I’ve been having so much fun reading new books! I haven’t been great at reading outside my preferred genres, but I’m trying (sort of). Here’s what’s on my to-be-read pile now!

For Pleasure

 The Accidental Guardian by Mary Connealy

When Trace Riley finds the smoldering ruins of a small wagon train, he recognizes the hand behind the attack as the same group who left him as sole survivor years ago. Living off the wilderness since then, he’d finally carved out a home and started a herd–while serving as a self-appointed guardian of the trail, driving off dangerous men. He’d
hoped those days were over, but the latest attack shows he was wrong.

Deborah Harkness saved her younger sister and two toddlers during the attack, and now finds herself at the mercy of her rescuer. Trace offers the only shelter for miles around, and agrees to take them in until she can safely continue. His simple bachelor existence never anticipated kids and women in the picture and their arrival is unsettling–yet enticing. 

Working to survive the winter and finally bring justice to the trail, Trace and Deborah find themselves drawn together–yet every day approaches the moment she’ll leave forever.

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The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck by Bethany Turner

Becoming a Christian is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to Sarah Hollenbeck. Best because, well, that’s obvious. Worst because, up to this point, she’s made her very comfortable living as a well-known, bestselling author of steamy romance novels that would leave the members of her new church blushing. Now Sarah is trying to reconcile her past with the future she’s chosen. She’s still under contract with her publisher and on the hook with her enormous fan base for the kind of book she’s not sure she can write anymore. She’s beginning to think that the church might frown on her tithing on royalties from a “scandalous” book. And the fact that she’s falling in love with her pastor doesn’t make things any easier.

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The Great Lakes Lighthouse Brides, a collection

Lighthouses have long been the symbol of salvation, warning sailors away from dangerous rocks and shallow waters.

Along the Great Lakes, America’s inland seas, lighthouses played a vital role in the growth of the nation. They shepherded settlers traveling by water to places that had no roads. These beacons of light required constant tending even in remote and often dangerous places. Brave men and women battled the elements and loneliness to keep the lights shining. Their sacrifice kept goods and immigrants moving. Seven romances set between 1883 and 1911 bring hope to these lonely keepers and love to weary hearts.

For Self-Improvement

Writing Deep Viewpoint by Kathy Tyres

“There is no single component of the writing craft as vital to good fiction, and to developing an artistic voice, as point of view.  The term covers a great deal of ground, but basically boils down to sharing the world of your characters, starting from within.  Writing Deep Viewpoint helps establish a foundation from which a novelist can spread artistic wings and fly.  Highly recommended.” Davis Bunn, NYT bestselling author.

The Key to Great Fiction:

Why is deep viewpoint vital for hooking and holding your readers?
Who is narrating each scene of your story?
What are readers really looking for when they pick up a novel?
Where does the real action of a written story take place?
What are the two most important rules of storytelling?
When should viewpoint be established?

Deep viewpoint can convince your readers that they have become your characters. This powerful writing-craft skill set includes showing instead of telling, maintaining story flow, attributing dialogue effectively, and showing characters interact with convincing antagonists and believable settings.

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Happily Ever After by Catherine M. Roach

Find your one true love and live happily ever after.” The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney’s princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

What are you reading? Why did you decide to read it? What do you like about it so far?

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