A BLUE STAR by Ben Solomon

Every morning before sunrise, Nora unlocks the Blue Star Café in the small town of Marlowe, pours the first pot of coffee, and holds together a life that's been stretched thin since her divorce — a young son named Eli who notices everything, a diner full of regulars who feel like family, and never quite enough hours in the day. Then Elias Mercer starts appearing every Tuesday and Thursday at exactly eleven forty-five, demanding a clean spoon and gravy without a skin on it, a gruff and exacting presence who seems to be carrying something far heavier than his complaints about burnt toast. As the seasons turn and old griefs surface — a lawyer's wife, a man named Graham in Dallas, a winter in France, a will that changes everything — the Blue Star becomes the place where broken lives quietly find their way back toward warmth. A Blue Star is a tender, small-town novel about grief, second chances, and the found family that gathers, one plate at a time, under a flickering neon sign.

•A cast of vividly drawn small-town regulars — a gruff veteran, a devoted cook, a sharp-tongued waitress — anchored by warm, character-driven dialogue
•A slow-building relationship between two guarded people learning to let each other in
•Five interwoven parts tracing loss, memory, and reconnection across changing seasons
•An unflinching, tender look at single motherhood and the quiet resilience it demands
•A richly atmospheric small-town setting that turns a neon-lit diner into the heart of the story

If you love slow-burn, character-driven small-town fiction with heart, get your copy of A Blue Star today.