Shades of Light — Melody Carlson

Widowed Gwen Sullivan has never worked outside the home and isn't sure she's ready to. But faced with an empty house when her daughter leaves for college, she reluctantly takes a job for an interior designer. The characters who hang around the criminal defense attorney's office upstairs are creepy, her boss is unpleasant, her tasks are menial-but eventually Gwen gains enough confidence in her instincts to take on a design client of her own. And helping Oliver Black transform a derelict downtown building into a safe haven for street kids does more for her than she could have imagined. . . .