Historical Homes

Settle in by the fireside and savor stories of unexpected romance, second chances, and lifelong love. Featuring four novellas from some of your favorite authors, this historical Christmas romance collection is sure to capture your heart: Memories of Christmas, A Home for the Holidays, Lady Walmsley and Foster, and Charles and Maria.

After saving the life of the glamorous Marquise de Harfleur, painfully shy barmaid Alice Henshawe is employed as the lady’s companion and whisked away to Versailles. There, she catches King Louis’ eye and quickly becomes a court favorite as the muse for Charles Perrault’s Cinderella. The palace appears to be heaven itself, but there is danger hidden beneath the façade and Alice soon finds herself thrust into a world of intrigue, murder, and Satanism at the heart of the French court.

Joining the communal society of the Amana Colonies isn't what Jancey Rhoder planned for her future, but when unforeseen circumstances force her family to make some difficult decisions, she chooses to give up her teaching position in a Kansas City orphanage and move with her parents to Iowa. Her besotted suitor, Nathan Woodward, isn't at all happy about the move and is determined to get Jancey to change her mind.

1891: Living separately for three years, 14-year-old twins Katherine and Tommy Arthur have done their best to make each boarding house feel like home. But unrest grows as they are driven to questionable actions just to survive. Meanwhile, their desperate mother is confronted with breaking yet another promise to her children. Then a miracle descends. Hope rises on a cold, rainy night and changes everything. If Jeanie could just get word to Katherine and Tommy, she knows she can set their lives right again.

Hazel Mae Hollingsworth is devastated following the unexpected death of her father, and she can’t shake a sense of foreboding when the family solicitor arrives at the estate. Her intuition turns out to be well founded, for her father’s will reveals a long-held family secret - Hazel’s entire life has been a lie. Within hours of receiving the news, she is turned out by the man she once called her brother, dispossessed with little more than her mother’s instruction to seek refuge with her father’s sister.

Jessica Layton left her Oregon hometown - and her longtime love - for medical school with one thing on her mind: saving lives. Her frontier dreams were filled with more than rural domestic life, even if that life was with the man she was supposed to marry.… Now, years later, Cole Braddock is not pleased to see Dr. Jessica Layton back in Powell Springs. He’s never forgiven her for choosing her career over him. Cole knows that Jess can save their town, but will he let her heal his heart?

Proud, orphaned, Katie MacLeod, along with her younger brother and sisters, left the bitter heartbreak of Texas behind and dared to take up their father's dream of building a ranch in the beautiful Chiricahua Mountains in Southeast Arizona. The MacLeods braved the perils of a harsh, unyielding wilderness, faced Geronimo and his Apaches, and fought Ed Larrimore, the most powerful rancher in the San Simon Valley, for territory.

Susannah Braddock’s worst nightmare has come true: her husband, Riley, has been killed in WWI. Devastated, she turns to her hired hand Tanner Grenfell for support. As Susannah’s grief ebbs, her friendship with Tanner deepens into love. But their newfound happiness is short lived…. Riley Braddock cannot remember his life before the war. All he knows are the two years he has spent with Véronique, the French woman who rescued him from the battlefield and nursed him back to health. When Riley returns to the Braddock farm, both he and Susannah know he’s a different man.

Devastated by her father’s death days after her triumphant graduation from Oberlin College, Amanda Stewart is all alone in the world. Her father’s unscrupulous business partner offers her an indecent proposal to earn a living. Instead, to fulfill a promise she made to her father, she resolves to start a school to educate and uplift their race. Sorting through her father’s papers, she discovers he had carried on a mysterious correspondence with a plantation in Milford, Georgia. She determines to start her teaching work with the formerly enslaved.

The Second World War ends and Josje is returned to his parents. Who are these people who call themselves my parents, he imagines. He is three years old and feels abandoned, confused and angry. He wants to return to his “real” parents who loved and sheltered him during the war. “My name is Pietje Dijkstra not Josje Gosler!”, he states tearfully when goaded by his cousin. As a Jew and a Hidden Child, his innocence protected him as much as his Christian family.

