Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 6

A boy breaks a date with his girlfriend for the winter formal, a young woman with a secret struggles when love finds at her, a delightful story about a high school junior struggling with the death of her father and whose life changes at Christmas, and the stalking of a Nashville country star. This group of Christmas novellas has something for everyone. 

In Holly Hearts by Tanya Hanson, high school senior and part-time ranch hand Haggai Procter breaks his date with Elli Martin for the winter formal. The reason is that his mother is hiding something from him; she’s apparently sick and he believes they’ll need every bit of money to pay for expenses. The rest of his senior year, college, and a basketball scholarship look increasingly problematic.

 

Elli is disappointed, but she knows Haggai’s heart is in the right place. She, her father, and the large Martin clan at the Heart’s Crossing Ranch will help Haggai get through whatever it is he’s facing with his mother’s health. 

 

Midnight Clear by British author Autumn Macarthur takes place in Huckleberry Lake, Idaho. Claire Robinson is the town’s schoolteacher, and she resists the overtures from town handyman Ryan Connor with snark, put-downs, and borderline anger. She knows she’s attracted, but Claire harbors a secret about her past in Texas that she knows will destroy any hope for a relationship.

 

Ryan is loved by the town, and more than one person is trying to play matchmaker between him and Claire. He doesn’t need convincing, but he knows that something must have hurt Claire in the past and hurt her powerfully. The crisis arrives when the two are thrown together to help a friend give birth.

 

My Secret Santa by Jaclyn Weist turns out to be something of a sleeper surprise. Claire is your typical high school girl – bright, athletic (she’s trying out for the basketball team), snarky, and sarcastic. She’s trying to get over the death of her father while helping her mother run the town diner. What she doesn’t need is a regular group of boys, led by Chad Damon, ribbing and insulting her whenever they eat the diner. In fact, instead of calling her by name, Chad calls her “Diner Girl.”

 

Claire’s English class gets an assignment that’s grown out of A Christmas Carol. Each member of the class picks a name from a basket, and the assignment is to learn 10 things about the person whose name you’ve drawn. Claire draws Chad’s name, and from that point on her life turns upside down, including being on the receiving end of online bullying by Chad’s former girlfriend. She soon finds herself falling in love with the guy who calls her Diner Girl. The strength of My Secret Santa is the sparkling dialogue by the characters, which is going to take you right back to high school.

 

And now for the stalker. In The Christmas Stalking by Lillian Duncan, Nashville singing superstar Destiny, aka Holly Stone., is on the run. A stalker is after her, and the incidents are escalating toward violence. She’s cut her hair, changed her appearance, and heads back to the upstate New York town of Serenity and Peace, where she spent many summers with her grandparents. No one is supposed to know she’s there, most of all the stalker.

 

She almost immediately connects with Robby Trenton, a childhood friend who’s now the town sheriff, when he stops her for speeding. She eventually tells him her story about the stalker, and he works to protect her and perhaps find who’s doing it. Three suspects emerge, including Robby himself. And then there’s a wild climax in the woods. The story stretches a bit thin at points, but the season often strains credulity. 

 

Related:

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 1.

 

Christmas, Suspense, and Romance: Christmas Novellas, Part 2.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 3.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 4. 

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 5.

 

Top photograph by Eugene Zhyvchik via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Finding Romance in London, Part 2

Sometimes finding romance in London means going to Edinburgh and Paris first.

American Tiffany Gallagher flies to London, joining her family for Christmas. Brother Nick, a television actor, is happily in love with Cara Talbott, whom he met at the Pettett & Mayfield Department Store on Oxford Street (Believe in Me). Twin sister Zoe, the “serious” sibling, is studying psychology and working for a university in London. Tiffany, the “lightweight” one known for her ability to shop, is determined to be taken just as seriously as the rest of the family. She’s been showing her fashion designs to the big houses and designers in Paris and London.

Except no one seems interested. About the only thing she’s able to achieve is to go to fulfill a dream to attend the Edinburgh Hogmanay, the big New Year’s Eve celebration. But to do it, she has to accept the invitation from Colin Maclean, the cynical photographer helping Nick and Cara. “Mac,” as he’s called, invites her to stay with his parents at a large parsonage in Edinburgh. Mac’s family is delighted, believing Tiffany is his new love interest.

