Spotlight: My Darling Husband by Kimberly Belle

Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological

352 pages

Bestselling author of DEAR WIFE and THE MARRIAGE LIE, Kimberly Belle returns with her most heart-pounding thriller to date, as a masked home invader reveals the cracks in a marriage.

Everyone is about to know what her husband isn’t telling her…

Jade and Cam Lasky are by all accounts a happily married couple with two adorable kids, a spacious home and a rapidly growing restaurant business. But their world is tipped upside down when Jade is confronted by a masked home invader. As Cam scrambles to gather the ransom money, Jade starts to wonder if they’re as financially secure as their lifestyle suggests, and what other secrets her husband is keeping from her.
Cam may be a good father, a celebrity chef and a darling husband, but there’s another side he’s kept hidden from Jade that has put their family in danger. Unbeknownst to Cam and Jade, the home invader has been watching them and is about to turn their family secrets into a public scandal.
With riveting twists and a breakneck pace, My Darling Husband is an utterly compelling thriller that once again showcases Kimberly Belle's exceptional talent for domestic suspense.

Excerpt

Jade

3:18 pm 

I see the black figure in the shadows, and my first thought is of the kids, an immediate, full-throttle alarm that comes on like a freight train. This is parenthood in a nutshell: utter terror for your children’s welfare, always. It’s something Cam and I never thought about back when we were trying to get pregnant—the overwhelming insecurity when the doctor settled our babies into our arms, the unrelenting worry whenever they’re not near. I spot movement and I reach for them at the same time—instant and instinctual. My brain identifies a person, a male-sized form that does not belong here, and I shove their little bodies behind mine. 

A man, looming in my garage. Breathing the same air. 

I don’t move. I can’t. No fight. No flight. I just stand here, transfixed, dumbstruck, stock-still. 

I think of my phone, buried under the mail and trash in my bag. I think of the panic button on the alarm pad in the house, on the other end of a breezeway and tucked safely behind a locked door. I think of my keys, next to my phone. Even if I managed to get us out of this garage, where would we go? I’d never make it inside the house, and the backyard is fenced, the gates either electronic or secured with a complicated, child-safe latch. There’s nowhere to escape.

“Don’t move. Stay quiet and I won’t hurt you.” 

The voice is so frighteningly close. Hoarse, rattling in air hot with my sticky fear, and I don’t believe a single word. Especially not when he steps closer, and I get a better look. The man is wearing a mask. He’s holding a gun, a stubby black thing in a fist. Head-to-toe black, every bit of him covered, even his hands. His fingertips. 

Run. I scream the word in my head, urging myself on. Grab the children and run. 

Now.

A chill races down my spine. The hairs soldier on my skin. 

This man is here to hurt me. To hurt us.

And still I can’t move. 

So this is it, then. This is how my body responds when faced with sudden fright, with this hot, sluggish horror—like when your fingers brush over a strange lump under your armpit and you realize your life has veered sideways. Some people run. Others scream. Me, I just stand here, paralyzed by the mounting terror. 

The kids, too. They stare at him with big, frightened eyes. A little hand grabs my pants leg.

“Please,” I somehow manage to squeak, but I can’t finish. Please don’t touch the children. Please don’t shoot us. The words are too horrifying to say out loud.

He moves closer, his gait smooth but there’s something sinister in the way he’s walking across the concrete floor. He’s like an animal on the hunt, joints loose, ready to pounce. All dangerous, coiled energy lurking just below the surface. 

“Take my car.” I hold out my bag, a stupidly expensive designer thing from a couple years ago. “The keys are in here somewhere, and so’s my wallet. I—”

“I don’t want your purse. Don’t want your car, either.” His voice is deep and scratchy, the kind that sounds filled with cigarette smoke. 

My stomach spirals, and I search his face for more, but the parts of him I can see—his lips, his eyes—are closed off. I search for something recognizable, something human I can appeal to, but there’s nothing. It’s like searching for meaning on a covered canvas. 

Still, I take in every detail I can see and commit them to memory. Just under six foot, medium build, broad shouldered. Caucasian. I know this from his eyes, olive green and flecked with amber, the pink patch of skin around his mouth. His teeth are white and straight, the kind of straight that comes from braces. 

