Sweet romance with Zoe McCarthy

The Putting Green Whisperer

Zoe M McCarthy

White Rose Publishing

September, 2018

Ebook $5.99

Print $15.99

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Suddenly unemployed, petite and peppery Allie Masterson returns home to Cary, North Carolina to caddy for her father on the PGA Seniors Tour. There, she encounters Shoo Leonard.

The easygoing caddy drives Allie insane, but Shoo's uncanny ability to read the contours of the greens and his determination to overcome a personal hand injury, fascinate Allie. She finds herself agreeing use her sport science degree to become his trainer... and then she falls for him.

Shoo Leonard is grateful to Allie for her singular determination to get him ready for the PGA tour, but he isn't ready for anything more. Still raw from a broken engagement and focused on his career, he's content to be her fist-bumping buddy...but then he falls for her. What seems like a happily-ever-after on the horizon takes a turn when Allie decides she's become a distraction to Shoo's career. Is it time for her to step away or can the putting green whisperer find the right words to make her stay?

My review:

McCarthy’s latest novel digs into the lives of professional golfers and their caddies. When teens reunite as adults, sparks fly all over the place, and not all from romance.

Allie has finished college but has a lot of growing up to do. She’s quick to leap to conclusions about her family and her friends, and especially her faith. Shoo Leonard, nicknamed by his friends as a sure contender in the world of professional golf, is a man of deep faith and commitment. He’s watched what professional golf has done to take apart his family, and doesn’t want the same fate.

Allie and Shoo meet again as caddies on the senior golf tour, and learn they have a mutual passion—Allie to help golfers as a trainer, and Shoo to recover from an accident which might prevent him from realizing his dream. But their personal baggage is a lot to stumble over as their friendship develops.

When Allie realizes that so much of the hurt she’s bottled since her mother’s death was based on false assumptions, she has decisions to make. When clueless Shoo is whapped upside the head with the truth about relationships, his own choices challenge his commitment to his career.

I appreciate learning new things. I’m not a golfer, but I am fascinated by certain aspects of the sport and the role it’s played in other books I’ve read. While I also love that the author doesn’t try to complicate the story by adding useless details other golfers understand, I admit that any technicalities were lost on me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the story—a romance is a romance. I liked the interplay between the characters, the camaraderie and rivalry, and learning that glamour doesn’t always trickle down.

The story is told in alternating voice between the main characters, showing their foibles and miscommunications. Recommended for those who enjoy contemporary clean romances, and especially those who are familiar with golf.

Merry Christmas!

Sunnys Dream with Mary Ball

Sunny’s Dream

Mary L. Ball

Contemporary Christian Romantic Suspense

Forget-Me-Not Romances, December 2017

Kindle: $2.99

Print: $7.47

Buy on Amazon

About the Book

“Sunny’s Dream,” Celestial Investigation, book one.

A Christian romantic suspense based on three sisters. Their P.I. skills come in handy in the quaint town of Mercy, North Carolina, a place where romance and mystery unite.

Sunny Kast spends her week fighting cyber-crime, and dreaming of her prince charming.

When a man walks into Celestial Investigations and introduces himself as Trouble, she’s sure he’s not her prince and positive that he lives up to his name.

After Max Trouble finds an important document, his life gets complicated with the know-it-all P.I. hired to track down its owner.

Sunny and Max’s relationship grows. She’s optimistic that he may be her prince charming, but after her car is sabotaged, and she’s almost killed Max’s chauvinist ideas of a female investigator surface.

Will she see God’s perfect plan, or a not-so-perfect relationship?

Mary, tell us what you love about this book.

This is my first series. I liked creating novellas about three feisty sisters who run an investigating firm. 

Share two things you learned while writing this book.

I learned a lot about poisonings, LOL and requirements needed to be an investigator in NC.

What can you tell us about the series?

It’s a Christian suspense about three sisters in a small town who deal with the same shortcomings all sisters do and ban together to solve crimes.  

What do you hope readers will tell others when they've finished the book?

That they enjoyed the series.         

What are you reading now?

Lessons from David- How to be a Giant Killer by Andrew Wommack. I have a whole shelf of fiction TBR’s I need to tackle.

About the Author

Mary L. Ball is a multi-published Christian author. She lives in North Carolina and enjoys fishing,

reading, and ministering in song with her hubby at functions. Her books are about small-town romance, suspense, and mystery, influenced by the grace of Jesus Christ.  