The naval Battle of Copenhagen cost Captain Will Dormer an eye and a leg. The battle to establish himself as Viscount Claremont of Belford Park could cost him his life. He feels completely at sea as owner of an estate, but his father and two brothers managed to kill themselves in a drunken carriage accident.

Etienne Gayneau doesn’t understand why the native peoples and colonists can’t get along in this land of abundant resources and opportunity. As war erupts between his Old World religious community and his New World friends, Etienne must find a way to end the violence, while protecting those he loves on both sides of the dispute. Etienne must learn to survive in this dangerous, exotic new world. He will learn new skills from his Native American friends and establish new friendships with old enemies.

In Victorian-era Louisville, the Home for Friendless Women is run by benevolent benefactors with one mission: to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives through religious lessons and hard work. For Ruth, a college student who’s expelled after a campus sexual assault, the Home is a purgatory to endure before she can get her life back. For Belle, a queer sex worker who exchanged her bed at a brothel for one in the Home, it’s a safe place to rest her feet until she can track down her missing lover.

Part of the Logger’s Ridge series, Home on the Ridge starts almost immediately after the end of Welcome Home Doc, which means that it overlaps the last part of May You Meet a Stranger’s time period and merges the storylines. Citizens of the small towns of Logger’s Ridge and Sunny Valley have overcome significant hurdles to recover from a series of economic disasters. Their hard work is paying off, and they see a bright future ahead. Much hard work and buried secrets still lie before them.

Lily Van Der Houghton, a newly licensed physician, is lost and unsettled on which way her life is leading her when she goes hiking to the Jacks River Falls. Lily stumbles through a hole in time and finds herself in 1763. She is not on the trail to the falls anymore but is in Indian Territory in the aftermath of the French and Indian War. To her surprise, Lily learns she has a key role in an ancient Cherokee prophecy.

In this classic coming-of-age story, Carter Barnwell is thrust into an early manhood as he faces the challenges of living off the land, caring for his ailing grandmother, wrestling with his budding sexuality, and wrangling with his awakening conscience. When he meets an abolitionist missionary from the north – who happens to be a beautiful young girl – Carter begins to see his world through new and critical eyes, even as he maintains fierce loyalty to the people and homeland he loves.

Home from the Hill is the story of that tragic day and the dramatic events leading up to it. The biggest landowner in the county, Captain Wade Hunnicutt was a charismatic war hero whose legendary hunting skills extended to the wives of his friends and neighbors. Humiliated by her husband's philandering, Hannah grew to despise Captain Wade but was too proud to ask for a divorce; instead, she devoted herself to her only child. Torn between his mother's adoration and an overwhelming need to win his father's approval, Theron tried to become his own man.

Orphaned at birth and a loner all his life, the last thing Sergeant Klayne Campbell needs is for feisty Delaney Danvers to entangle his thoughts. Bravely volunteering for a top-secret mission almost certain to get him killed, Klayne can't bear the thought of dying utterly alone. All he wants is to face death knowing his life meant something to at least one person. Offering Delaney a marriage of convenience, he plans to leave behind a war bride as his beneficiary.

It's January 1943 when Rita Vincenzo receives her first letter from Glory Whitehall. Glory is an effervescent young mother, impulsive and free as a bird. Rita is a sensible professor's wife with a love of gardening and a generous, old soul. Glory comes from New England society; Rita lives in Iowa, trying to make ends meet. They have nothing in common except one powerful bond: The men they love are fighting in a war a world away from home. Brought together by an unlikely twist of fate, Glory and Rita begin a remarkable correspondence.

Before the Civil War had even begun, these young men, Zach and Luke, had already crossed paths while fishing in eastern Tennessee. After they parted ways, they never expected to later be pitted against each other in war - but, when Zach joined the Northern cause and Luke joined the Southern, that's exactly what happened. On the battlefields, each boy learns invaluable lessons about himself, and both contribute to the outcome of battles and, ultimately, to the war.