“Do you want money? I don’t have cash, but take my card. My pin is 4-3-0-8.”

“Jade. Shh.”

My name on his tongue tightens a knot of panic in my gut, and I scurry—finally—backwards, putting some distance between me and this man, pushing the kids behind me and towards the door. 

Stay calm. 

Don’t panic.

Whatever happens, do not let the gunman in the house. That’s how people get killed. That’s how entire families end up in a pool of blood. As soon as you let the gunman into the house, you’re already dead. 

Excerpted from My Darling Husband @ 2021 by Kimberly S. Belle Books, LLC, used with permission by Park Row Books.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardcover | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author:

Kimberly Belle is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of seven novels, including her latest, My Darling Husband (December 2021). Her third novel, The Marriage Lie, was a semifinalist in the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Mystery & Thriller, and a #1 e-book bestseller in the UK and Italy. She’s sold rights to her books in a dozen languages as well as film and television options. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Belle divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

Connect:

Author website: https://www.kimberlybellebooks.com/

Facebook: @KimberlyBelleBooks

Twitter: @KimberlySBelle

Instagram: @kimberlysbelle

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/kimberlybelle 

Cover Reveal: The Gunslinger's Guide to Avoiding Matrimony by Michelle McLean

(Gunslinger, #2)
Published by: Entangled: Amara
Publication date: July 26th 2022
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Romance, Western

Synopsis:

This gunslinger has two rules, and he’s about to break both of them for her in this next installment of the laugh-out-loud western romcom from Michelle McLean.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

About the Author

Michelle McLean is a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl who is addicted to chocolate and Goldfish crackers and spent most of her formative years with her nose in a book. She has degrees in history and English and is thrilled that she sort of gets to use them. Her novel Truly, Madly, Sweetly, written as Kira Archer, was adapted as a Hallmark Original movie in 2018.

When Michelle’s not working, reading, or chasing her kids around, she can usually be found baking, diamond painting, or trying to find free wall space upon which to hang her diamond paintings. She resides in PA with her husband and two teens, the world’s most spoiled dog, and a cat who absolutely rules the house. She also writes contemporary romance as USA Today bestselling author Kira Archer.

For more info on Michelle and her work, please visit her website at michellemcleanbooks.com.

Connect:

https://michellemcleanbooks.com/

https://www.facebook.com/authormichellemclean

https://www.instagram.com/michellemcleanbooks/

https://twitter.com/michellemclean

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4253087.Michelle_McLean

Spotlight: Text and Confused by Whitney Dineen & Melanie Summers

Release Date: December 27

It's hate at first text. Or is it...?
 
I'm Toni Capella and I'm a bad-man-o-holic. (Hi, Toni!). If a guy lives on the eastern seaboard, is covered in tattoos, muscles, and motor oil, I've probably already dated and dumped him. But it's a new year and for the first time in my twenty-nine years I'm determined to attract Mr. Right. I'm doing this by changing my type and my look.
 
So when super-hot contractor Cooper Flint walks into my office, I immediately put him on my 'no way' list. He embodies every bad boy trait there is. Besides, my eye is on another new co-worker, Somner Livingston. Handsome, well-heeled, and professional, Somner is nothing like my usual type, which I assume makes him perfect for me.
 
Determined to take things slowly for once, I insist Somner and I keep our budding relationship separate from work. I even suggest we do our initial courting via text while we get to know each other better. Things are going beautifully and just when I'm starting to think he's 'the one,' I find out there's been a horrible mix-up. My boss accidentally gave me Cooper's number, not Somner's, and I'm falling for Mr. Wrong, again.
 
Unfortunately, after I break it off with Cooper, I discover that Somner isn't the good guy he portrays himself to be. When Cooper rescues me from a compromising situation, I belatedly realize I might be been missing out on the man of my dreams.
 
Have I lost my chance at true happiness or is there someway I can convince Cooper I'm the woman he needs?

