Winner - - An Unexpected Wish

The winner of an e-copy of An Unexpected Wish by Eileen Richards is:

Connie

Congratulations!

Please send your email address to

theromancedish (at) gmail dot) com

Winner - - A Gentleman For All Seasons Giveaway

The winner of four books from the authors of A Gentleman For All Seasons 

(one book from each author) is:

librarypat

Congratulations!

Please send your full name and mailing address to

theromancedish (at) gmail (dot) com

Review - - A Winter Wedding

A Winter Wedding

By Brenda Novak

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: October 27, 2015

Kyle Houseman has been in love with Olivia Arnold for what seems like forever, but he made a big mistake years ago that he has been paying for ever since. He allowed himself to be seduced by Olivia’s sister Noelle and married her when she ended up pregnant.  Olivia’s broken heart was repaired by Kyle’s step-brother, Brandon Lucero. Olivia and Brandon have been married for several years, and Kyle and Noelle have been divorced almost as long. But as often as Kyle reminds himself that Olivia is happily married and merely his sister-in-law now, he recognizes he still has special feelings for her, feelings strong enough to keep him from falling for anyone else. And as often as he reminds Noelle that they are divorced, she has another problem that requires his attention and his money.

Lourdes Bennett was a rising star in country music just a short time ago, but her decision to make a pop album sent her career in a downward spin that has left her worried that she’s finished. As if that were not enough, she is fairly certain that her manager fiancé is cheating with the younger woman who has replaced her as the next big thing. In need of a quiet refuge to write songs for a new album she hopes will restart her career and to make some decisions about her personal life, she rents a farmhouse outside Whiskey Creek, a farmhouse owned by Kyle Houseman.

When the heating in the farmhouse malfunctions, Kyle invites his famous tenant to take sanctuary in his spare bedroom until he can have the heating repaired. As these two very different people spend time together, they find a friend in each other. They confide in each other about their mistakes and the consequences and discover they are remarkably simpatico. Neither is looking for romance, but the chemistry between them makes it difficult to keep their relationship platonic. Kyle’s tight circle of friends, including Olivia and Brandon, like Lourdes and welcome her to the group. They would like nothing better than to see these two together. But Noelle is skilled at complications and manipulations, and Lourdes still has her manager fiancé and her career that require attention. Can these two overcome all these obstacles and make their way to an HEA of their own.

Brenda Novak began her Whiskey Creek series in the summer of 2012 with When We Touch, a novella featuring Olivia and Brandon, with Kyle’s betrayal of Olivia and his wedding to Noelle as backdrop. I wrote in my review of When We Touch:

Noelle is a one-dimensional bitch who is easy to hate. . . . Kyle is more interesting, a guy who made a stupid mistake and is paying the price of marriage and shared parenthood with a woman he doesn’t even like very much. Neither does his family or friends. Interesting possibilities there, so maybe we’ll see more of Kyle in other Whiskey Creek books.

It has been interesting to see Kyle in the rest of the series, suffering in various ways for his mistake and growing in the process. He completely won me over with his compassion for Phoenix Fuller in This Heart of Mine (Whiskey Creek 3). I thought Novak did an excellent job of showing him in his book as the same person, still capable of being victimized by Noelle who is as self-absorbed and manipulative as ever, but overall, wiser, more mature, and more likeable.  I found Lourdes an immensely likeable character, and I was glad to see Kyle let go of Olivia and accept her fully as his friend and Brandon’s wife. I especially appreciated the slow build of the relationship between Kyle and Lourdes and the way their HEA was achieved.

With Novak committed two other series, Fairham Island and Hanover House, this generally excellent small-town series may be winding down, although there will be at least one more book (Discovering You, May 24, 2016). I applaud Novak for the risks she has taken that has set the Whiskey Creek books apart from predictable small-town series, and I recommend this book. With a wedding, a new baby, the reaffirmation of the bonds of friendship, and one more heartwarming HEA, The Winter Wedding has everything needed to win the hearts of readers who love small-town contemporary romance stories.

~Janga

Review - - Hope Springs on Main Street

Hope Springs on Main Street

By Olivia Miles

Publisher: Forever

Release Date: October 27, 2015

 

Conscious that she is the target of town gossip and that her cheating ex-husband is having no problem moving on with his mistress, Jane Madison is trying to cope with life as a divorced woman and mother of one. She knows the gossip and the poor-Jane looks are only going to get worse when Briar Creek learns that her ex is soon to marry his pregnant mistress. This is not how she saw her life when she gave up her best chance to conquer a larger world as a dancer and married her high school sweetheart instead. Added to her hurt and disillusionment is her worry about tightening finances because the dance studio where she teaches is cutting classes, some of them the classes Jane teaches. But Jane is determined not to burden her mother and sisters with her problems, especially since the family is focused on her sister’s upcoming wedding.

