Best of
American-Fiction

2019

Wolfpack 351


R. Cameron Cooke - 2019
    submarines of Wolfpack 351 are low on fuel, torpedoes, and morale. Their only means of escape is a narrow passage teeming with enemy aircraft, mines, and coastal batteries – and guarded by a menacing Japanese fleet led by a legendary admiral hell-bent on stopping them. Facing the imminent destruction of the entire wolfpack, and with few options remaining, the American admirals in Pearl Harbor turn to an aging submarine, the only boat close enough to help. With time running out, the USS Aeneid – a V-boat from another era – must spring the trapped submarines from their watery prison before they meet their fates under the hull-shattering wrath of the enemy’s depth charges.

Loving Liberty Levine


Colin Falconer - 2019
    But all Sarah really wants is what has come so easily to her sisters—a family of her own. Finally, in her new home, her dream comes true…but at a terrible cost. She names the baby girl Liberty after the great statue in the harbor that she saw when she first came to America.From struggling to raise Liberty in a Lower East Side tenement to building a fashion empire, the only constants in Sarah’s life are her love for her daughter and the terrible secret that she must keep. Sarah gives Liberty everything she has, but the truth cannot stay hidden forever. As Liberty grows to womanhood and the world prepares to go to war again, Sarah is asked to make one last impossible choice…

Practically Married


Karin Beery - 2019
    Instead, she’s burying him.Ashley Johnson moved to northern Michigan to finally meet her fiancé face-to-face, but she arrived in time to attend his funeral. With no home back in Ohio, she decides to stay in what would have been their house, except his cousin Russ lives there too, and Russ has never heard of Ashley. To complicate matters, her fiancé accidentally willed her the family farm house. Eager to please everyone and desperate to disappoint no one, she proposes a marriage of convenience that could solve her and Russ’ problems, if they can get past her aunt, his sisters, and an ex-girlfriend.

The Orchard


Peter Heller - 2019
    One of the world’s most renowned translators of poetry from China’s Tang dynasty, Hayley walked away from her career and her drug-addicted husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things—including their exuberant Bernese mountain mutt, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith—precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader—considers herself queen of this backwoods paradise. She is too young to understand the pain and regret that have followed her mother here.Season after season, it is the three of them—mother, daughter, and dog—until the sunny March day when Rose Lattimore appears at their door. Rose is an artist and kindred spirit whose unexpected friendship upends Hayley and Frith’s solitary existence. Rosie takes the edge off the worries of day-to-day survival and encourages the playful aspects of living in nature: fishing, picnics, swimming in a quarry. Frith thrives under the loving care of Hayley and Rosie and, with a child’s innocence, assumes their happiness will last forever. Instead, their lives are shattered by unexpected tragedy and Frith must come to terms with heartbreak and fear.Peter Heller is unique in his ability to capture the beauty and nuance of the natural world and its pull on women and men. In The Orchard, he pairs evocative storytelling with jewel-like poems—Hayley’s translations of her most beloved Tang poet, Li Xue—that echo Hayley and Frith’s life in the wilderness and tell their own tale of mother and daughter. By turns joyful and searing, The Orchard examines the fragility of childhood, motherhood, romantic love, and friendship, and celebrates the enduring solace of nature.

Falling in Love with a Police Officer (Rich & Rugged: a Hawkins Brothers Romance #4)


