Review

Gift of the Heart by Karen Witemeyer

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From The Christmas Heirloom: Four Holiday Novellas of Love Through the Generations

Hope Springs, Texas October 1890

Ruth Fulbright and seven-year-old daughter, Naomi, are coming to Hope Springs to accept a job as cook at a café. The widow must make this new job work. She sold her wedding ring to pay for travel expenses.

Bo Azlin shuns the company of others because of a childhood injury. He owns most of the town’s businesses including the resort, yet the folks don’t know him. Hoping to hide his useless right arm, he avoids the townspeople … until Ruth insists on meeting him directly.

Her plight raises his compassion. Dare he dream the pretty widow and her daughter can learn to love him?

A heart-warming story that snatched my attention immediately. Before long, I was pulling for their relationship to blossom.

Lovable, strong characters add to the charm of this story. Recommend!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Christianbook.com

When Love Returns by Beth Wiseman

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An Amish Homecoming: Four Amish Stories

 Sarah and her five-year-old daughter, Miriam, lose everything they own in a hurricane. Now they have no choice but to return to Sarah’s parents’ Lancaster County home. She hasn’t seen them since leaving at seventeen.

Sarah’s father welcomes her with open arms. No hug from her mother—typical. They had trouble getting along in her teenaged years.

But there’s someone else she needs to see—Abram, her ex-fiancé.  She’d left him without a word, too.

This is a multi-layered story. Each character inspired varying levels of sympathy as a I read it. Each character is believable and so are the emotions they battle.

A great read. Recommend!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Amazon

 

 

 

Ice Melts in Spring by Linda Yezak

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A Southern Season: Four Stories from a Front Porch Swing

 Kerry Graham has avoided the beach since her husband died in boating accident. If she didn’t need her job cataloging items for an author’s museum donations, she wouldn’t be here now.

Quinn Russell, her handsome yet nosy beach neighbor, seems nice but Kerry holds everyone at an arm’s length these days, including God. Especially God.

Compassionate, believable characters in this novella drew me right into the story.  The setting made me long for an extended beach vacation.

Well-written. Recommend.

I can’t wait to read the rest of the stories in the collection!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Amazon

The Love Letter by Rachel Hauck

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The story begins with a wounded soldier, Hamilton. He seems near death yet he must retrieve a letter that is very important to him.

Hamilton is a Revolutionary War soldier, fighting for independence from England. Though Esther loves Hamilton, she and her father are Loyalists. Their story is interwoven with that of a modern couple.

Actress Chloe Daschle is desperate to play a part where her character doesn’t die. Playing the part of Esther in a movie by a new scriptwriter, Jesse Gates, will rescue her from that typecasted role.

Jesse Gates’ play, based on an ancestor’s letter, has more to do with a tragedy from his own life than he cares to admit. Though Chloe tugs at his heart, he’ll never heal from his past enough to love again.

Despite failures in past relationships, Chloe still believes in love. In marriage. Jesse captivates her yet he has put up walls between them.

The author has woven an intricate story, binding the past and the present in a way that kept me turning pages.

Believable, likeable characters all face their own internal battles in a dual story that will stay with readers.

Recommend!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Amazon

Flowers from Afghanistan by Suzy Parish

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A tragedy leaves a hole in Mac’s heart and a mountain of debt. He can’t stand the raw grief in Sophie’s eyes so he does the only thing he can do for his wife—sign up as a contractor in Afghanistan. The dangerous work pays well.

Guilt fights with grief as he travels across the world. The miles apart don’t heal his relationship with his wife. They both mourn Little Mac’s death in their own ways.

This story is told entirely from Mac’s point of view as he faces danger in Afghanistan and the turmoil of his heart. He meets other men battling their own issues in the Afghanistan heat.

Believable story. Believable, flawed characters that touched my heart.

An adventure and a page-turner. Recommend.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Amazon

 

 

 

Northkill by Bob Hostetler & J.M. Hochstetler

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Book One of Northkill Amish Series

Jakob Hochstetler and his wife Anna have fled persecution of the Amish in the Alsace region to live in the Pennsylvania wilderness. The novel begins in 1752. Readers experience the danger immediately. The warriors threatening the Hochstetlers were not from the Delaware tribe that the Amish families in the community had befriended.

Though the family survives that first hostile encounter, the event foreshadows the looming French and Indian War.