Henry Birch is not happy to be in Briar Creek. The town holds too many memories that haunt him, memories of his alcoholic mother and her neglect and of being an object of the town’s gossip and pity. Only his love and concern for his sister Ivy have brought him back after a six-year absence. He feels guilty that he did not return to help Ivy when their mother died, and he is determined to be there for her to help clear out their childhood home and put it up for sale. He also wants to make sure Ivy, who has Type I diabetes, is taking care of herself. His plans are to take care of business and leave Briar Creek as soon as possible.

Henry is not surprised to learn that Jane and Adam are divorced. Adam may have been his best friend, and Adam’s parents may have given Henry the only experience he has ever known of being part of a real family, but even so, Henry knew before Jane married him that Adam was a player. Jane unknowingly claimed Henry’s heart when they were in high school, and he has never forgotten her. Sure, the fact that she is his best friend’s ex creates some awkwardness, but all the connections that made Henry and Jane friends who “got” each other are still there with the potential for fireworks added. Henry even falls for the charms of Jane’s young daughter. But Jane’s roots in Briar Creek are deep, and she deserves a man without Henry’s baggage and his history of failed relationships. But sometimes a man finds that he has to go home again and hope that the woman who is more than he deserves can forgive him for leaving.  

Hope Springs on Main Street is the third book in Miles’s Briar Creek series, after Mistletoe on Main Street and A Match Made on Main Street. It is a slightly different take on the friends-to-lovers trope. Henry and Jane have a history, but they also have six years of silence and Henry’s loyalty to Adam—or perhaps more accurately, Adam’s family—to complicate matters. They are both good people, but they are far from perfect. Some readers may find Henry’s fear and self-doubt irritating, but I thought the characteristics were exactly those one would expect to see in the adult child of an alcoholic. I found Jane’s refusal to share her problems with the family that loves her more difficult to understand. But I cared about both these characters and wanted to see them reach an HEA.

As much as I liked the romance, I also appreciated that all the other relationships are also dynamic. Henry’s relationship with Ivy may be the most interesting, but Jane’s relationships with her daughter and with her sisters also change and grow. I found Henry’s developing relationship with young Sophia charming. Although I went in search of the first two books in the series as soon as I read this one, I had not read either before reading Hope Springs on Main Street and had no problem reading this book as a standalone. I am hooked on the series now, however, and am hoping for Ivy’s story soon. I had heard good things about Olivia Miles’s books, and I’m delighted that all the yea-sayers were right. I am adding another small-town series to my must-read list, and I definitely recommend that all of you who are fans of small-town romance or of romance with lots of sexual tension but closed bedroom doors give this one a try.

 ~Janga

Review - - Forever This Time

Forever This Time

By Maggie McGinnis

Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: November 3, 2015

Josie Kendrew left Echo Lake, Vermont, for Wellesley College when she was eighteen, and she has not returned in the decade since then—not to see her parents or the fiancé whom she jilted with little explanation. But when her mother calls with the news that Josie’s father has suffered a stroke and has not regained consciousness, Josie comes home, hoping her father will recover quickly and allow her to return to Boston and her work as a therapist for families with seriously ill children. But Josie finds it strangely disorienting to find Snowflake Village, the Christmas theme park to which her workaholic father devoted his life, unchanged while her parents are changed almost beyond recognition. Nothing could have prepared her to see her strong, energetic father still and unresponsive, but it is equally shocking to see her disintegrating alcoholic mother sober and fulfilled in her role as homemaker. That’s a change Josie cannot trust.

Little about Ethan Miller’s life turned out the way he once planned. A high school football injury ended hopes for a military career that would make his father proud. Instead, his younger brother is now the one serving his country as a marine. He expected to marry Josie with whom he fell in love at sixteen, but she left him behind without a backward glance. Recovering from such losses was not easy, and yet Ethan has earned a place of respect in Echo Lake as CFO of Snowflake Village and as founder and the driving force behind Avery’s House, a nationally recognized facility for children stricken with cancer and other devastating illnesses and their families. It was established in memory of a child who captured Josie’s and Ethan’s hearts and whose death left them broken. Ethan finds healing in helping other children like Avery. Ethan was concerned when he learned Josie was returning, and when her mother sends her to help out at Snowflake Village, he is adamant that the two of them cannot work together and does everything he can to see that they do not.

Josie is no happier than Ethan is about her working at Snowflake Village, a place she hates for its superficial merriment and for its victory in the battle for her father’s attention. However, as she and Ethan are thrown into one another’s company, they both realize the compelling attraction that drew them together as teenagers has only grown stronger, and the memories of all they shared remain vivid. But are their feelings and memories enough to withstand Josie’s belief that she does not belong in the small town where Ethan’s roots are deep and the pressure Ethan is getting from those closest to him who warn that Josie will only break his heart again?