   

Readers can check out her titles at: https://www.amazon.com/Mary-L-Ball/e/B007O97Y0E

Connect on:

http://www.marylball.com

https://www.facebook.com/gracefulbooks

https://twitter.com/inspires4mary

Rose Colored Christmas with Mary Ball

Rose Colored Christmas

Mary L. Ball

Christian novelette, 107 pp

Contemporary romance

Forget-Me-Not Romances, August 2018

About the Book

Young widow Emilee Arnold enjoys her freelance web design, teaching Sunday school Christmas. She’s content until she rescues a pilot from a burning plane and is snowed in with her very own scrooge. 

Gabe King specializes in flying corporate groups. He claims to be an easy-going guy, until Emilee challenges his lifestyle and his heart.

Emilee can’t stop her attraction to Gabe but his dislike for Christmas is the one thing she can’t get passed.

Can Emilee help to make her very own Christmas miracle? 

Kindle: $2.99

Print: $5.97

Buy on Amazon   

Mary, tell us what you love about this book.

I enjoyed plotting the story around Christmas and bringing Gabe back to a place where he can enjoy holidays’ again.

      

Do you prefer novellas to full-length works or vice versa? Why?

Novellas. Life is busy, I just don’t have time to read a 300 page novel. I guess my passion for reading shorter works rubbed off into my writing, I like creating novellas too.

    

What was the easiest aspect of telling this story?

Christmas makes us excited for new possibilities. I enjoyed Emilee’s expectations for the holidays.

    

What did you learn during your research?

A lot about private planes. J

   

What's your favorite Christmas tradition in your family?

I enjoy watching movies where families have a tradition. Our family never had one. Each year seems to present a unique situation, which requires adjustments for us to get together, it’s been hard to carry any customs over to the next year.

  

About the Author

Mary L. Ball is a multi-published Christian author. She lives in North Carolina and enjoys fishing, reading, and ministering in song with her hubby at functions. Her books are about small-town romance, suspense, and mystery, influenced by the grace of Jesus Christ.    

  

Readers can check out her titles at: https://www.amazon.com/Mary-L-Ball/e/B007O97Y0E

Connect on:

http://www.marylball.com

https://www.facebook.com/gracefulbooks

https://twitter.com/inspires4mary

One day book shopping spree!

ONE DAY ONLY!

One day special promotion of Holiday Books for that last-minute shopping. Even E-books can be great stocking-stuffers! Visit http://robinsnest212.wordpress.com 

TODAY Wednesday December 19 

for a browsing experience of only the best in clean holiday fiction.

Forgetting the Scot New from Jennifer Trethewey

Forgetting the Scot

The Highlanders of Balforss Book 3

Jennifer Trethewey

Historical Romance, serial

Entangled

released October 22, 2018

$3.99 eBook

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About the Book:

Virginia Whitebridge is trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage. The law says her husband can have whatever he wants from her—so he's taken her inheritance. And he tried to kill her. After a close escape, Virginia feels protected for the first time in forever, thanks to the Scottish Highlands and the Highlander Magnus Sinclair. But she must go back to England, regardless of the danger, to reclaim what's hers. Even if it means leaving her heart in Scotland.

It's just Magnus's luck that he's fallen for a woman he can't have. Virginia is rich and titled... and English. To keep her safe, he must follow her to the one place he loathes—England. Where the bowing, preening London Society has a secret language of manners unknown to him. Where he is too large, too uncivilized, too everything.

Despite omens that death awaits him there, Magnus vows to help Virginia go to London and restore her fortune. Get in. Get out. Or die trying.

My review:

The Sinclair clan Highland Scots save a pirate crew’s captured women, one of them Declan Sinclair’s bride. Another Sinclair is about to fall. Magnus, a cousin raised in part by clan patriarch, Laird John, respects his uncle, but when Magnus, the least tamed of the Sinclairs, does more than make passes at a lass in glasses, even Laird John can’t talk sense or manners into his nephew. Especially since the lass is so inviting.

In the most bawdy tale in the series, Magnus and Virginia, the much-abused wife of a truly evil English viscount and who has no support from her greedy father and equally despicable aunt, find true lust and impossible love. Magnus might have trouble keeping his kilt in check, but his heart and sense of nobility are truly in the right place as he vows to do anything, even disobeying his uncle, to ensure his soulmate’s safety and her heart’s desire to benefit the needy.

I enjoyed returning to this unruly but talented and dedicated clan with their high dreams, camaraderie and work ethic. A few loose ends with story elements introduced then left drifting kept me noodling over them after I’d finished the book. I don’t want to give anything away by mentioning them, and perhaps most readers won’t be bothered. Told from Magnus’s and Virginia’s perspectives, this highland adventure is full of chases, fellowship, angst, and charm. It also includes pretty hot sensuality which is a little different from the first two books.