*** All books in the series read as standalones.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback

Meet Whitney Dineen:

Whitney Dineen is a rock star in her own head. While delusional about her singing abilities, there’s been a plethora of validation that she’s a fairly decent author (AMAZING!!!). After winning many writing awards and selling nearly a kabillion books (math may not be her forte, either), she’s decided to let the voices in her head say whatever they want (sorry, Mom). She also won a fourth-place ribbon in a fifth-grade swim meet in backstroke. So, there’s that.

Whitney loves to play with her kids (a.k.a. dazzle them with her amazing flossing abilities), bake stuff, eat stuff, and write books for people who “get” her. She thinks french fries are the perfect food and Mrs. Roper is her spirit animal.

Connect with Whitney Dineen:

https://whitneydineen.com/

Meet Melanie Summers:

I got SUPER lucky and my first novel, Break in Two, a steamy contemporary romance cracked the Top 10 Paid on Amazon in both the UK and Canada, and the top 50 Paid in the USA. My Full Hearts Series was then picked up by both Piatkus Entice (a division of Hachette UK) and HarperCollins Canada. 

My first three books have been translated into Czech and Slovak by EuroMedia. Since 2013, I've written and published sixteen novels and three novellas (and counting). I've sold over a quarter of a million books around the globe, and received two Bronze Medals at the Readers’ Favorite Award in the Chick Lit Category for The Royal Treatment (2018) and Whisked Away (2019), and one Silver Medal at the Readers' Favorite Awards in the Women's Fiction Category for The After Wife (2019).

Not bad for a newbie, eh?

I'm from Edmonton, Canada, where I live with my taller half, our three 'spirited' children (such a nice word to describe the chaos, no?). We also share our home with the cuddliest no-eyed dog ever, Lucy, and a furry Cuban dictator named Nelson. When I'm not writing, I love reading (obviously), snuggling up on the couch with the gang for movie night (which would not be complete without lots of popcorn and milkshakes), and long walks in the woods near my house.

I also spend a lot more time thinking about doing yoga than actually doing it, which is why any authorized photos of me are taken ‘from above’.

Oh, and I also love shutting down restaurants with my girlfriends. Well, not literally shutting them down, like calling the health inspector or something. More like just staying until they turn the lights off.

Connect with Melanie Summers:

https://www.melaniesummersbooks.com 

Spotlight: The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Publication Date: January 18, 2022

Publisher: MIRA Books

From one of America’s most beloved storytellers, #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard, comes the gripping novel of a mother who must help her son after he is convicted of a devastating crime. Perfect for book clubs and fans of Mary Beth Keane and Jodi Picoult—this novel asks the question, how well does any mother know her child?

For Thea, understanding how her sweet son Stefan could be responsible for a heinous crime is unfathomable. Stefan was only 17 when he went to prison for the negligent homicide of girlfriend, college freshman Belinda McCormack—a crime he was too strung out on drugs even to remember. Released at 21, he is seen as a symbol of white privilege and differential justice by his local community, and Belinda’s mother, Jill McCormack, who also happens to be Thea’s neighbor, organizes protests against dating violence in her daughter's memory.

Stefan is sincere in his desire to start over and make amends, and Thea is committed to helping him.  But each of their attempts seems to hit a roadblock, both emotionally and psychologically, from the ever-present pressure of local protestors, the media, and even their own family.

But when the attacks on them turn more sinister, Thea suspects that there is more to the backlash than community outrage. She will risk her life to find out what forces are at work to destroy her son and her family…and discover what those who are threatening them are trying to hide.

This is a story in which everything known to be true is turned inside out and love is the only constant that remains.

Excerpt

1

I was picking my son up at the prison gates when I spotted the mother of the girl he had murdered.

Two independent clauses, ten words each, joined by an adverb, made up entirely of words that would once have been unimaginable to think, much less say.