Mac has his own set of issues, including recovering from a serious leg wound while being an embedded photographer with a British military unit in Iraq. All he wants is to be pass his physical to be allowed to return to the unit. He’s not interested in anything, or anyone, else. 

You can see where this is headed, but the fun is watching it unfold..

A Model Bride by British author Autumn Macarthur is Tiffany’s and Mac’s story, a sweet romance about wo unlikely people developing an interest in each other, even when they’re determined not to. 

Sister Zoe Gallagher has her set of problems. She’s doing research in Paris, determined to prove that romance is based on hormones and never lasts. She even has a study to prove it, and she’s in the process of validating it by interviewing people on the Pontes des Artes, a place where lovers place locks to symbolize their eternal love. The bridge is busy; it’s Valentine’s Day and lot of couples are out. 

It’s on the bridge that she meets a man by himself, Gabe Ross, a fellow American who’s there to carry out a wish from his recently deceased parents. Zoe asks him for an interview, and he agrees, even though he doesn’t fit the type of people she’s studying. Then her purse is stolen, he accompanies her to the police station, and both begin to sense an attraction. But it’s not going anywhere, because she has to return to London, and he’ll be returning to America.

Gabe is returning to America, but it’s by way of an extended stay in London. He’s been engaged to undertake a project at a local university but finds himself asked to fill in for six weeks for a professor who suffers a heart attack. And, yes, it’s the same university and the same department where Zoe works. The ailing professor is, in fact, her boss. 

Autumn Macarthur

Macarthur’s Forget Paris is the story of Zoe and Gabe, an anti-romantic and a romantic gradually and not so gradually falling in love, regardless of what the psychological studies say. The nuts and bolts of psychology and romance get some hefty explanation in the story, but Macarthur manages to keep the love story on track and engaging.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. Her novels include The Macleans series, the Together for Christmas, series, the Billionaire Protectors series, the Sweetapple Falls series, the London Loves series, the Come to the Lake series, and the Huckleberry Lake series. She lives in London.

Related:

The Wedding List by Autumn Macarthur.

Finding Romance in London.

Top photograph by Emmanuel Appiah via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

London, Christmas, and Romance

Pettett & Mayfield is a fictitious London department store. In its heyday, it competed with Harrod’s, Selfridges, and similar stores. But it’s become a bit dowdy, and any suggestions for improvement meet the fierce opposition of aging Mrs. Pettett, who runs the store and its employees with an iron fist.

British author Autumn Macarthur uses Pettett & Mayfield as the backdrop for five Christmas romance stories, grouped as the “In Store” series. The first is The Wedding List, reviewed last September. The next two in the series are Believe in Me and Least Expected. 

In Believe in Me, Cara Talbott is the deputy assistant manager at Pettett & Mayfield, which means she “got landed with the management jobs no one else wants and the blame when things went wrong.” And one job she clearly doesn’t want is Mrs. Pettett’s latest brainchild – American television star Nick Callaghan is going to be the store’s celebrity Santa. Cara will be responsible for shepherding him in his duties, and she’s determined to have as little to do with him as possible, no matter how good-looking he is. 

Nick comes up with an idea, the 12 dates of Christmas, to help promote the store and what it sells. He will date a store employee for 12 romantic dates, jinning up free publicity, and tied to each date will be a store window depicting the date. Mrs. Pettett decides that she loves the idea, and Cara gets to be the store employee. For herself, Cara is mortified. Not only does she have to go on 12 dates with a shallow Hollywood star, she has to bury the growing attraction she feels for him. He first became famous as a teen movie star in a Christmas movie that had her then-teenaged heart fluttering. She even had a poster of him on her bedroom wall.

The dates begin, and the whole publicity program goes off in directions no one anticipates. Cara knows she’s falling for Nick, and Nick discovers a growing attraction for Cara. It’s a fun story, full of romantic mishaps, misunderstandings, and upsets.

In Least Expected, Maggie Golding is the 50-something window dresser, a friend of Nick Callaghan’s whom he gets to do the Pettett & Mayfield store windows for Christmas. Maggie is actually a set designer who does retail displays when business is slow. Each of her store windows tell a story, and they become a huge draw for Christmas shoppers. 

Maggie is a bit unconventional. It might be her multi-colored dyed hair, matched only by the multi-colored clothes she wears. The operative description would be barely restrained flamboyance. The last person in the world she thinks she could be attracted to is the buttoned-down Edgar Pettett, 50-something son of the woman who runs the store. His mother usually blows up any romantic interests he has in women.