About the Author:

Hi, I'm Jennifer Trethewey and I write about men in kilts because, hey, what's not to love about a man in a kilt? I was lucky enough to travel to Scotland twice. I'm planning a third trip next year. I have fallen in love with the Highlands and all things Scottish: the people, their language, cuisine, customs, idioms, humor, history, intense sense of pride, and, most of all, the land--the perfect setting for sweeping romantic tales of love, strife, and glory. As they say, Scotland is pure dead brilliant! 

As for more personal stuff, I'm an actress, former co-artistic director of a professional theater company, and my husband and I operate an improv comedy club. I live with my comedian husband in the Midwest where I've been ever since college. 

I write both contemporary and historical fiction full time. I like to read romance, mystery, fantasy, and paranormal, as well as literary fiction and non-fiction. As you can imagine, I'm a big fan of Outlander and Herself. I adore traveling to new places (but I hate flying). I love movies and music and dogs and good wine and I love to enjoy them all with my friends.

Keely Brooke Keith Uncharted Journey

Uncharted Journey

Book 6 in the Uncharted Land series

Keely Brooke Keith

Romantic sci fi fiction

Edenbrooke Press

released November 9, 2018

$12.99 print

$3.99 eBook

Buy on Amazon 

About the Book

Eva and Solo find love at The Inn at Falls Creek, while Bailey’s quest to reach the Land costs her everything.

Young widow Eva Vestal assumes loneliness is God’s permanent plan for her life. She keeps busy by raising her son and co-managing the Inn at Falls Creek with her elderly father, but her heart yearns for more.

Solomon “Solo” Cotter has spent his life working with horses, but he secretly wants to write a book of the children’s stories his grandfather told him as a boy. He barters with Eva’s father for a 40-night stay at the inn, a needed respite from work to get his stories on paper.

Once Eva discovers the barter, she believes Solo is taking advantage of her father’s failing memory. But when tragedy strikes and Solo works hard to save the inn, Eva sees his true nature. As her heart stirs with feelings for Solo, she wrestles with the guilt of loving someone new.

Meanwhile, outside the Land...

Bailey Colburn arrives at the coordinates of the Land on the autumn equinox and finds nothing but ocean. The sun sets, ending Bailey’s dream of a safe and simple life with the family she’s never known. Just when she decides Justin Mercer lied about visiting a hidden land in the South Atlantic Ocean and meeting Bailey’s distant relatives, the atmosphere around the boat changes and ushers her into an uncharted world, but her entrance into the Land comes at a devastating price.

Uncharted Journey weaves past and future in this inspirational story of life in a hidden land. There is always room for you at the Colburns’ house in the quaint village of Good Springs. Join the Colburn family as they discover their purpose, find love, and protect the Land. Read Uncharted Journey today.

My review

Uncharted Journey picks up the thread of post-apocalyptic Earth and one young woman’s desperation to find her roots and escape a violent and hopeless life. Trouble is…the family she seeks disappeared two hundred years ago and the only evidence is from a crazy man asking her to catalog a plant that can’t exist. Even worse…Bailey discovers this plant has properties worth killing for.

Bailey convinces her former professor to connect with his nephew who runs a charter boat service. The crazy man’s directions are even loonier—to find this place where the impossible plant exists is to head way south and wait on only one day of the year, the fall equinox, when this island appears like Brigadoon. Imagine her surprise when it works.

Arrival is a shock to both Bailey’s crewmates and the security team of Good Springs, who include a former pilot who had arrived at the Uncharted Land some years earlier and made it his home. One of the initial security party members is a young man in training named Revel who is new to the area.

The parallel Land story is that of Revel’s widowed sister, Eva, who is left as the oldest daughter to run the family business in a society whose traditions over seven generations decrees the son follow his father’s trade. In Revel and Eva’s case, that’s the Inn, a business out in the middle of nowhere, in which Revel has no interest, but a long-term guest, Solomon, discovers he’d rather be nowhere else. Eva has a way to go before she can corral her fears for her ailing family members, their livelihood which affects her ability to raise her young son, and her lonely heart.

It’s a brave new era in the Land Uncharted, when young people are breaking out of the customs of mid-nineteenth-century-era American colonialism and finding their own way. Women can become doctors, run businesses, even wear pants, and sons are choosing their own careers.

 

About the Author

Keely Brooke Keith writes inspirational frontier-style fiction with a slight Sci-Fi twist, including The Land Uncharted (Shelf Unbound Notable Romance 2015) and Aboard Providence (2017 INSPY Awards Longlist). Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Keely was a tree-climbing, baseball-loving 80s kid. She grew up in a family who moved often, which fueled her dreams of faraway lands. When she isn't writing, Keely enjoys teaching home school lessons and playing bass guitar. Keely, her husband, and their daughter live on a hilltop south of Nashville, Tennessee.