A Sea View Christmas

Three years into the Great War, England's greatest asset is their intelligence network - field agents risking their lives to gather information, and codebreakers able to crack every German telegram. Margot De Wilde thrives in the environment of the secretive Room 40, where she spends her days deciphering intercepted messages. But when her world is turned upside down by an unexpected loss, for the first time in her life numbers aren't enough.

After a humiliating mistake, lawyer Benjamin Booker resolves to never again trust a beautiful woman. When an old friend is killed, the senior partner isn't satisfied with Bow Street's efforts and asks Benjamin to investigate. Eager to leave London for a while, Benjamin agrees. Evidence takes him to a remote island on the Thames, a world unto itself, shrouded in mist and mystery. Soon he finds himself falling for the main suspect - a woman who claims not to have left the island in 10 years. But should he trust her?

A vicar's 20-year-old daughter pays dearly for a single lapse in judgment. To avoid the scorn of local villagers, Charlotte Lamb wends her way to the forbidding Milkweed Manor on the outskirts of London. Concealing her identity, she finds refuge within the dank confines of this mysterious bastion of old secrets and new life. She soon encounters a former suitor, harboring secrets of his own. Firmly relying on God's strength, both resolve to protect their loved ones.

When their father's death leaves them impoverished, Sarah Summers and her genteel sisters fear they will be forced to sell the house and separate to earn livelihoods as governesses or companions. Determined to stay together, Sarah convinces them to open their seaside home to guests to make ends meet and provide for their ailing mother. Instead of the elderly invalids they expect to receive, however, they find themselves hosting eligible gentlemen. Sarah is soon torn between a growing attraction to a mysterious Scottish widower and duty to her family.

Anne Loveday, a surgeon's daughter, is determined to live a single, useful life. To escape her matchmaking stepmother, she accepts an invitation from an old friend to return to Painswick, the place where she and her sister spent many happy summers until that last, fateful year. Soon after arriving, Anne is asked to serve as sickroom nurse to Lady Celia, who forbade her nephew to marry Anne's sister years before. Pushing aside resentments, Anne moves into Painswick Court, a shadowy old house rumored to be haunted. 

When their South Carolina home burns to the ground, Anna Stewart’s only choice is to move with her younger brother to the wilds of a Texas ranch. Their prospects are beginning to look better, until the rancher’s son, Jacob O’Brien, shows up with his alarmingly blue eyes to put a kink in Anna’s well-controlled plans. When danger escalates in the form of a band of cattle thieves with deadly intent, can Anna learn to release control to God’s capable hands…and those of the blue-eyed cowboy who’s stolen her heart?

The lifeblood of the Wiltshire village of Ivy Hill is its coaching inn, The Bell. But when the innkeeper dies suddenly, his genteel wife, Jane Bell, becomes the reluctant owner. Jane has no notion of how to run a business. However, with the town's livelihood at stake and a large loan due, she must find a way to bring new life to the inn. Despite their strained relationship, Jane turns to her resentful mother-in-law, Thora, for help.

Set adrift on the tides of fate by the deaths of her parents and left wanting answers, Laura Callaway now lives with her uncle and his disapproving wife in North Cornwall. While wreckers search for valuables along the windswept Cornwall coast - known for its many shipwrecks but few survivors - Laura searches for clues to the lives lost so she can write letters to next of kin and return keepsakes to rightful owners. When a man is washed ashore after a wreck, Laura acts quickly to protect him from a local smuggler determined to destroy him.

After enjoying London's sophisticated society and the attentions of wealthy suitors, Lilly returns home to help her ailing dad. Determined to resurrect his apothecary business, Lilly labors tirelessly - praying her family's secrets and her rivals' schemes won't cloud her future.

Sophie Dupont, daughter of a portrait painter, assists her father in his studio, keeping her own artwork out of sight. She often walks the cliffside path along the North Devon coast, popular with artists and poets. It's where she met the handsome Wesley Overtree, the first man to tell her she's beautiful. Captain Stephen Overtree is accustomed to taking on his brother's neglected duties. Home on leave, he's sent to find Wesley.

RITA finalist Julie Klassen has earned numerous awards for her popular historical romance novels. In The Maid of Fairbourne Hall, pampered Margaret Macy flees her home in London to avoid marrying a dishonorable man. Now, with no money and no place to stay, Margaret does the unthinkable: she takes a job as a housemaid in the home of two brothers - both of whom are former suitors. As an “invisible” observer, Margaret realizes she may have misjudged one brother and wonders if it’s too late to win his admiration.

When Miss Rebecca Lane returns to her home village after a few years away, her brother begs for a favor: Go to nearby Swanford Abbey and deliver his manuscript to an author staying there who could help him get published. Feeling responsible for her brother's desperate state, she reluctantly agrees.  

1950. In the wake of the war, Audrey Clarkson leaves her manor house in England for a fresh start in America with her young son. As a widowed war bride, Audrey needs the support of her American in-laws, whom she has never met. But she arrives to find that her longtime friend Eve Dawson has been impersonating her for the past four years. Unraveling this deception will force Audrey and Eve’s secrets - and the complicated history of their friendship - to the surface.

As the beloved stepdaughter of the Earl of Castleton, Lady Mariah Lyons cherishes her home at Plumford Manor, but her idyllic world will be threatened when the estate passes to Cyril Lightbourne, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen or heard from in years. Once, Mariah dreamed their friendship would kindle into something more, but that was before she heard Cyril was courting the cruelhearted Lady Pearl. Now Mariah is willing to welcome him as a friend and pray he will be the heir her stepfather needs, but she’ll keep her heart locked safely away from anyone with such poor taste.

New York, 1898. The only thing more shocking than Arthur Stanhope III’s unexpected death is the revelation that his will bestows his company—and most of the vast fortune that goes with it—to the nearest male heir, leaving his mother, wife, and daughter nearly impoverished. His widow, Sylvia, quickly realizes she must set aside her grief to ensure their daughter, Adelaide, is launched into society as soon as the appropriate mourning period passes.