2011 Book of the Year Award for Multi-cultural Fiction. Sometimes, the least likely encounter changes everything... Jane Pepper is a thirty six year old editor in a small Baltimore press. Until the past year her life has been comfortable and enviable, but when her daughter develops leukemia, then accidentally dies, only Jane knows the reason for the accident. Keeping the secret may cost her her family, her career, and her sanity. Human rights photographer, Riva Hakim, the only child of multi-racial, multi-faith parents, has survived a volatile, itinerant childhood and loveless marriage to gain international acclaim for her work. Now, at fifty-two, and under contract to write her memoirs, she must put away her camera and find a way to frame the past before she can face the future. But that future is turned upside down the morning she finds a stranger named Jane Pepper on her doorstep. Spanning both sides of the Atlantic from Washington D.C. to the Canary Islands to Sudan, Alabaster Houses is the story of an unlikely friendship between two women who are both at a critical crossroad in life. Book Club discussion questions are included, and a link to videos featuring the author discussing her work. Praise for Alabaster Houses... "McLaughlin invites readers on a journey of the heart in this celebration of life, death and what it means to be human... McLaughlin's storytelling is superb... A tour de force that makes readers face hard truths about the effect a person's choices can have on her soul." - Kirkus Reviews "Debut novelist Lara McLaughlin soars out of the gate with her tale of entanglement, grief, guilt and familial anguish... A wrenching search for peace and absolution by a talented new writer." - US Review of Books