her new novel, the Old Town Alexandria-set story of a woman trying to leave her past and family behind to embrace the new life and love she’s found at a Virginia vineyard. AT THE CORNER OF KING STREET is a Berkley trade paperback original.

Addie Morgan grew up in the shadow of her family’s curse, the mental illness that haunts the women of each generation and has claimed both her mother and sister. Settled in her new, stable and happy life with a man she loves, Addie wants nothing more than to be free of the pain and loss of the past. Reality, harsh and swift, intrudes when her Aunt Grace, who provided a safe haven for the girls during part of their childhoods, shows up determined to bring Addie back to Alexandria to solve the latest family crisis. Janet, Addie’s sister, who’s already abandoned her seven-year old son, has just given birth to a baby girl and is hospitalized, unable to care for herself let alone her baby.

Determined to make quick work of the problem and return to her own life, Addie’s arrival in Alexandria is greeted by more complications. Janet needs weeks of treatment; Grace’s health is failing and so is her salvage business; social services is having trouble placing “Baby Morgan” in a foster home; Janet’s ex, Zeb, accuses Addie of trying to cut and run just like her sister; and her nephew wants to see his mother and hold his half-sister. They’re all looking to Addie, who, woefully unprepared to deal with an infant, now has one to care for 24/7 while trying to keep her job and hold on to her fiancé, who knows nothing about her family’s checkered past.

Interspersed with journal entries from Alexandria’s earliest days, the story gives readers insight into events in the past that paved the way to the story’s troubled present. Meanwhile, the plot unfolds to reveal the discovery of centuries old “witch bottles,” hints to bonds that may tie Addie and her family to a heritage they never expected.

In AT THE CORNER OF KING STREET, Mary Ellen Taylor presents a tale of family and self-discovery interwoven with voices from the past in a contemporary novel of adversity, hard choices and the power of truth.