She pulled in—not next to me, but four spaces over—in the half circle of fifteen-minute spots directly in front of the main building. It was not where Stefan would walk out. That would be over at the gatehouse. She got out of her car, and for a moment I thought she would come toward me. I wanted to talk to her, to offer something, to reach out and hold her, for we had not even been able to attend Belinda’s funeral. But what would I say? What would she? This was an unwonted crease in an already unaccustomed day. I slid deep into my down coat, and wished I could lock the car doors, although I feared that the sound would crack the predawn darkness like a rifle shot. All that Jill McCormack did, however, was shove her hands into the pockets of her jacket and lean against the back bumper of her car. She wore the heavy maroon leather varsity jacket that her daughter Belinda, captain of the high school cheer team in senior year, had given to her, to Stefan, and to me, with our names embroidered in gold on the back, just like hers.

I hadn’t seen Jill McCormack up close for years, though she lived literally around the corner. Once, I used to stop there to sit on her porch, but now I avoided even driving past the place.

Jill seemed smaller, diminished, the tumult of ash-blond hair I remembered cropped short and seemingly mostly white, though I knew she was young when Belinda was born, and now couldn’t be much past forty. Yet, even just to stand in the watery, slow-rising light in front of a prison, she was tossed together fashionably, in gold-colored jeans and boots, with a black turtleneck, a look I would have had to plan for days. She looked right at my car, but gave no sign that she recognized it, though she’d been in it dozens of times years ago. Once she had even changed her clothes in my car. I remember how I stood outside it holding a blanket up over the windows as she peeled off a soaking-wet, floor-length, jonquil-yellow crystal-beaded evening gown that must, at that point, have weighed about thirty pounds, then slipped into a clean football warm-up kit. After she changed, we linked arms with my husband and we all went to a ball.

But I would not think of that now.

I had spent years assiduously not thinking of any of that.

A friendship, like a crime, is not one thing, or even two people. It’s two people and their shared environs and their histories, their common memories, their words, their weaknesses and fears, their virtues and vanities, and sometimes their shame.

Jill was not my closest friend. Some craven times, I blessed myself with that—at least I was spared that. There had always been Julie, since fifth grade my heart, my sharer. But Jill was my good friend. We had been soccer moms together, and walking buddies, although Jill’s swift, balanced walk was my jog. I once kept Belinda at my house while Jill went to the bedside of her beloved father who’d suffered a stroke, just as she kept Stefan at her house with Belinda when they were seven and both had chicken pox, which somehow neither I nor my husband, Jep, ever caught. And on the hot night of that fundraising ball for the zoo, so long ago, she had saved Stefan’s life.

Since Jill was a widow when we first met, recently arrived in the Midwest from her native North Carolina, I was always talking her into coming to events with Jep and me, introducing her to single guys who immediately turned out to be hopeless. That hot evening, along with the babysitter, the two kids raced toward the new pool, wildly decorated with flashing green lights, vines and temporary waterfalls for a “night jungle swim.” Suddenly, the sitter screamed. When Jill was growing up, she had been state champion in the 200-meter backstroke before her devout parents implored her to switch to the more modest sport of golf, and Belinda, at five, was already a proficient swimmer. My Stefan, on the other hand, sank to the bottom like a rock and never came up. Jill didn’t stop to ask questions. Kicking off her gold sandals, in she went, an elegant flat race dive that barely creased the surface; seconds later she hauled up a gasping Stefan. Stefan owed his life to her as surely as Belinda owed her death to Stefan.

In seconds, life reverses.

Jill and I once talked every week. It even seemed we once might have been machatunim, as they say in Yiddish, parents joined by the marriage of their son and daughter. Now, the circumstances under which we might ever exchange a single word seemed as distant as the bony hood of moon above us in the melting darkness.

What did she want here now? Would she leave once Stefan came through the gates? In fact, she left before that. She got back into her car, and, looking straight ahead, drove off.

I watched until her car was out of sight.

Just after dawn, a guard walked Stefan to the edge of the enclosure. I looked up at the razor wire. Then, opening the window slightly, I heard the guard say, “Do good, kid. I hope I never see you again.” Stefan stepped out, and then put his palm up to a sky that had just begun to spit snow. He was twenty, and he had served two years, nine months and three days of a five-year sentence, one year of which the judge had suspended, noting Stefan’s unblemished record. Still, it seemed like a week; it seemed like my entire life; it seemed like a length of time too paltry for the monstrous thing he had done. I could not help but reckon it this way: For each of the sixty or seventy years Belinda would have had left to live, Stefan spent only a week behind bars, not even a season. No matter how much he despaired, he could always see the end. Was I grateful? Was I ashamed? I was both. Yet relief rippled through me like the sweet breeze that stirs the curtains on a summer night.