Ellie Hall - 2019
    He believes relationships can ruin lives. Brynn Powell had a tough childhood and after her husband died in the line of duty, she leaves the city for the small-town of Hawk Ridge Hollow to start over as a teacher. Aside from her lively classroom, she leads a quiet life fixing up an old house and would like to keep it that way. Owen Hawkins, former Olympian, cop, and single father moves to the town where he grew up to give his daughter a sense of belonging even though he’d turned his back on his brothers. He isn’t looking for anyone to replace his ex-wife, especially not the pretty kindergarten teacher. She needs a room parent and he’s perfect. He needs someone to look after his little girl because he works the night shift. The arrangement suits them just fine until they start turning to each other for laughs, for friendship, for something more... Brynn’s thankful that she has Owen in her life. He and his daughter are like the family she’s always wanted. Then she makes a mistake and oversteps a boundary. Owen isn’t sure he can forgive her. But he hasn’t told her his entire story either. They’re both keeping secrets. Can they trust each other? Can they trust themselves to love again? This is book 4 in Rich & Rugged, Hawkins Brothers Romance series. Each book stands alone but reading them in order provides a deeper, richer experience. It is a sweet, “clean and wholesome” romance without swearing or mature content and contains a HEA.

Task Force Baum


James D. Shipman - 2019
    Shipman delivers a powerful, action-packed novel that illustrates the long-buried secrets and unending costs of war--based on the true story of General Patton's clandestine unauthorized raid on a World War II POW camp. March, 1945. Allied forces are battle-worn but wearily optimistic. Russia's Red Army is advancing hard on Germany from the east, bolstering Allied troops moving in from the west and north. Soon, surely, Axis forces must accept defeat. Yet for Captain Jim Curtis, each day is a reminder of how unpredictable and uncertain warfare can be.Captured during the Battle of the Bulge after the Germans launched a devastating surprise attack, Curtis is imprisoned at a POW camp in Hammelburg, Bavaria. Conditions are grim. Inmates and guards alike are freezing and starving, with rations dwindling day by day. But whispers say General Patton's troops are on the way, and the camp may soon be liberated.Indeed, fifty miles away, a task force of three hundred men is preparing to cross into Germany. With camps up and down the line, what makes Hammelburg so special they don't know, but orders are orders. Yet their hopes of evading the enemy quickly evaporate. Wracked by poor judgment, insufficient arms, and bad luck, the raid unravels with shattering losses. The liberation inmates hoped for becomes a struggle for survival marked by a stark choice: stay, or risk escaping into danger--while leaving some behind.For Curtis, the decision is an even more personal test of loyalty, friendship, and the values for which one will die or kill. It will be another twenty years before the unsanctioned mission's secret motivation becomes public knowledge, creating a controversy that will forever color Patton's legacy and linger on in the lives of those who made it home at last--and the loved ones of those who did not.

Courage to be Counted


Eleri Grace - 2019
    When she wins a coveted overseas post with the Red Cross, she focuses on her war service. Falling hard for a sexy pilot wasn't part of her plan. Jack Nielsen has a mission. Motivated by patriotic duty and desire to avenge the death of his best friend, Jack commands a ten-man B-17 crew. Keeping himself and his men alive in the fire-filled skies over Europe will require Jack's full focus. Romancing a headstrong Red Cross Girl is a distraction he knows he shouldn't indulge. While Vivian's work takes her across France and into the heart of Nazi Germany, mounting casualties drive Jack to confront his dwindling odds of survival. As Allied forces converge on all fronts, can Vivian and Jack's relationship withstand an excruciating battle between love and duty?Courage to be Counted is the first book in the Clubmobile Girls series of thrilling historical romances. If you like brave military heroes, trailblazing heroines, and romance under fire, then you'll love Eleri Grace's page-turning tale. Buy Courage to be Counted and soar into this historical romance today!