Autumn Macarthur

But attracted she is. And proper Englishman Edgar is equally attracted. He asks Maggie out, she accepts, but the specter of his mother is hanging over their budding relationship. And they both know it will have to be faced and confronted. Least Expected is unusual for a romance novel in that the protagonists are not young and beautiful but older, more established, and certainly more mature. But love and romance can strike at any age.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. Her novels include The Macleans series, the Together for Christmas, series, the Billionaire Protectors series, the Sweetapple Falls series, the London Loves series, the Come to the Lake series, and the Huckleberry Lake series. She lives in London.

Both stories are fast-paced and fast-reading stories, with the added benefit of the sights and sounds of London at Christmastime. 

Related:

The Wedding List by Autumn Macarthur.

Top photo: Regent Street in London at Christmas by Luke Stackpoole via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

"His Father's Son" by Autumn Macarthur

Luke Tanner had grown up with life stacked against him. Raised by a drug-addicted single mom who didn’t know who his father was, Luke passed through a succession of temporary foster homes and managed to stay more in trouble than out of it. Anna Harrison was the daughter of a strict, no-nonsense small-town police chief; when she went to college to study art, she met Luke, fell in love, and became pregnant. Back home in Sweetapple Falls, Oregon, she faced the ire of her father.

When the baby, a boy Anna names Joshua, was born, her father told Anna that she had to do two things: put the child up for adoption and get rid of the no-good Luke. She sent Luke away, but the baby turned out to have serious medical problems and her father grudgingly allowed her to keep him. Now he’s 12, functioning in a motorized wheelchair, hoping that one day he’ll have a father like his friends do.

Luke has found faith in Christianity and turned his life around. He’s the project manager for a construction ministry in Mexico when he sees a television talent program. And one of the contestants is Joshua, who’s shown with his mother Anna. Three days later, Luke is in Oregon, ringing Anna’s doorbell, desperate to be part of his son’s life and equally desperate to learn if Anna still loves him.

Autumn Macarthur

His Father’s Son by Autumn Macarthur tells the heartwarming and often heart-wrenching story of Luke, Anna, and Joshua. The story turns on the themes of love, forgiveness, and trust. It’s about owning up to past mistakes and past sins, and what happens when a practical, living faith collides head-on with a more legalistic faith.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. Her novels include The Macleans series, the Together for Christmas, series, the Billionaire Protectors series, the Sweetapple Falls series, the London Loves series, the Come to the Lake series, and the Huckleberry Lake series. She lives in London. 

His Father’s Son is a moving novel that probes what faith and love look like and actually mean in the hard realities of day-to-day life.

Related:

More Than Friends by Autumn MacArthur.

The Wedding List by Autumn Macarthur.

Four More Christian Romances.

Four More Christmas Romances

Thanksgiving is still three weeks off, and already Christmas decorations are flooding retail stores. It’s not only Christmas that prompts a consumer marketing frenzy; my local grocery start set up its large Halloween candy display in late August.

The Christmas season is also a time for Christmas stories, and Christmas romance stories. I noted four last week, and here are four more. If you’re looking for light, holiday reading, these just might fit the bill.

In Calm and Bright by Autumn Macarthur, Brad Hughes is a big-city hospital administrator and borderline workaholic. His former wife, Maddie, is living in Idaho with their four-year-old son, Jacob, who happens to be crazy about his father. Maddie invites Brad to her home in Huckleberry Lake for Christmas; she wants her son to be with his father. Maddie still has strong feelings for Brad but doesn’t trust him. Brad desperately wants a reconciliation and for Maddie and Jacob to live with him in Los Angeles. The irresistible force is about to meet the immovable object.

Widower Kade Delgado has a toddler named Jericho who he deeply loves. At the coffee shop in Saddle Springs, Kade comes face to face with Cheri Mackenzie, the woman who ran off with another man years before – right before her wedding to Kade. That turned out to be a bad mistake, and she’s come back to help care for her aging grandparents. Will Kade and Cheri understand what happened, and what is still happening? The Cowboy’s Christmas Reunion by Valerie Comer tells their story. 