For the first several chapters, I had to push to keep reading what seemed like a story often retold with only the Christmas theme park to set it apart from dozens of others, and even that is not unique. But as more of Josie’s past with Ethan, with her parents, and with Avery was revealed, the story gained substance and emotional power. I felt sympathy for the young lovers and for the adults they had become. I didn’t always find these characters likeable. Josie really did come across as self-absorbed at times, and some of Ethan’s “jokes,” such as the unnecessary unloading of 500 pounds of ice, just seemed mean to me. But their memories of Avery and the ways she had helped to shape what they did with their lives were genuinely moving and fresh. and their connection to one another was convincing. Josie’s relationship with her parents was also potentially rich material, although I thought it merited fuller exploration. Everything resolves itself a bit too easily and tidily for my taste.

Still, had it not been for a secondary character, I would have given the book four stars and a recommendation with a caveat about the slow start. But I actively disliked Molly, Josie’s former best friend. I can understand an eighteen-year-old feeling betrayed by her best friend’s disappearance, but ten years later she seems to be no wiser or more tolerant. In fact, she frequently comes across as jealous and vindictive, and her final choice was wrong on two levels.

Overall, this is a promising story with some commendable parts but with too many flaws for me to give it an unqualified recommendation.  I did like Ethan’s friend Dr. Josh and look forward to his story, Heart Like Mine, set for release on April 5, 2016. But if McGinnis plans a book for Molly, I’ll probably skip that one. I would be a really hard sale on her as a redeemed heroine.

 ~Janga

Throwback Thursday - - Cozy Kitchen Memories

And so it begins...

Here in the United States, our thoughts are turning to food as we prepare for our Thanksgiving celebration next week. For me, those thoughts center primarily on side dishes - specifically sweet potatoes and cranberry salad. Mmmmm. My niece, Jenn was a wee sprite when she first started helping me in the kitchen. Over the years, we've made hundreds of dishes together and, somewhere along the way, the student surpassed the teacher, becoming an accomplished - and creative - cook and baker (You should taste her biscuits. Heaven!). Jenn is a wife and mom now, living in Japan with her family, but she's home visiting her parents this Thanksgiving so I thought it would be the perfect time to revisit this post she wrote for the Dish the first year we were open, November 2009. 

My Mom's Sweet Potato Casserole

Halloween has come and gone and if you have managed to shake off the sugar-induced coma long

enough to venture out, you'd be hard pressed to miss the explosion of holiday decorations.  If you live in Florida like I do,  this is the only indication that the holiday season has arrived.  The average temperature here is still in the 80s!

The holidays are my favorite time of year.  Everything seems to slow.  The hustle and bustle of everyday life ebbs (I do my shopping online!), if only briefly, allowing us to focus on the things in life that endure.  For me, this is the love of my family.  There is nothing more important to me, and it's this time of year that really makes me want to not only embrace every second of joy they bring me, but to also show my thanks for their never-ending love and support.  It's my personal belief that there is no better way to do this than through food.

Brings a whole new meaning to love handles!

Jenn and PJ (a/k/a Aunt Patty)

I was lucky enough to be given a wonderful culinary education from a very young age and most of my most cherished memories happened in a kitchen.  The family recipes I've collected are much like a diary of my life; every one of them has a story on which I look back fondly.  When I make chocolate chip cookies, it's as if my Aunt Patty is in the kitchen with me, helping me work that beautiful culinary magic while trying to keep my fingers out of the cookie dough.  Whenever I felt homesick at college, I would try to recreate my dad's amazing pancakes and remember all the weekend mornings he'd wake up early to make breakfast for all of us.  I can't even look at sugar cookies without thinking of every Christmas holiday during which my grandmother and I spent hours decorating Christmas trees, angels and reindeer.

Jenn and her mom (a/k/a best sister-in-law ever!)

With only a few days until Thanksgiving, this post is to honor my mom's sweet potato casserole. After inquiring as to the recipe's origins, she informed me that she really couldn't say, but it was something she adapted from numerous different recipes she came in contact with.  It might not be a recipe that has been in my family for generations, but it has been a feature at every Thanksgiving dinner I can remember, and it always fills me with a sense of warmth and peace.  It is home and family and everything I love.

 And it has streusel.  Who doesn't love streusel?

Mom's Sweet Potato Casserole

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 cup white sugar

2 beaten eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1/2 stick butter*

Topping:

2 cups packed brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 stick melted butter*

1.  Preheat oven to 350°.  Boil sweet potatoes until fork tender.  Drain.
2.  Using electric mixer, mash sweet potatoes.  Gradually add sugar, eggs, vanilla, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Mash until smooth.  Turn mixture into your favorite baking dish.
3.  Combine topping ingredients and mix until crumbly.  Sprinkle evenly over potato mixture and bake for 30 minutes or until topping is crusty and brown.
4.  Throw your scale out the window and have a moment of silence for your waistline.  Elastic waist pants are advised.
5.  Enjoy!
                                     
                                
The best thing about this casserole is that it can be used as a side dish or even a dessert!

