Smiling Dog Cafe

The Smiling Dog Cafe - Healing Fiction #1

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Welcome to The Smiling Dog Café, where lost souls find their way home, guided by mysterious dogs and comforted by the scent of perfectly brewed coffee. This collection of two interconnected novellas brings the Japanese tradition of healing fiction to the streets of Brooklyn, where an unassuming café holds more magic than meets the eye.

In "Code of Silence," Jeff Hodges has spent his life afraid to speak his truth, until the day he loses everything and follows a golden retriever to a café that seems to exist between worlds. There, proprietor Betty Martinez serves coffee that tastes like memories, while her wall of dog portraits holds secrets that could help Jeff finally find his voice – if he's brave enough to face what he's been running from.

"A Mother's Heart" introduces us to Sophia Greenwood, whose young daughter has just been diagnosed with the same heart condition that claimed Sophia's mother. As she grapples with this inherited legacy of both loss and love, Sophia finds herself guided to The Smiling Dog Café by an Irish Setter who seems to know exactly what her heart needs. There, surrounded by Betty's gentle wisdom and the café's subtle magic, Sophia discovers that some inheritances are stronger than fear.
Drawing on the Japanese tradition of healing fiction while grounding itself firmly in American soil, The Smiling Dog Café explores how we heal from past wounds, find courage to face our futures, and learn to trust love again. Through Betty's carefully crafted coffee blends and the watchful eyes of her painted dogs, these stories remind us that sometimes the path to healing requires a little magic, a lot of courage, and the perfect cup of coffee.
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The Bridge Between Us - Healing Fiction #2

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When master carpenter Barry Goldstein loses his wife Ellen to a sudden heart attack, he finds himself drawn to Brooklyn’s mysterious Smiling Dog Café, where the coffee tastes like memory and painted dogs on the walls seem to watch with knowing eyes. Meanwhile, his estranged sister Leah has rebuilt her life in Connecticut after years of addiction and loss, including the death of her husband Jaime and their unborn child.


After fifteen years of silence, a chance meeting at Ellen's funeral cracks open the door to reconciliation. As they cautiously rebuild their relationship, Barry and Leah uncover a family history of patterns repeated through generations: love and loss, staying and leaving, building walls and tearing them down.

When they discover their father had a sister named Temmy who died as a child—a sister whose existence was never mentioned, whose grave was abandoned when the family moved from Connecticut to Newark—they embark on a journey to find her final resting place and reclaim this forgotten piece of their history.
Under the guidance of Betty Martinez, the enigmatic owner of the Smiling Dog Café, and Molly, the labrador retriever who seems to appear when she's needed most, Barry and Leah begin to understand that what they truly inherited wasn't just their grandfather's carpentry skills or their mother's restlessness, but the capacity to rebuild what's broken—including their relationship with each other.

"The Bridge Between Us," the second book in the Smiling Dog Café series, weaves together multiple timelines and perspectives to create a rich tapestry of family history, exploring how the wounds of one generation can echo in the next, and how healing sometimes requires both letting go and holding on. This deeply moving story about siblings finding their way back to each other reminds us that the strongest structures are often built in the places that once broke apart.
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