Winter’s Kiss by Sienna Carr is set in Starling Bay, state unknown but usually about a five-hour drive from Boston. Widowed and still grieving Merry Nicholls is a marketing manager for a big Boston department story, and her mother has convinced to take some time off and spend a month in Starling Bay. Dylan Fraser is a former small-role actor who’s trying to make a go of his pottery store. Merry’s Great Dane Goliath causes chaos at Dylan’s shop, and it looks like love might be just around the corner.

Lisa Marsh has been volunteered to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a local Chicago mission, and she’s just not up for it. She starts but makes a mess with some of the mission’s clients. One particularly scruffy-looking individual is Pete. A friend challenges Lisa to help just one person, and she decides she will help Pete get his life together by finding him work. She even prints business cards. But Pete isn’t what he appears to be. And the story of Lisa and Pete is told inSnow Angels by Cathe Swanson. 

Related:

Four Christmas Romances.

“The Wedding List” by Autumn Macarthur

Ten years earlier, 16-year-old Beth Forrest worked as a housemaid at the stately home of the Tetherton-Harts, an Anglo-American family with the daughter of a viscount as the mother and an American business tycoon as the father. They had one child, 19-year-old James, with a penchant for physics, a brilliant, and a growing friendship with Beth. His mother wants James to marry well, and a housemaid from a poor family didn’t fit her definition. So Beth was sent packing, and James was sent off.

Ten years have passed. Beth now works in the wedding registry for the London department store Pettett & Mayfield (think Selfridge’s, Harrods, and similar stores). It’s nearing Halloween, and the store has all employees in costume; Beth is wearing a bloodied wedding dress. Who should show up desperately needing a wedding present but James, who’s now teaching at Cambridge and in line to become a professor. 

Autumn Macarthur

Beth realizes she’s still in love with James; James knows he’s still in love with Beth. But they both have considerable baggage to deal with – Beth is still hurt that he never tried to contact her, and she’s still embarrassed by her low-oncome family. James has his mother, who’s still determined that he must marry well. But James convinces Beth to attend the wedding with him.

The Wedding List by Autumn Macarthur is the story of Beth and James. It’s the first in Macarthur’s “Love in Store” series, set at Pettett & Mayfield and central London. The characters of Beth and James are drawn well – Beth is full of insecurities and James is something of the absentminded professor. 

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. Her novels include The Macleans series, the Together for Christmas, series, the Billionaire Protectors series, the Sweetapple Falls series, the London Loves series, the Come to the Lake series, and the Huckleberry Lake series. She lives in London. 

The Wedding List is a fun, sweet story, in the Christian romance genre, with the added bonus of a fair amount of sightseeing (in this case, the wedding scene at the Tower of London Bridge).  

Related:

More Than Friendsby Autumn MacArthur.

"More Than Friends" by Autumn Macarthur

Catriona Maclean is a nurse and the daughter of an Edinburgh pastor. She has a servant’s heart, and her role model is Martha, sister of Mary, of the Gospels. Catriona is almost obsessive in her desire to serve; she’s convinced herself that she will never marry, and it relates to a family situation from years before where, she believes, her selfishness cost her brother.

She’s organized a day at the beach for disabled children, and she has a problem. The man who had promised to help couldn’t go, and she needed a man for the boys, and specifically a man cleared to work with disabled children. The only man who fits the requirements is Alastair Murray, who works in the orthopedic unit at Catriona’s hospital. The problem with Alastair: he was the reason for her act of selfishness years ago; she had to go on a youth group trip because he would be there as well. He’s the best friend of one of her brothers, and Catriona knows she is still in love with him.

Alastair also catches the eyes of the other nurses and woman workers at the hospital. Catriona, who studiously avoids makeup and really caring about her appearance, is convinced he doesn’t think twice about her.

Autumn Macarthur

Except he does. Alastair has always been in love with Catriona, but he senses her desire for distance and non-involvement. He goes out of his way to protect himself as well. He agrees to be her last-minute substitute on the field trip. Complications ensue.

More Than Friends by Autumn Macarthur is the story of Catriona and Alastair, and if and how they will finally realize their mutual love. Told in alternating viewpoints, most of the short novel occurs in one day, the day of the field trip. It’s a lovely little story that focuses the reader on how these two people will come to recognize their feelings for each other.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. More Than Friends is book 2 in the Macleans Series. She lives in London.

The novel is a quick, easy-to-read romance that sounds all too real when two people go out of their way to ignore, excuse, and explain away their feelings.