I got out and walked over to my son. I reached up and put my hand on his head. I said, “My kid.”

Stefan placed his huge warm palm on the top of my head. “My mom,” he said. It was an old ritual, a thing I would not have dared to do in the prison visiting room. My eyes stung with curated tears. Then I glanced around me, furtively. Was I still permitted such tender old deeds? This new universe was not showing its hand. “I can stand here as long as I want,” he said, shivering in wonderment. Then he said, “Where’s Dad?”

“He told you about it. He had to see that kid in Louisville one more time,” I told him reluctantly. “The running back with the very protective grandmother. He couldn’t get out of it. But he cut it short and he’ll be home when we get back, if he beats the weather out of Kentucky this morning, that is.” Jep was in only his second season as football coach at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, a Division II team with significant chops and national esteem. We didn’t really think he would get the job, given our troubles, but the athletic director had watched Jep’s career and believed deeply in his integrity. Now he was never at rest: His postseason recruiting trips webbed the country. Yet it was also true that while Stefan’s father longed equally for his son to be free, if Jep had been able to summon the words to tell the people who mattered that he wanted to skip this trip altogether, he would have. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it’s a big day, our son’s getting out of prison.

Now, it seemed important to hurry Stefan to the car, to get out of there before this new universe recanted. We had a long drive back from Black Creek, where the ironically named Belle Colline Correctional Facility squatted not far from the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Black Creek. Stefan’s terrible journey had taken him from college to prison, a distance of just two miles as the crow flies. I felt like the guard: I never wanted to see the place again. I had no time to think about Jill or anything else except the weather. We’d hoped that the early-daylight release would keep protestors away from the prison gates, and that seemed to have worked: Prisoners usually didn’t walk out until just before midday. There was not a single reporter here, which surprised me as Jill was tireless in keeping her daughter Belinda’s death a national story, a symbol for young women in abusive relationships. Many of the half dozen or so stalwarts who still picketed in front of our house nearly every day were local college and high-school girls, passionate about Jill’s work. As Stefan’s release grew near, their numbers rose, even as the outdoor temperatures fell. A few news organizations put in appearances again lately as well. I knew they would be on alert today and was hoping we could beat some of the attention by getting back home early. In the meantime, a snowstorm was in the forecast: I never minded driving in snow, but the air smelled of water running over iron ore—a smell that always portended worse weather.

Excerpted from The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Copyright © 2022 by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardcover | Bookshop.org

About the Author

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard has written nine previous novels for adults; six young adult novels; four children’s books; a memoir, Mother Less Child; and a collection of essays, The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, and later adapted for a feature film. Mitchard is a frequent lecturer and a professor of fiction and creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children.

Connect:

Author Website

Facebook: Jacquelyn Mitchard

Twitter: @JackieMitchard

Instagram: @jacquelynmitchard

Goodreads

Spotlight: Sisters of the Great War by Suzanne Feldman

Publication Date: October 26, 2021

Publisher: MIRA Books

Two sisters. The Great War looming. A chance to shape their future.

Sisters Ruth and Elise Duncan could never have anticipated volunteering for the war effort. But in 1914, the two women decide to make the harrowing journey from Baltimore to Ypres, Belgium in order to escape the suffocating restrictions placed on them by their father and carve a path for their own future.

Smart and practical Ruth is training as a nurse but dreams of becoming a doctor. In a time when women are restricted to assisting men in the field, she knows it will take great determination to prove herself, and sets out to find the one person who always believed in her: a handsome army doctor from England. For quiet Elise, joining the all female Ambulance Corps means a chance to explore her identity, and come to terms with the growing attraction she feels towards women. Especially the charming young ambulance driver who has captured her heart.