Landing by Moonlight: A Novel of WW II


Ciji Ware - 2019
     The year is 1942, and American secret agent Catherine Thornton has no idea whether she will be dropped behind enemy lines in an inflatable raft launched from a submarine or be flung through the moonlit sky from a low-flying British Halifax. Either way, the young embassy wife and erstwhile journalist knows there’s always the chance she’ll be picked off by German sharpshooters, although nothing in her imagination prepares her for the trial-by-fire to come. Only she understands why she volunteered for such “unwomanly warfare” and the secret reasons she joined a handful of female American spies destined to risk her gilded life on French soil--yet former Vichy diplomat Henri Leblanc, code name Claude Foret, thinks he knows the answers. As Catherine’s missions grow more harrowing each day, and she fears she’s fallen in love with a captured fellow agent, the German SS begin to close in on the world of Madame “Colette Durand” and her Résistance network embedded in coastal cities along the French Riviera—an exposure that could threaten the Allied victory itself. And hanging in the air like a half-opened parachute is the life-or-death question: Who is the betrayer and who will be betrayed in this, their finest hour? New York Times & USA Today bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning former broadcast journalist Ciji Ware once again displays her extraordinary talent for weaving historical fact into compelling fiction to produce novels so engaging that one reviewer warned of her work: “…do not start unless you want to be up all night.” “Thoroughly engaging” - BOOKLIST

Repentance


Andrew Lam - 2019
    A Japanese American war hero has a secret. A secret so awful he’d rather die than tell anyone—one so entwined with the brave act that made him a hero that he’s determined never to speak of the war. Ever. Decades later his son, Daniel Tokunaga, a world-famous cardiac surgeon, is perplexed when the U.S. government comes calling, wanting to know about his father’s service with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Something terrible happened while his father was fighting the Germans in France, and the Department of Defense won’t stop its investigation until it’s determined exactly who did what.Wanting answers of his own, Daniel upends his life to find out what his father did on a small, obscure hilltop half a world away. As his quest for the truth unravels his family’s catastrophic past, the only thing for certain is that nothing—his life, career, and family—can ever be the same again."Suspenseful, touching and beautifully written."-Margaret George, New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth I and Helen of Troy"A gorgeous, emotional book. An important, and timely, American story"-Karin Tanabe, author of The Diplomat's Daughter

Flight of the U-463


Timothy Donald Pilmaier - 2019
    Steamrolled by the Nazi onslaught and mistaken for a German citizen, he finds himself conscripted into the vaunted German Navy. Forced to serve on a U-boat, his odds of escaping back to America are slim. If his true identity is discovered, he would be executed as a spy.Peter must find a way to escape, yet he is thwarted at every turn. Hounded by a brutal Nazi, Klaus Lübeck, who suspects that Peter is not what he appears to be, the American avoids detection at all costs. A chance meeting with the head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, may just be the key to his deliverance. With the odds of escaping stacked against him, the young American devises a bold and daring plan. Once in motion, there is no turning back.

Tomorrow's Bread


Anna Jean Mayhew - 2019
    Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee’s love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk’s white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.Loraylee has heard rumors that the city plans to bulldoze her neighborhood, claiming it’s dilapidated and dangerous. The government promises to provide new housing and relocate businesses. But locals like Pastor Ebenezer Polk, who’s facing the demolition of his church, know the value of Brooklyn does not lie in bricks and mortar. Generations have lived, loved, and died here, supporting and strengthening each other. Yet street by street, longtime residents are being forced out. And Loraylee, searching for a way to keep her family together, will form new alliances—and find an unexpected path that may yet lead her home.

Lawfully Secure


Krista Noorman - 2019
    Until she met the man hired to protect her. Paige Bancroft lives a charmed life—the daughter of a billionaire, beautiful and intelligent, about to marry the man of her dreams. Things are going according to plan, until her father unexpectedly summons her home and introduces her to Adam Wilder. He’s irritatingly polite and far too serious, and she hates herself for noticing how handsome he is. Worse, he’s the man her father has hired to protect her after a threat against their family. After his years in the military, Adam Wilder never expected to work as a personal bodyguard for the heiress of the Croft athletics empire. Her sarcastic remarks and cold shoulder are easily overlooked, given the sudden inconvenience to her life, but when she’s open and real with him, he feels a connection with her that he’s never felt before. As Paige’s wedding approaches, Adam begins to uncover who’s behind the threat against her. And the closer they get to the truth and to each other, the more he realizes he would do anything to keep her secure. ____________________ The Lawkeepers is a multi-author series alternating between historical westerns and contemporary romance featuring law enforcement heroes that span multiple agencies and generations. Join bestselling authors Jenna Brandt, Lorana Hoopes and many others as they weave captivating, sweet and inspirational stories of romance and suspense between the lawkeepers -- and the women who love them. The Lawkeepers is a world like no other; a world where lawkeepers and heroes are honored with unforgettable stories, characters, and love. ** Note: Each book in The Lawkeepers series is a standalone book, in a mini-series, and you can read them in any order.