* My mom always uses salted butter in cooking.  If you prefer to use unsalted butter, I would suggest adding 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt to the potato mixture.

Photographic evidence of my lack of self-control.

Tell me about your favorite family recipes!  Are they generations old or something new you developed?  Do they have interesting family stories to go along with them?  What are your quintessential holiday dishes?

Review - - Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

By Sheila Roberts

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: October 27, 2015

 

The holiday season has begun again in Icicle Falls, Washington, and once again Candy Cane Lane is the most elaborately decorated street in town. Maddy Donaldson is the driving force behind the neighborhood’s decorating extravaganza. She polices the street to make sure each house has at minimum outdoor lights and plastic candy canes, available at the hardware store her husband owns. She spends more than her share of shifts dressed as Mrs. Santa and passing out candy canes to the visitors who drive by to view the most decorated street in Icicle Falls. In fact, Maddy is so busy with all her seasonal activities that her husband and her thirteen-year-old daughter are feeling neglected and resentful, and the mother-in-law from hell is arriving for a holiday visit.

Tilda Morrison, a member of the Icicle Falls Police Department, has just bought her first house, a fixer-upper that needs immediate attention. But while Tilda is ready to lavish some TLC on her new home, she is unprepared for the expectation that she will join in the decorating frenzy on Candy Cane Lane or become the resident cop with a ready solution for the public safety problems of the middle-class neighborhood. And then there is Devon Black. Tilda’s head tells her to avoid that bad boy, but her heart wonders if he’s a better man than she knows, and her libido just screams “Yes!”

Ivy Bohn is just trying to get through her first Christmas as a single mother. Between her responsibilities at Christmas Haus, her family’s Christmas shop, and trying to make the season special for her two young children, Ivy is feeling overwhelmed. Her ex may be making noises about forgiving and forgetting, but Ivy is ready to do neither. Rob walked out a year ago because he no longer wanted the responsibilities of marriage, and he wasted no time hooking up with someone new. Whatever his regrets now, Ivy is not about to let him back into her house or her heart, no matter how many tears their daughter sheds or how many Christmas lights Rob puts up to add to the glow on Candy Cane Lane.

While the residents of Candy Cane Lane deal with their separate problems, a Christmas vandal is attacking the holiday displays and destroying candy canes with a vengeance—once, twice, three times. Is the perpetrator the rude, unruly teens whose taunts ring more loudly than canned carols, or is it someone closer than those on Candy Cane Lane dare consider?

Roberts weaves these stories together with her usual charm and humor. In addition to the lead characters, characters from earlier books show up to add to the overall festive note. I found myself wishing for fewer plot threads and more development of the characters. Any one of these stories could easily have been its own book. Nevertheless, Icicle Falls is a heartwarming place, and this book contains enough Christmas traditions to appeal to those who love them and enough substance to challenge the reader to consider her own holiday priorities. If you have enjoyed other books in this series, you will probably enjoy this one as well. Although it is unlikely to win a “Best of 2015 Christmas Season” ribbon, it offers a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

~Janga

Review - - A Mackenzie Clan Gathering

A Mackenzie Clan Gathering

By Jennifer Ashley

Publisher: InterMix / Penguin Group

Release Date: November 17, 2015

The Mackenzie Clan is preparing to gather at Kilmorgan Castle to celebrate the birthday of Hart Mackenzie, Duke of Kilmorgan, but the youngest Mackenzie brother, Ian, his wife Beth, and their three children are the only family members in residence when art thieves infiltrate the castle and carry away priceless sculptures and paintings belonging to Hart. For Ian, the art theft is strictly secondary to his concern for Beth and their children, but the next day he sends telegrams with the pertinent information to all his brothers, including his half-brother, Chief Inspector Lloyd Fellows of Scotland Yard, who is the first to arrive.

Even before his other brothers arrive, Ian discovers that forty barrels of Mackenzie malt have been ruined. He also has reason to believe someone is following him. It is clear that Hart Mackenzie, perhaps all the Mackenzies, have an enemy. It will take the combined skills of Ian and Fellows to identify the enemy and see that he is brought to justice.

In the meantime, a guest from Beth’s past also joins the Mackenzie gathering. John Ackerley, a recently retired missionary, is the brother of Beth’s deceased husband. In his post-retirement travels on the continent, John has encountered new treatment for mental illness that has proved successful in some cases. He insists that the treatment holds promise for “curing” Ian’s madness. Ian is skeptical at first, but humors John because he is Beth’s family. Will John’s treatment only reawaken Ian’s demons? What would a “cure” mean for Ian and Beth?

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie (2009) is one of only a handful of books that I first read based solely on book buzz. It remains my favorite of Ashley’s Mackenzies-McBrides series and one of my all-time favorite romances. Thus, I was delighted when Ashley first mentioned that this novella would be an Ian-and-Beth story. I must say that it was even better than I hoped.

