Miller (A Valentine for a Vet) kicks off the Silver Teapot Series with a fun if somewhat flimsy 21st-century spin on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. After losing her job as a high school history teacher, Liv Bennet is tasked by her family with caring for her ailing grandmother, Veronica, in the small English village of Hartbury. A lifelong Austen fan, Liv is itching to visit historic Hartbury Hall, which doubled as Pemberly Hall in the film Pride and Prejudice, but upon arriving discovers the building has fallen in disrepair and learns from surly, handsome gardener Liam Brown, who chastises her for trespassing, that it is closed to the public. But there’s more to Liam than meets the eye, her grandmother hints as she and Liv marshal a group of volunteers to refurbish the hall and open it to the public. Liam begrudgingly joins the efforts to revive Hartbury Hall and begins to open up about a long-ago tragedy and his struggles with his faith in its wake. While the narrative frame and Regency-inflected trappings are cute, it feels unlikely that it would take Liz almost to the end of the book to discover Liam’s secret. Still, Austenites who can suspend their disbelief will find enough to enjoy. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/19/2025 | Details & Permalink

Landsem (Code Name Edelweiss) unspools a thrilling tale of family turmoil set against the backdrop of the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake in Montana. Claire, Bridget, and Frannie Reilly’s mother walked out on the family when they were kids, leaving all three with deep emotional scars. Seventeen years later, Bridget, a nurse, and Frannie, a rebellious teen, still live with their dad in Minnesota, but Claire has moved to West Yellowstone, Mont., with her husband, Red, and baby daughter, Jenny. When Bridget gets a summer position at a hospital in Yellowstone, their father asks her to take Frannie along and bring Claire, her husband, and their baby back home at the end of the season. Upon arriving in Montana, Bridget and Frannie find that Red and Claire are barely speaking to each other. Meanwhile, relations among the three sisters aren’t much better—especially after Red leaves to take a job three hundred miles away, kicking Claire’s fears of abandonment into high gear. When an earthquake hits, triggering severe flooding, the three sisters must put their faith in God and one another to survive. In the process, they uncover buried secrets about themselves and their mother’s long-ago departure. Landsem keeps the tension high throughout with a perfect balance of zippy action and detailed character work. It’s a must-read for fans of clean historical fiction. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Afshar (The Queen’s Cook) transports readers to ancient Persia with this high-octane spin on the Purim story. Sazana is a prodigious potter who keeps her Jewish heritage a secret from her employer Haman, the instigator behind a royal edict to annihilate all of Persia’s Jews. After Queen Esther persuades her husband, King Xerxes, to execute Haman and grant Jewish people the right to defend themselves, Sazana is cautiously optimistic there may be hope for her people yet. But when it becomes clear that sympathizers to Haman’s cause remain—including his 10 vengeful sons—Sazana must summon her faith and join forces with her ex, Jadon, an agent of Queen Esther, to ensure peace in Persia. That involves investigating the death of Sazana’s mentor and guardian Arta, who left behind clues that embroil the pair in a generations-spanning mystery. Despite a few hiccups near the end (including a quickly resolved and somewhat out-of-place plot twist), the textured narrative is effectively propelled forward by its endearing characters, including resilient Sazana and complex Queen Esther. Fans of biblical fiction should take note. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Snelling’s textured latest Home to Green Creek romance (after Land of Dreams) follows a widow as she starts a new life in the Midwest. In 1890, Maya Bredesen is set to leave Norway for America with her husband, Einer, when he dies in a storm. A devastated Maya decides to make the trip nonetheless, but arrives at her cousin Amalia’s Iowa boardinghouse severely ill and angry at God for her misfortune. Upon realizing she’s pregnant, Maya’s buoyed by the renewed sense of connection to her late husband and regains hope. Things get complicated, though, when she bonds with her tall, selfless neighbor Eben Miller, with whom she discusses faith, his family struggles, and her heartbreak. Unsure what to do with such feelings only months after losing her husband, Maya wrestles with what it means to start over and rediscover happiness. Snelling paints a richly detailed historical backdrop and perceptively renders the tension between Maya’s competing senses of loss and hope. Bolstered by plot threads carried over from previous installments, this immersive outing will satisfy series fans and new readers alike. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

A stalled bookmobile sparks unlikely chemistry between a bubbly librarian and a curmudgeonly mechanic in this charming contemporary from Monzon (Checking Out Love). Since receiving a liver transplant at 12, Hayley Holt has been determined to “pay it forward.” Now 29, she’s eager to start her library’s bookmobile program serving nearby rural areas of Tennessee. Problems begin on her very first run when the bookmobile’s engine quits and a rockslide blocks her return route. The local mechanic—tall, stoic Levi Redding—says she’ll have to wait until the road’s cleared and begrudgingly invites her to stay in his spare room until then. Things get off to a rough start: Hayley’s constant chatter irritates Levi, whose sensory issues make it hard for him to spend extended periods of time with people. The pair begin communicating via letters left around the house, leading Levi to share more about his sensory processing challenges and Hayley to open up about her survivor’s guilt, faith struggles, and fears of needing a new transplant. Despite some clichéd prose (“Her future no longer had to be shadowed by ominous dark clouds”), the letters add a charmingly old-fashioned twist to the grumpy/sunshine trope. Bookworms will find the balance of heart and humor hard to resist. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