Until We All Find Home


Heather Wood - 2019
    But Justin discovers that sometimes love is more painful than it is healing as the siblings struggle with facing their own inadequacies in their journey towards reconciliation with God and each other. Along the way, the siblings and their friends learn that real love often looks like the hard work of granting grace and second chances to other hurting, imperfect people with whom they have nothing in common. In the end, they each find that when they come home to God, He gives them the courage, freedom and grace to come home to the people they've come to love. ~~~ As Irish American orphans raised in different circumstances in Kentucky, North Carolina and Maryland, the Young siblings could not be more different from each other, but they are determined that the ties of the same blood are strong enough to bring them together despite the secrets they each carry from their past. In this emotional story filled with humor and love, Yankee siblings come head to head with Confederate ones, Christian siblings with atheists, educated siblings with those raised on the street, and extroverted siblings with introverts. Set in the backdrop of Civil War Chicago, with its labor strikes and the Union prison camp at Camp Douglas, you will find characters you'll come to love and won't soon forget.

Right Number


Perry Elisabeth Kirkpatrick - 2019
    She guesses he's off on an assignment and can't make contact for safety reasons... or can he?This short story takes place a few weeks after the end of Book 6, "Once Upon a Dime" and can be read for free on the author's blog.

Occupied: A Novel Based on a True Story


Kurt Blorstad - 2019
    Will they all survive? As WW II breaks out, a father finds himself in the U.S. while his wife and sons are home in occupied Norway. Based on the son’s true-life journals from 1935-1945, this is the story of a family separated by war and uncertainty.

Wedding Score


Amanda Tero - 2019
    Except me. I’m too busy practicing piano and being the live soundtrack for everyone else’s weddings to think about my own. I’ve survived most of my twenties with harmonious chords and pleasant days. So why is it that now, at twenty-seven, a discordant feeling presents itself? Is there a solid solution to loneliness when there is absolutely no potential husband on the horizon?A CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN SHORT READ

Only Americans Burn in Hell


Jarett Kobek - 2019
    your democracy and your dignity? What if the media were owned by filthy-rich men who didn't give two shits about any of it as long as it continued to make them filthy rich?Wouldn't it be enough to send you certifiably insane? To make you write a novel about an immortal lesbian fairy that mimicked the conventions of movies like Wonder Woman but became an accidental allegory for #MeToo? To write a savage death wail of a satire about how the rich stole everything from us?Enough to make you. reader. consider laying off the spectacular pornography about war for long enough to read it?

Ruby Moon


Jenny Knipfer - 2019
    Jenay, a young woman of mixed French and Ojibwe descent, must survive the trauma of causing a horrific accident. Her maturity accelerates as the challenges of grief, and romance enter the scene. Amidst this drama, Jenay is caught in a web spun by Renault, a rich, charming man who once threatened ruination of her father’s shipping company but now seeks something even more valuable–Jenay. Renault, her past enemy, suddenly becomes her friend then something more . . . Will she leave the man she loves for this new found affection? Jenay must find where her strength lies in order to face the challenges life brings her or be washed away like driftwood on the tumultuous shores of Lake Superior. Life’s richest dramas are played out under the banner of two ruby colored moons and become the hidden gems which forge her into a mature strong woman. Jenay realizes God is by her side, using even the harsh events of life to create something precious in her.