First, it holds its own as a mystery involving a Mackenzie enemy and as a story about the treatment of mental illness. Assorted strings are woven together in the mystery, including the contrast between Ian’s “madness” and that of someone whose madness poses a threat to others. Even without having read Ian’s book, one understands the difference in the techniques John Ackerley uses and the torturous mistreatment a younger Ian endured in an asylum. By 1892, the time of the novella, Freud and others had used hypnosis with patients and Freud was beginning to develop his theories concerning the human mind. I found it fascinating, albeit somewhat horrifying, to see these methods used by an amateur. On these levels, it is unnecessary to have read other books in the series to enjoy this story. Ashley provides ample details to make meaning clear to a new reader.

However, the joy of seeing the changes years of happiness have wrought in Ian and seeing him and Beth ten years into their marriage, their passion and their commitment deepened by a decade together and their lives enriched by their love for their children, is an experience reserved for readers who know these characters. Since Lloyd Fellows is my second favorite hero in this series (The Untamed Mackenzie, 2013), I was pleased that he plays a significant role, and the reader sees how his relationship with his half-brothers has progressed. Despite the title, except for his role and minor parts for Hart and Eleanor, the gathering of the clan is background, sufficient to see that all is well with the various couples and their growing families but not enough to distract readers from the central story.

If you are a fan of this series or if you read only The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, you will not want to miss this novella. If you have never read any of the series, don’t let the Mackenzies-McBrides 8.5 intimidate you. I promise you can read this one as a single read, but be prepared to become addicted enough to seek out the other eight novels and three novellas as well. I’m practically dancing with delight because Ashley promises more of both the 18th-century Mackenzies (The Stolen Mackenzie Bride, 2015) and the Victorians.  

~Janga

On Second Thought

I love Christmas! And I love Christmas romances. As of the first week in November, I have read about two dozen 2015 Christmas romances, a mix of historical and contemporaries, single-titles and anthologies and have enjoyed them to varying degrees. But for the most part, my favorite Christmas reads of 2015 have been reissues of older books, some of which have been part of my Christmas reading tradition for years. Rather than recommending one digital reissue this month, I am recommending these cherished Christmas rereads, a mix of collections, anthologies, and single stories.

From 1989 through 2005, Signet published an annual anthology of Regency Christmas novellas. The early anthologies were released the first week in November, the later ones in early October, and for fifteen years the Signet anthology inaugurated my annual Christmas reading marathon. Thus, it is hardly surprising that my list of favorite Christmas digital reissues includes many stories that first appeared in those anthologies.

Mary Balogh had a novella in the very first Regency Christmas anthology and in nine others that followed. In 2003, Balogh published Under the Mistletoe, a collection that included four reissues: “The Star of Bethlehem” (1989), “The Best Gift” (1994), “Playing House” (1990), and “No Room at the Inn” (1995), along with one new story, “A Family Christmas.” A digital version of Under the Mistletoe was released in 2004. All of the stories are good, but “The Best Gift” is my favorite. In this Cinderella story, the heroine Jane Craggs, a Jane Eyre type, is asked to escort one of her pupils to the young woman’s uncle’s home for Christmas and is thus given the opportunity to teach her student a more important lesson than any learned in a classroom. She unites a cynic with his illegitimate daughter and achieves her own Christmas dream and fairy tale ending. The way Balogh weaves the story of the father learning to love his young daughter into the love story is a marvel. That the magic of Christmas transforms even a lonely, obnoxious adolescent may be a greater marvel.

This year Balogh released two digital collections of her Signet Christmas novellas.  Christmas Gifts includes “The Best Christmas Ever’ (1991), “The Porcelain Madonna” (1992), and “The Surprise Party” (1995). As with the earlier collection, all three stories are heartwarming, but the last one is extraordinary: a reunion story that takes place when the widowed Ursula, Lady Carlyle, and Timothy, Viscount Morsey, each, propelled by duty rather than love, show up at the home of three orphaned children. The children are the offspring of Ursula’s brother and Timothy’s sister whose marriage sparked a quarrel that led to the dissolution of Ursula and Timothy’s betrothal.  As the two fall in love with the children who bravely accept there will be no Christmas for them this year, they also fall in love with one another again.

Christmas Miracles offers another trio of reissued novellas: “The Wassail Bowl” (1196), “The Bond Street Carolers” (1997), and “Guarded by Angels” (1995). The first and last stories in this collection are marriage-in-trouble tales, but “The Wassail Bowl” is the stronger story, despite confusion about the hero’s name. (He is identified as the Earl of Wyndham and the Earl of Wycherly, an error that even superficial editing should have caught.) But the story satisfies regardless of the distracting error. The scene that gives the novella its title is unforgettable  . Wyndham totally deserves the sticky bath he receives when his countess throws the contents of the wassail bowl in his face. Forgiveness, reunion, and healing truths along with scene-stealing children make this a touching story.  “The Bond Street Carolers” is another favorite. Lord Heath is an arrogant aristocrat who dislikes children and Christmas, but when he hears a boy with the voice of an angel singing with a group of carolers on Bond Street, he is determined that the boy sing at his annual concert. Soon he finds himself falling in love with the boy’s mother, a lovely, lonely window and looking forward to building a family with her and her two children, the boy soprano and a little girl who wants a papa for Christmas. Mary Balogh likes children in her Christmas stories, and she gives them integral roles. It is Katie’s Christmas prayer and her brother’s astounding voice that propel this story. The hero and heroine make a brief appearance in Simply Unforgettable (2005).