In the twilight of the Old World and the dawn of the new, both young women come of age in the face bombs, bullets and the deadly futility of trench warfare. Together they must challenge the rules society has placed on them in order to save lives: both the soldiers and the people they love.’

Excerpt

1

Baltimore, Maryland

August 1914

Ruth Duncan fanned herself with the newspaper in the summer heat as Grandpa Gerald put up a British flag outside the house. If he’d had a uniform—of any kind—he would have worn it. People on the sidewalk paused and pointed, but Grandpa, still a proper English gent even after almost twenty years in the U.S., smoothed his white beard and straightened his waistcoat, ignoring the onlookers.

“That’s done,” he said.

Ruth’s own interest in the war was limited to what she read in the paper from across the dining table. Grandpa would snap the paper open before he ate breakfast. She could see the headlines and the back side of the last page, but not much more. Grandpa would grunt his appreciation of whatever was in-side, snort at what displeased him, and sometimes laugh. On the 12th of August, the headline in the Baltimore Sun read; France And Great Britain Declare War On Austria-Hungary, and Grandpa wasn’t laughing.

Cook brought in the morning mail and put it on the table next to Grandpa. She was a round, grey-haired woman who left a puff of flour behind her wherever she went.

“Letter from England, sir,” Cook said, leaving the envelope and a dusting of flour on the dark mahogany. She smiled at Ruth and left for the kitchen.

Grandpa tore the letter open.

Ruth waited while he read. It was from Richard and Diane Doweling, his friends in London who still wrote to him after all these years. They’d sent their son, John, to Harvard in Massachusetts for his medical degree. Ruth had never met John Doweling, but she was jealous of him, his opportunities, his apparent successes. The Dowelings sent letters whenever John won some award or other. No doubt this was more of the same. Ruth drummed her fingers on the table and eyed the dining room clock. In ten minutes, she would need to catch the trolley that would take her up to the Loyola College of Nursing, where she would be taught more of the things she had already learned from her father. The nuns at Loyola were dedicated nurses, and they knew what they were doing. Some were out-standing teachers, but others were simply mired in the medicine of the last century. Ruth was frustrated and bored, but Father paid her tuition, and what Father wanted, Father got. 

Ruth tugged at her school uniform—a white apron over a long white dress, which would never see a spot of blood. “What do they say, Grandpa?”

He was frowning. “John is enlisting. They’ve rushed his graduation at Harvard so he can go home and join the Royal Army Medical Corps.”

“How can they rush graduation?” Ruth asked. “That seems silly. What if he misses a class in, say, diseases of the liver?”

Grandpa folded the letter and looked up. “I don’t think he’ll be treating diseases of the liver on the battlefield. Anyway, he’s coming to Baltimore before he ships out.”

“Here?” said Ruth in surprise. “But why?”

“For one thing,” said Grandpa, “I haven’t seen him since he was three years old. For another, you two have a common interest.”

“You mean medicine?” Ruth asked. “Oh, Grandpa. What could I possibly talk about with him? I’m not even a nurse yet, and he’s—he’s a doctor.” She spread her hands. “Should we discuss how to wrap a bandage?”

“As long as you discuss something.” He pushed the letter across the table to her and got up. “You’ll be showing him around town.”

“Me?” said Ruth. “Why me?”

“Because your sister—” Grandpa nodded at Elise, just clumping down the stairs in her nightgown and bathrobe “—has dirty fingernails.” He started up the stairs. “Good morning, my dear,” he said. “Do you know what time it is?” “Uh huh,” Elise mumbled as she slumped into her seat at the table.

As Grandpa continued up the stairs Ruth called after him. “But when is he coming?”

“His train arrives Saturday at noon,” Grandpa shouted back. “Find something nice to wear. You too, Elise.”

Elise rubbed her eyes. “What’s going on?”

Ruth pushed the letter at her and got up to go. “Read it,” she said. “You’ll see.”

Ruth made her way down Thirty-Third Street with her heavy bookbag slung over one shoulder, heading for the trolley stop, four blocks away, on Charles. Summer classes were almost over, and as usual, the August air in Baltimore was impenetrably hot and almost unbreathable. It irritated Ruth to think that she would arrive at Loyola sweaty under her arms, her hair frizzed around her nurse’s cap from the humidity. The nuns liked neatness, modest decorum. Not perspiring young women who wished they were somewhere else.