The Accident


A.M. Heath - 2019
    She's already lost her father, and now that her mom is battling thyroid cancer, she fears being orphaned at fifteen. When a friendly stranger texts the wrong number, Ashlyn finds a confidant she didn’t realize she needed. The more Ashlyn gets to know Chris Knowles, the more she’s convinced he could be the caring husband and loving father the Conner women so desperately need.If only she’d been honest and hadn’t made him believe he was texting her mother, Danielle.When the truth comes out, will she lose her friendship with Chris and damage her relationship with her mother? Or can God make something beautiful out of her lie?Told through text messages and Ashlyn’s journal entries, The Accident is a heartwarming, family-centered story.

Phantom Thief


P.D. Atkerson - 2019
    A con artist, master thief, and most times smarter than anyone else in the room. One thing he'll never be is normal. He never has been, nor will he ever be. That's why the agency needs his help, and that's why he'll give it to them, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have his own plans too. Joining up with the team that arrested him won't be easy, but he'll do anything to bring down the man who ruined his life. After he's worn so many faces, how does he really know who he is underneath? Most teenagers have hobbies, his is crime.

The Light From the Dark Side of the Moon


Norman G. Gautreau - 2019
    Before he dies, he hopes to at last address a grief he has allowed to simmer for decades and to rekindle memories of Élodie Bedier, the French Resistance fighter with whom he fell in love 70 years earlier, as a way of confronting his grief at losing her.During his return journey, he relives events of 1944: being wounded as he parachutes into Normandy; falling in love with Élodie who nurses him back to health; fighting the Germans alongside her and her resistance companions; and finally abandoning the war to rescue a group of children from the Holocaust, choices that leave Henry at risk of a firing squad for desertion and Élodie vulnerable to fatal condemnation from her compatriots.When he arrives back in France, Henry makes several shocking discoveries that shake the very foundations of the memories he’s had of Élodie all these years and he is left to wonder about the love he has had for Élodie: what rests on true memory vs. what is based on countless imagined conversations over the decades?

Beloved


Kaitlyn Krispense - 2019
    Foster teen Cara Richards is unloved. With nothing left and nowhere to go, she is determined to find peace, no matter the cost. But despite her intentions, she’s tossed into another foster family and this time, there’s no going back to who she used to be. To make matters worse, one of her five new foster brothers is a Jesus freak, and she refuses to believe that God actually cares.Her world is thrown upside down in a way she never expects. Though she prides herself on a resilient heart, her mind is lost adrift among a sea of questions: Is death really the answer? Does God care about someone as unworthy as me? Can everyone truly be loved, no matter what?

Live Again


Sarah Grace Grzy - 2019
    A short story prequel to Live Without You.

Big Bang


David Bowman - 2019
    It was the second big bang.In this hilarious, lightning-fast historical novel, Bowman follows the most famous couples of the decade as their lives are torn apart by post-war's new normal. We see Lucille Ball's bizarre interrogation by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and Jackie Onassis' moonlight cruise with Frank Sinatra . We follow Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller as they attempt to get quickie divorces together at a loophole resort in Nevada and watch a young Howard Hunt snoop around South America with the newly founded CIA. A young Jimi Hendrix, now the epitome of counterculture cool, tries his luck as a clean cut army recruit.Written with an almost documentary film like intensity, BIG BANG is a posthumous work from the award-winning author of Let the Dog Drive. A riotous account of a country, perhaps, at the beginning of the end.

The Rings of Berlin


Michael Wallace - 2019
     Now, twenty years later, Helen is a world-class swimmer, and a medal favorite for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, yet politically naive as the American team arrives in a racially charged, vainglorious Germany, where the Nazi regime is all too happy to use the young woman for political purposes. Caught up in the charismatic approaches of a member of the German press, Helen ignores the warnings of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, a fellow swimmer and Italian American who has personal experience with fascism. She promises herself that once the gold medal is hers, she will speak her mind on the matter of peace between the two great countries. And then, on the eve of her gold medal swim, a chance meeting with an old mentor opens her eyes to the truth, that she is being used as a tool of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, who vows to ruin her if she doesn’t accept tainted assistance and in return, make a public gesture in support of the regime.