Balogh has also written four Christmas novels: Christmas Belle, Christmas Beau, A Christmas Bride, and A Christmas Promise. All except Christmas Belle are available in digital reissues. A Christmas Bride is an excellent redeemed heroine novel, but I am particularly fond of A Christmas Promise, one of Balogh’s cross-class romances, a trope she does especially well. In this one, distant spouses in a marriage of convenience, Randolph Pierce, Earl of Falloden and Eleanor Transome, daughter of a wealthy merchant, gather at the earl’s country estate with his aristocratic friends and her boisterous, bourgeois family to celebrate Christmas—and in the case of the latter, to remember Ellie’s late, beloved father. The reserved earl unexpectedly delights in the warm affection and seasonal revelry of the Transome relatives, and he and Ellie find their way to the kind of marriage her father wanted for her. A trio of secondary romances adds to the joyous mood.

Carla Kelly, Mary Jo Putney, and Jo Beverley have also reissued Christmas novellas in collections guaranteed to make your holiday brighter.

Carla Kelly’s stories are unusual in that they are filled with ordinary people and are sometimes darker Carla Kelly’s Christmas Collection (2011) includes “The Christmas Ornament” (1998), probably the most light-hearted of Kelly’s stories, with an Oxford scholar as hero and a pair of matchmaking fathers; “Make a Joyful Noise” (1997), a story with a hero who finds his pregnant heroine when his mother gives him the task of recruiting new voices for a choral competition; “An Object of Charity” (1999), a tale featuring a ship’s captain who’s coming home to an estranged family and the niece and nephew of his first mate, killed in action, for whom the captain feels responsible; and “The Three Kings” (1990), in which the hero and heroine travel through war-torn Spain. The last story is especially poignant as Lady Sarah Comstock, a bluestocking whose scholar brother was killed in error by the French, and Colonel Luis Sotomayor, a Spanish soldier who dreams of being reunited with his motherless young daughters, make their way towards Ciudad Rodrigo amid the devastation of war and people who cling to their Christmas rituals even when facing danger and deprivation.

than the norm.

Kelly’s  Coming Home for Christmas (2011) is a set of generationally linked stories: “A Christmas in Paradise,” set in California in 1812, with a Navy surgeon as hero and the daughter of an embezzler as heroine; “O Christmas Tree,” in which the heroine, a nurse in the Crimean War, is the daughter of the lead characters from the first story and a shy hero who totally stole my heart; and “No Crib for a Bed,” a Western that features another military doctor, the grandson of the doctor in the first story and the son of the nurse in the second story, and the down-to-earth heroine who saves him from what would have been a disastrous marriage. In typical Carla Kelly fashion, all of these characters are ordinary people captured in stories that reveal how extraordinary they are. That all of this is accomplished with Christmas meanings threaded throughout the stories makes them all the more treasured.

Season’s Regency Greetings (2014) contains my two top favorite Carla Kelly stories. “Let Nothing You Dismay” (2003) features Cecilia Ambrose, a half-Egyptian, half-English schoolteacher, and Lord Trevor Chase, the younger son of an aristocratic family who scandalized his social circle and worried his family by becoming a barrister who defends the poor, particularly children. One of the many reasons I love this one is that the pragmatic Cecilia saves the guilt-burdened Trevor. In “No Room at the Inn” (2002), Lady Mary, who has been reared as the daughter of an aristocratic family, finds out that she is actually plain Mary McIntyre, the granddaughter of a farmer. Caught in a snowstorm and with no room at the inn, she and her traveling companions find shelter in the home of Joe Shepard, the younger son of the steward on the estate where Mary was reared. Mary falls in love with the widowed Joe and the boy he looks on as his son but who is really his late wife’s son by her first husband. It’s a sweet story that carries a message about where happiness can be found and where the heart of Christmas lies.

