I Wish I Had a Red Dress #2 (PB) (2025)

Bestselling author Pearl Cleage returns to the site of her Oprah pick novel, What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day, to affirm life's precious wonder once again.

Since Joyce Mitchell was widowed five years ago, she's kept herself mercifully busy by running The Sewing Circus, an all-female group she founded to provide badly needed services to single mothers and other young women at risk. But some nights, home alone, she knows something is missing. And if the state legislature cuts off funding, she'll soon not even have The Sewing Circus to fill up her life. Then one night, at dinner at the home of her best friend, Sister, Joyce finds a perfect meal and a perfect man: tall, dark Nate Anderson, whose unexpected presence touches a chord in Joyce's heart that she thought it had forgotten how to play.

Suddenly, Joyce feels ready to grab a sexy red dress and the life that goes with it...if she can somehow keep her girls safe from the dark forces aligning against them.