Christmas Hostage


P.D. Atkerson - 2019
    After everything that had happened, he'd expected his life to finally calm down and for three months it did. But when he's left alone on Christmas Eve, things spiral out of control and he soon finds himself taken hostage alongside a little girl. Why have these men taken her? Lee doesn’t know, but he soon finds out. These men are with the Underground and they don't make idle threats. If he's going to keep the girl safe, he's going to have to use some old tricks. Christmas is a time for new beginnings, but Lee's having a hard time starting over. Does he need to forget everything he's done, or learn from it?

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage: The Selected Stories of Bette Howland


Bette Howland - 2019
    Each of these facets plays a central role in her work. Mining her deepest emotions for her art, she chronicles the tensions of her generation--and her native city--with a flair for language in the tradition of Lucia Berlin, Kathleen Collins, and Grace Paley. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage introduces a new generation of readers to a wry, brilliant observer and a writer of great empathy and sly, joyous humor. With an afterword by Honor Moore.

Dewdrops and Butterflies


Libby May - 2019
    It was amazing how much people assumed by a simple glance. An outfit, an expression, a tone of voice. Anyone could pretend to be anything. Today, I was a rich girl.”Thirteen-year-old Rose Wells is determined to make it on her own. Running from authority one last time, the forest has become her home and the cafe her source of food. Fear driven determination will keep her here as long as she can help it. But not everybody is okay with that. Alex and Jenni Johnson will do whatever they can to find their foster daughter and bring her home, longing to give her the genuine love she’s never known.Over the course of a single summer, hearts are broken, scars exposed, friendships blossom, and ultimately a greater truth is learned.A greater God is understood.Purchase a signed copy at geoturtle.com/shop/

An Admiral for Her Voyage (Monterey Brides Series Book 1)


Cheyanne West - 2019
    Refusing to be Orsini’s captive, Maria flees from Italy to the shores of America with her best friend Adriana, both stalked by a powerful menace. Neither imagined they’d be followed.Union Navy Admiral John Charles Fremont served with distinction during the Mexican American War. Now retired he endeavored to settle into a quiet civilian life on the large spread of land he’d purchased for ranching, that was until gold was accidently found. With notoriety and now riches he attracted shallow high-society women, the final straw being the likes of Esmeralda Cortez.Two hearts; one escaping and one hoping, but both need saving.  Will Maria grow to trust and possibly love the man behind the stern façade? Watch for Monterey Brides 2, Troubled Past meets Bright Future, soon to be released! Read other best-selling releases by Cheyanne West! The San Diego Brides Series has six clean and wholesome Mail Order Bride stories that will touch your heart.  These are tales demonstrating qualities of fortitude, strength, and valor with biblical values. Stories you’ll find in this series are: Book 1 – A Home for ElizabethBook 2 – A Sturdy Hand for SharronBook 3 – Welsh Beauty for a Fierce FighterBook 4 – Irish Lass for a Wounded WarriorBook 5 – An English Bride for a Lonely CaptainBook 6 - A Highlander Bride for the Dark Rider

A Jewish Refugee in New York: Rivke Zilberg's Journal


Kadya Molodovsky - 2019
    Struggling to learn a new language and cope with a different way of life in the United States, Rivke finds herself keeping a journal about the challenges and opportunities of this new land. In her attempt to find a new life as a Jewish immigrant in the US, Rivke shares the stories of losing her mother to a bombing in Lublin, jilting a fiancé who has made his way to Palestine, and a flirtatious relationship with an American "allrightnik."In this fictionalized journal originally published in Yiddish, author Kadya Molodovsy provides keen insight into the day-to-day activities of the large immigrant Jewish community of New York. By depicting one woman's struggles as a Jewish refugee in the US during WWII, Molodovsky points readers to the social, political, and cultural tensions of that time and place.