I also recommend Kelly’s Christmas novel, Marian’s Christmas Wish (Signet, 1989; Cedar Fort digital reissue, 2011). Like all of Carla Kelly’s romances, this one is filled with flawed, human characters who come alive for the reader. Marian is young, not yet seventeen, with a candor that makes her seem even younger at times. But she has intelligence, a loving heart, and an irrepressible sense of humor. Gilbert Collinwood, Earl of Ingraham is a wonderful hero—understanding, great-hearted, and surprisingly unlordly for an aristocrat of such high rank—and with all the appeal of a man who combines tenderness with an understated charm. Despite their differences in age and fortune, I can imagine these two growing old together, celebrating Christmas through the years. Some might argue that Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand (Signet, 1994; Signet, with Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career, 2003; digital reissue, Cedar Fort, 2011) is not a Christmas book, but it opens not long before Christmas, the hero and heroine marry on Christmas, and it ends with an invitation for a Christmas visit from the happy couple. Moreover, the book is packed with themes like giving and forgiving and restoration that are at the heart of Christmas. Roxanna Drew, a beauty whose physical charms are surpassed by the loveliness of her character, is one of my all-time favorite romance heroines. She is a loving wife, a devoted mother, a passionate lover, and a human being with faults, dreams, memories, a rich interior life, and a well-developed moral compass. Fletcher Rand is another of Kelly’s heroic former soldiers who has been shaped by the horrors of war and yet maintains a sense of humor, an abiding kindness, and a willingness to do what needs to be done. I’ve read Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand at least half a dozen times since I first read it during Christmas 1995, and each reading reveals something new I love about the book. Carla Kelly’s newest Christmas gift to readers is not a reissue, but the three stories in Regency Christmas Gifts (2015) are well worth reading.

Two more of my all-time favorite Christmas romances can be found in Mary Jo Putney’s Christmas

Revels (2002). “Sunshine for Christmas” (1990) pairs Lord Randolph Lennox, the man whose careless words indirectly lead to Lady Alys Weston’s flight from her home in The Rake, with Elizabeth Walker, an English governess who comes to his rescue. It’s set in Italy, a lovely bonus. “The Black Beast of Belleterre” is a wonderful Beauty and the Beast tale that is classic romance. It always leaves me happily sighing, no matter how many times I’ve read it before. Christmas Revels also includes “The Christmas Cuckoo” (1991), “The Christmas Tart” 1992), and “A Holiday Fling,” a contemporary story loosely connected to MJP’s only contemporary series and published for the first time in this collection.

Jo Beverley’s Mistletoe Kisses and Yuletide Joy (2013) includes three novellas and extras for history buffs (a description of Christmas in the Regency period) and holiday cooks (seasonal recipes, new and old). “The Gift of Light” (1996) is a delightful story in which Miss Kitty Mayhew—too tall, too thin, and too lacking in a romantical nature (She’s even immune to Byron) to be a proper heroine—has her plans for a quiet holiday interrupted by a pair of cats and an irrepressible viscount, appropriately named Tom. “The Christmas Wedding Gambit” (free on the author’s website for several years) centers on the Gretna Green wedding of Viscount Greystoke to plump, plain Frances Guysley to avoid a marriage to her lying, scheming, prettier sister. “Star of Wonder” (1999) is a rare tale set in 999, featuring a novice nun as heroine, a hero whose home has been captured by Danish Vikings, and a legendary star sapphire pendant which purportedly was given to the baby Jesus by one of the Three Magi. I also recommend Beverley’s A Mummer’s Play (1995) published as a standalone novella in 2013. It is the touching story of Justina Travers whose intense grief for her dead fiancé leads to her plan to use the traditional mummer’s play on Christmas Eve to gain entry to Torlinghurst and find proof that Lucky Jack Beaufort, the only man to survive the ambush in which her fiancé was killed, is a traitor. Instead she finds that Lucky Jack, now the Duke of Cranmore, is a man scarred by war more deeply than she could have imagined.  Don’t forget Beverley’s Christmas novel, Christmas Angel (2001) and reissued in digital format in 2013. The third book in the Company of Rogues series, it is the story of Leander, Lord Charrington, in search of a bride who will not fall in love with him, and Judith Rossiter, immortalized as the Angel Bride of her late husband, popular poet Sebastian Rossiter, who is facing a lean Christmas for her two children when Leander proposes. (Beverley’s Winter Fire, the sixth in her Malloren series, is another of my annual holiday rereads, but it is not a reissue. Both print and digital versions were released in 2003.)

I also recommend the following:

Barbara Metzger: Greetings of the Season and Other Stories and An Enchanted Christmas (both include five Christmas-themed novellas first published in anthologies); three Christmas novels: The Christmas Carrolls, Christmas Wishes, Father Christmas. Metzger is an especially good choice for those looking for Christmas romances rich in humor.

Patricia Rice: Christmas Enchantment (reissues of “Christmas Angel,” Christmas Goose,” and “Tin Angel”). The third story is my favorite.

Donna Simpson: A Matchmaker’s Christmas (reissue of a 2002 novel), a perfect read for those who love the matchmaker trope since the matches are multiple.

If Santa is reading this, I want to get my requests in early for next year’s reissues. I’d really love to have a digital collection or two or three of Edith Layton Christmas stories, and I promise I would faithfully reread each year a digital version of I Will by Lisa Kleypas.