A quiet town is shaken by buried family secrets and clashes with Englisch culture in the engrossing latest installment in the Amish of Shepherd’s Hill series from Johns (after Green Pastures). Twenty-one-year-old Beth Peachy has returned to the small Pennsylvania Amish community to help prepare her grandmother’s house for sale. While there, Beth hopes to dredge up more information about her recently deceased father, whose childhood has always been a tightly guarded secret. Her grandmother wants to clear her conscience before she dies, but her dementia makes Beth’s pursuit of answers challenging. As Beth discovers clues about her father’s childhood in her research on the town and its mysterious lake, which her grandmother keeps warning her to avoid, she chafes against the restrictions of Amish life. Still, her growing feelings for local shopkeeper Danny Lapp push her to rethink what she’s willing to sacrifice for love. Beth’s quest to uncover her father’s roots propels the narrative forward and provides its emotional core, while threads from the previous books (veterinarian Tabitha Schrock’s efforts to fit in, Danny’s brother’s Zach quibbles with the Amish faith) will keep series fans turning pages. The result is a charming and captivating glimpse at small-town Amish life. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

A young woman in 19th-century England grapples with memory loss in this riveting historical from Linder (When Tomorrow Came). Meg Foxcroft has just decided to marry longtime beau Tom McGwen when strangers break into her uncle’s apothecary and attack her, causing injuries that erase all her memories. She’s rescued by Benedict Cunningham, a wealthy lord who invites her to recover at his sprawling estate. A brokenhearted Tom finally tracks her down, but Meg wants nothing to do with the apparent stranger. Her new high-society life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, however, and when she becomes the target of several more attacks she seeks comfort in Tom. The more she gets to know her even-keeled ex, the more she understands why she’d been drawn to him in the first place, but with evidence emerging that Meg is entangled in a much-larger conspiracy, they’ll need to draw on their faith to protect themselves while planning a future together. Linder weaves a taut mystery into a sizzling romance, and brings Meg’s sense of disorientation to life with vivid prose (following the attack, she feels “empty, hollow, like a book ripped of all its pages”). This addictive Regency romance has thrills to spare. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Farnsworth (The Curator’s Secret) kicks off the Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush series with an animated romance set in a bustling 19th-century Southern town brimming with thieves and double-crossers. Genny Gillbard, known as the Songbird of Auraria, spends her days crooning at local saloons for money and dodging the advances of her guardian, Charles Martin, the wealthy mine owner to whom her father entrusted her when he died. After Genny discovers Charles is hatching a plan to steal gold from a rival mine—potentially risking Genny being kidnapped by the mine’s owners as payback—she tries to escape on horseback, but falls and breaks her leg on surveyor Jesse Holden’s land. Jesse offers to hide Genny in his cabin and temporarily marry her to change her legal status as Charles’s ward. She reluctantly agrees, and they slowly bond over their faith and emotional scars, including the death of Jesse’s wife and Genny’s unstable childhood. But Charles and his minions won’t let Genny go so easily, and Jesse ’s forced to take desperate measures to keep her safe. While the gold-stealing scheme can be tough to keep track of, tense action scenes and tender romance carry the layered plot to its satisfying conclusion. Fans of high-stakes romantic historicals will be swept up. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/22/2025 | Details & Permalink

Todd (Even If We Cry) delivers a pulse-pounding tale of survival at sea during WWII. Withdrawn 41-year-old piano teacher Mary Cornish is an unlikely candidate for wartime heroics, but when her reverend encourages her to apply for a program seeking adults to accompany children out of war-torn England to Canada, she finds unexpected purpose in the task. In September 1940, Mary boards the SS City of Benares and quickly bonds with the 15 young girls in her charge. But when the ship’s torpedoed by Nazis, Mary is separated from the girls and stranded on a lifeboat with ailing Father O’Sullivan and six young boys. As the days tick by without rescue—and as their food and water supplies dwindle and storms threaten to overturn the boat—Mary leans on her faith and the swashbuckling stories of Bulldog Drummond, an adventure-seeking WWI veteran who first appeared the novels of H.C. McNeile, to raise her charges’ spirits. Based on documents written by people connected with the real-life sinking of the Benares, including diary entries from the children’s parents, the novel adeptly blends suspense and emotional depth as Mary struggles with her faith amid the cruelties of war. Fans of historical fiction will be rapt. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/22/2025 | Details & Permalink

Shepard Gray (B Is for Bonnet) returns to the quiet community of Walden, Ohio, for this touching entry in the Amish ABCs series. Levelheaded Beth Schrock, formerly a high-powered real estate agent, is staying with her Amish grandparents in Walden after getting pregnant following a drunken night with an old friend. Restless and eager to take her mind off things, she volunteers at a local candle-making factory run by John “Junior” Lambright. Though the chemistry between the two is instant, the situation’s anything but easy—rumors about the pair fly around town, plus Beth blames herself for her pregnancy and thinks Junior would be making a mistake by getting involved with her. Meanwhile, in a story line continued from the previous books, Beth’s older brother, Martin, has decided the Amish life isn’t for him but isn’t willing to give up on his love for devout Patti Coblentz. Despite a few minor plot holes, Shepard Gray unfurls a layered narrative that probes love, obligation, and forgiveness against the backdrop of culture clashes between Amish and Englisch. Series fans will be satisfied. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/15/2025 | Details & Permalink