Elise, Ruth thought, as she waited for a break in the noisy traffic on Charles Street, could’ve driven her in the motor-car, but no, she’d slept late. Her younger sister could do pretty much anything, it seemed, except behave like a girl. Elise, who had been able to take apart Grandpa’s pocket watch and put it back together when she was six years old, was a use-ful mystery to both Father and Grandpa. She could fix the car—cheaper than the expensive mechanics. , For some rea-son, Elise wasn’t obliged to submit to the same expectations as Ruth—she could keep her nails short and dirty. Ruth wondered, as she had since she was a girl, if it was her younger sister’s looks. She was a mirror image of their mother, who had died in childbirth with Elise. Did that make her special in Father’s eyes?

An iceman drove a sweating horse past her. The horse raised its tail, grunted, and dropped a pile of manure, rank in the heat, right in front of her, as though to auger the rest of her day. The iceman twisted in the cart to tip his hat. “Sorry Sister!”

Ruth let her breath out through her teeth. Maybe the truth of the matter was that she was the ‘sorry sister.’ It was at this exact corner that her dreams of becoming a doctor, to follow in her father’s footsteps, had been shot down. When she was ten, and the governess said she’d done well on her writing and math, she was allowed to start going along on Father’s house calls and help in his office downstairs. Father had let her do simple things at first; mix plaster while he positioned a broken ankle, give medicine to children with the grippe, but she watched everything he did and listened carefully. By the time she was twelve, she could give him a diagnosis, and she remembered her first one vividly, identifying a man’s abdominal pain as appendicitis.

“You did a good job,” Father had said to her, as he’d reined old Bess around this very corner. “You’ll make an excellent nurse one day.”

Ruth remembered laughing because she’d thought he was joking. Her father’s praise was like gold. “A nurse?” she’d said. “One day I’ll be a doctor, just like you!”

“Yes, a nurse,” he’d said firmly, without a hint of a smile. It was the tone he used for patients who wouldn’t take their medicine.

“But I want to be a doctor.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He hadn’t sounded sorry at all. “Girls don’t become doctors. They become nurses and wives. Tomorrow, if there’s time, we’ll visit a nursing college. When you’re eighteen, that’s where you’ll go.”

“But—”

He’d shaken his head sharply, cutting her off. “It isn’t done, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

A decade later, Ruth could still feel the shock in her heart. It had never occurred to her that she couldn’t be a doctor because she was a girl. And now, John Doweling was coming to town to cement her future as a doctor’s wife. That was what everyone had in mind. She knew it. Maybe John didn’t know yet, but he was the only one.

Ruth frowned and lifted her skirts with one hand, balancing the bookbag with the other, and stepped around the manure as the trolley came clanging up Charles.

Excerpted from Sisters of the Great War by Suzanne Feldman, Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Feldman. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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About the Author

Suzanne Feldman, a recipient of the Missouri Review Editors' Prize and a finalist for the Bakeless Prize in fiction, holds an MA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University and a BFA in art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Missouri Review, Gargoyle, and other literary journals. She lives in Frederick, Maryland.

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Spotlight: Gingerbread & Jingle Bells by Caro Carson

Publication date: October 12th 2021

Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Holiday, Romance

Synopsis:

You never get a second chance at a first kiss…

Eve Richards has made every sacrifice to become a rising corporate executive in the big city–until this December. Her grandmother needs help running the family bakery, so Eve is finally taking her unused vacation to return to her small hometown to count cookies instead of corporate cash.

Eve isn’t the only person returning to town. Her childhood sidekick, the recipient of her very determined (but fairly disastrous) first-ever attempt at a kiss, has returned as well. Daniel Shepherd, the once-shy boy from England, is now the town’s swoon-worthy new veterinarian. Grandma’s obvious matchmaking attempts are as mortifying as the memory of the awkward kiss that ended their friendship so many years ago, but the more time Eve spends with Daniel, the harder it is to resist the temptation to take a second chance at that first kiss.