I haven’t forgotten that there are reissues of some wonderful contemporary Christmas romance stories. Look for those next month.

 ~Janga

PJ here. For those of you who stopped by yesterday expecting Janga's On Second Thought for November, I offer my sincere apology. I was certain Monday (today) was the 15th so imagine my surprise (and horror) when I logged on last night to format and schedule this post only to discover yesterday was the 15th! So sorry for the confusion. I hope you enjoy this wonderful holiday historical romance post from Janga! 

Have you started Christmas romances yet this year? Have you found any keepers? Do you have favorites that you re-read each year?

Review - - Tall, Dark, and Wicked

Tall, Dark, and Wicked

By Madeline Hunter

Publisher: Jove

Release Date: October 6, 2015

Lord Ywain Hemmingford, eminent barrister and younger brother of the Duke of Aylesbury, is accustomed to being asked to perform services, legal and extralegal, for the Crown, but he is not prepared for the complications that accompany the case against one Hadrian Belvoir, a man suspected of involvement in counterfeiting and perhaps conspiracy. Ives, as he is known, has an uncomfortable passion for justice and a growing concern about the fact that many in the Home Office are so concerned about the threat posed by political radicals that they are eager to disregard the liberties of British citizens. Not only does the scholarly Belvoir seem like an unlikely conspirator, but his daughter Padua, who approached Ives about taking her father’s case, appears to personify the perfect mistress whose qualities Ives was enumerating when his butler announced that she had called.

Padua Belvoir teaches mathematics and natural science at a school for girls and tutors some of the more promising girls in advanced math and radical ideas about women’s rights, but her teaching is merely a means to save the money that will allow her to go to Italy and study at the university where her late mother studied. Padua has had a distant and uneasy relationship with her father since her mother’s death, but her strong sense of duty and a promise she made to her mother compel her to do all she can to see that he is released from prison. She cannot believe that her father, a man for whom the life of the mind holds more attraction than the world around him, is a criminal. Ywain Hemmingford with his reputation for aiding those wrongfully accused seems to be her best hope. Even when she learns that he will be her adversary, he proves to be an asset.

Ives senses that there is more to the Belvoir case than is readily apparent, and he can’t stop thinking about Padua. The combination compels him to delay his response to the Crown’s request that he prosecute and investigate. The more he discovers, the more suspicious he becomes. And the more time he spends with Padua, the greater his desire for her becomes, not just physical desire but a desire for real intimacy. Padua refuses to wait on the sidelines while Ives untangles the mystery surrounding her father’s imprisonment. Having played the fool over a man once, she is equally determined to ignore her attraction to Ives. But his kisses are potent and the way he makes her feel is irresistible. Soon even intelligence and experience are not enough to keep her from tumbling heart over head for this sexy barrister.

I love intelligent romance fiction, and when she is at her best, nobody does smart romance better than Madeline Hunter. She is at her best in the Wicked books. His Wicked Reputation was superb, and Tall, Dark, and Wicked is better. This time the history lesson, delivered with several heaping spoonsful of luscious romance and a generous serving of mystery, focuses on England’s legal system and a period when the obsessive fears of the powerful led to an abridgement of rights. All this and a Dantean view of “coining” (counterfeiting) as a threat to the order of the kingdom and thus logically connected to insurrection had me fascinated from the beginning.

Yet, for me, character is always the most important element, and both Ives and Padua (not names the reader is likely to confuse with other protagonists) are deftly drawn characters who are vital, likeable, and credible for their time. Padua is not typical in any way. Educated, intelligent, independent, and assertive, she considers herself too tall and too unfashionable to be beautiful. I particularly appreciated that her independent streak does not override her intelligence. She may do so reluctantly but she does accept help from Ives when she loses her job. When she does act independently, her choices are reasonable given her circumstances and historical reality. Ives has a sharp mind, a kind heart, and a stern conscience, and he loves Padua for all that she is. These qualities are as much a part of him as his wealth, social status, and good looks. He is a hero who inspires admiration as well as lusty appreciation.  And I love that these two talk to each other. Their dialogue—smart, witty, and revealing--is one of the novel’s strengths.

The secondary characters are also strong. Padua’s good-hearted, fluttery employer, the lawyer who takes her father’s case, Ives’s conflicted connection at the Home Office—all have a satisfying dimensionality. Of course, the bonds that link the three brothers are an important part of the story. I love their interactions that seem sufficiently masculine and yet clearly reveal the love these brothers have for one another. Fans of the first book will be particularly pleased to see Gareth and Eva, and it’s a plus that their appearance is quite natural to the story rather than an author’s reminder that this is a series. Lance, the dukely brother, shows that he is hero material, but he does so in a manner that is integral to this story rather than setting up his own book. His story, The Wicked Duke, concludes the trilogy in the spring (May 31, to be exact).

If you like romance that is as smart as it is sexy and as rich in history as in passion, add this one to your books to be read ASAP.

~Janga