The story is told from several perspectives though nearly all of them are the Hochstetler men. Differing points of view build sympathy and compassion for each character. The story shows the escalating tension that leads to increasing violence in the midst of an Amish family called to peace.

A word of caution: the story contains violence. At that point, I was too engrossed in the drama to stop reading—I had to know what happened.

This is book one in a series.

This action-packed adventure will appeal to male readers and fans of American history.

An adventurous page-turner that kept me up too late!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Christianbook.com

Shadowed by a Spy by Marilyn Turk

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Lexie Smithfield, a nursing student in Long Island, longs to ease the suffering of her country’s soldiers in this second World War. Four men on a train catch her attention when they seem to be going everywhere she’s going. Are they following her? Later she sees them again near Bellevue Hospital where she takes her training. One of them, Cal, becomes very friendly.

Russell Thompson, Lexie’s fiancé, works at a hotel near the hospital so he can be close to her. Four men check into the hotel but Russell is too busy to pay much notice. If not for his foot injury, he’d be serving his country as a soldier across the sea. As part of her training, some of Lexie’s patients are soldiers. She’s doing more for their country’s cause than he is able to do.

Then Russell receives the opportunity to join an army USO group that will take him far from Lexie when she needs him most.

Likeable characters in an intriguing and dangerous situation grabbed my attention early in this novel. Tension builds as the reader recognizes the danger before the characters do. The book was also an eye opener for the danger U.S. citizens at home were in during the war.

I read the first novel by this author and enjoyed spending time with the same characters again.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas – Use coupon code SandraMHart for a 20% discount on Lighthouse Publishing books!

 

 

Love’s Undoing by Gabrielle Meyer

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Part of The Backcountry Brides Collection – Eight 18th Century Women Seek Love on Colonial America’s Frontier

 This novella is set at Fort McCrea, along the Upper Mississippi River in 1792.

Abi McCrea longs to leave her father’s fur post for her sister’s Montreal home, located in the wilderness within stockade walls, but he will not allow it.

Henry Kingsley works for Abi’s uncle in Montreal. He travels a long way to deliver a letter to Abi’s father. The news of an inheritance may take her father from his family. What will become of Abi and her Chippewa mother?

The author did a great job showing the prejudice that some felt for the Native Americans in the new country of the United States. I enjoyed the story.

A good read! I will look for more books by this author.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Christianbook.com

 

The Counterfeit Tory by Shannon McNear

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Part of The Backcountry Brides Collection – Eight 18th Century Women Seek Love on Colonial America’s Frontier

 This novella is set in 1781. It starts in Charlotte Town, North Carolina, and moves to the wilderness.

The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown was supposed to have ended everything. Jedidiah Wheeler, who had fought with the Continental Regulars in a war for independence, hates that loyalists still ravage the Carolinas. He accepts a dangerous mission to try to stop them.

Lizzy Cunningham lives in the South Carolina backcountry, keeping house for her ungrateful and abusive father and brothers. She stays busy from morning to night working at their tavern.

When a stranger comes to the tavern one cold evening, Lizzy can’t trust the kindness in his eyes or his respectful manner. Experience has taught her that no man can be trusted.

As danger escalates, she finds herself hoping that Jed is the man he seems to be.

Believable characters in harsh circumstances make this book a page turner. I also loved learning the history after the Revolutionary War ended.

A good read! I will look for more books by this author.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Christianbook.com

 

 

Across Three Autumns by Denise Weimer

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Part of The Backcountry Brides Collection – Eight 18th Century Women Seek Love on Colonial America’s Frontier

 This novella is set in Wilkes County, Georgia, beginning in 1778.

Jenny White protects her mother and sisters from Creek warriors while her father fights in the war for independence with the British. Since the local tribes have sided with Great Britain, they are her enemy.

Caylan McIntosh, a Scotsman scout, comes to fetch her father back to the militia after Savannah falls. The muscular man towers over Jenny as few men do. He captivates not only Jenny’s attention but also Hester’s—her beautiful, younger sister.

The war of the revolution spreads to the Georgia wilderness, demanding all of Jenny’s courage and love.

The author drew me into the action from the beginning where Jenny’s bravery and protectiveness toward her family are immediately evident. Lovable, heroic characters are stretched to their limits, touching readers with the tragedy of a country at war. A page turner!

I will look for more books by this author.

Recommend.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Christianbook.com