But Daniel has come back to Masterson to put down roots; Eve will be gone after the holiday rush at the bakery. Nothing good could possibly come from letting herself fall for the man who was once her best friend.

A kiss before Christmas could be the key. Will it be the sweet ending to their childhood story…or will Eve risk everything for the chance to turn her first love into a forever love?

A heartwarming wintery romance from a USA Today Bestselling Author and RITA Award winner, set in a wonderfully unique 1980s setting. Perfect for fans of sweet and sincere happily-ever-afters.

Excerpt

Eve clutched the apron to her chest, wishing she could rewind the conversation—and this time, keep her mouth shut. “Listen, the gingerbread giant is on the house. One-hundred percent discount. I don’t even work here. It was my goof. Please, don’t tell anybody about this. My grandmother always does everything right when it comes to the bakery.”

“I insist on paying for it. It’s even more festive now that you’ve fixed the damage.” He reached out to take the apron from her, admonishing her lightly in that posh British accent. “Besides, you cannot seriously think I would ever harm your grandmother’s reputation. She is kindness itself. She never charged me for a single cookie she gave me as a child.”

As a child? Eve searched his handsome face, its masculine angles appealing but unfamiliar. His smile lit his eyes, which were as warm and brown as rich gingerbread. Posh, British gingerbread...

“Oh, my goodness. I know you. You’re—”

“Jingle Bell!” the man shouted, as the brown dog came sprinting back into the kitchen.

Eve squealed in terror as she dove to save the freshly frosted giant, but with a stern sit and stay, the man stopped the dog in its tracks as if he were some kind of magician.

“My apologies,” he said. “She was a stray until quite recently. I’ve been working with her, but her instinct to steal food still overcomes her at times.”

“Daniel Shephard.” She pressed her hand over her hard-beating heart. “It’s me, Evie Richards. From fifth grade. I didn’t recognize you, now that you’re all...” She nodded toward his sharp black slacks, his narrow tie. Toward the broad chest that filled out a burgundy dress shirt. Up, way up, to those eyes. Hadn’t she been the taller one? “...all grown up, and—and tall. Do you recognize me?”

“Yes, of course.”

She dropped her hand. She liked to think she was a polished, worldly woman of business, but apparently, she didn’t look much different from a girl in cable-knit tights. She forced a chuckle. “I haven’t changed, huh?”

“We are standing in your family’s bakery. That’s quite the clue.”

“Right.” Her cheeks were warm. “This is such a coincidence, because I was thinking about you today with the snow flurries, and now here you are.”

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and returned her gaze with an indulgent sort of smile, like he knew she was a little flustered as she tried to reconcile the boy she’d known with the man in her bakery.

He apparently was having no trouble seeing little Evie Richards in her. He didn’t look flustered in the least. Then again, he hadn’t been putting his foot in his mouth about discounts and patch jobs or yelping in terror at a dog.

She turned her back to him and picked up a wide box of cellophane wrap, taking two seconds to compose herself. Then she turned around like the brisk, efficient woman she was, ready to secure the giant cookie to its support board for the short trip to the veterinary clinic. “So, you’re back in town and going to the party. Who do you know at the vet’s office?”

Are you somebody’s date? Maybe he had a wife. She dropped her gaze to his hand.

He ruffled his dog’s ears affectionately.

Stop petting your dog. I want to see your ring finger.

“I am the vet, actually. Dr. Shephard, at your service.”

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About the Author

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and U.S. Army officer, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. After her military service, she worked in the healthcare industry with a Fortune 100 company, talking science with doctors who were rarely handsome bachelor Texans like the doctors in her books. Now a USA Today bestselling author and RITA™award winner, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband (who actually is a handsome Texan) and their two children. They live in the great state of Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving theme park fanatics a fortune on plane tickets.

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https://instagram.com/carocarsonauthor

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https://www.carocarson.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr7sDPZxTfUegBVJPia0s5A

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/caro-carson

https://www.amazon.com/Caro-Carson/e/B00GSGRZ62

https://twitter.com/TheCaroCarson

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6984425.Caro_Carson

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