Let Me Out Here : Stories


Emily W. Pease - 2019
    Pease is at work redefining the short story. Let Me Out Here explores the underbellies and strange desires of our neighbors, our loved ones, ourselves.A co-ed takes up/leaves school with a mysterious cab driver who’s been calling every night on her dormitory’s hall phone; a family isolated by their faith hikes to a waterfall in search of healing; a mother sets her balcony on fire after an awkward family dinner; a woman befriends the snakes her preacher boyfriend keeps in their shed. This revealing collection offers a deep empathy for people doing the best they can, despite themselves.Spread over varied landscapes of the South and offering surprising moments of raw revelation, the characters here find themselves at crossroads or alone on an empty street at night. With Let Me Out Here, Pease joins the ranks of Mary Gaitskill, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Kelly Link, and adds to their tradition a deft, singular style and a voice as darkly funny as it is exacting.Let Me Out Here is the 2018 winner of the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize.

A Police Force for Christmas


Rebekah A. Morris - 2019
    Christmas chaos at the Melson house usually involves wrapping paper and toys, not a broken window and a bare space under the tree. After a morning of questioning officers and chattering children, Amanda resigns herself to a very un-Christmasy day. But can the heroes on the Pineville police force find a way to save the family's Christmas?

A Very Bookish Christmas


Sarah Holman - 2019
    Grace Pennington (inspired by Anne of Green Gables)Sincerely, Jem by Kate Willis (inspired by Daddy-Long-Legs)

Blood in the Valley


Jean M. Roberts - 2019
    She raised her head and stared into the war-hardened eyes of a Mohawk warrior. A weapon clutched in each hand, his body smeared with grease paint and blood; he had come to wreak destruction he had come to kill. In 1753, Catherine Wasson and her extended family depart placid New Hampshire to settle in the raucous Mohawk Valley of New York, in search of fertile land and a better life. It doesn’t come easy. Catherine must adapt to a multicultural frontier society of wealthy Dutch settlers, hardscrabble Germans, Scots-Irish, African slaves and the original inhabitants; the fiercely independent Iroquois confederation. Within months of their arrival, conflict with their age-old enemy, the French, erupts into a war that threatens their homes and lives.When peace returns, Catherine and her new husband, Samuel Clyde, make their home in the idyllic but remote Cherry Valley, perched on the edge of the Indian frontier. Their peaceful life is short lived. Americans demanding their freedom break from the mother country. As conflict escalates, the Mohawk Valley descends into guerrilla warfare; brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor; everyone must choose a side. On a frigid November morning, Catherine finds herself face to face with Mohawk warrior, Joseph Brant, War Chief of the Iroquois. Once her childhood friend, he is now her greatest enemy; her life is in his hands. This is the story of my ancestor Catherine Wasson Clyde, wife of Revolutionary War hero Colonel Samuel Clyde. Catherine’s singular life is one of bravery, determination and survival.

Safe


Angie Thompson - 2019
    But despite repeated assurances that he's fine, an undercurrent of tension leaves her wondering what secrets lie beneath the surface.Alone with Bryson on her first night home, can Madison find the truth behind the shadows that lurk in her brother's eyes? Or will he succeed in shutting out the help he needs most?A short story

Goldfish Secrets


Kellyn Roth - 2019
    Judy only has one friend: her goldfish, Marlie.With Marlie gone, who can Judy rely on?Goldfish Secrets is the short story prequel to The Lady of the Vineyard.

Baby Mine


Kellyn Roth - 2019
    They don't have much except each other, but that's all right. Every day, God provides.When Amaliya's father, who hasn't been around since before she was born, returns and a custody battle begins, it's hard for her to understand. Can a man she's never met really take her away from her beloved mother? Why would God let such a thing happen?Sensitivity Warning: this novella features mistreatment of characters based upon their ethnicity (Russian) and other prejudices (unmarried mother). Though good triumphs in the end, it is not before a mighty struggle.