TOP TEN TUESDAY
Today’s Theme for Top Ten Tuesday is to feature books in (you choose the setting) My setting I’m choosing is cottages, delightful cottages I’d love to visit. This meme is hosted at That Artsy Reder Girl, give it a try yourself.
COTTAGE SETTINGS
Up in the attic, with views across the sparkling bay, she opens the lid of the carved trunk. Carefully moving aside the delicate linen wedding dress once worn by her great-aunt, she unpacks all the smaller boxes inside until she finds the leather-bound diary. She knows this will change everything…
The perfect Christmas read to touch the heart’ Bestselling author Christie Barlow
The countdown to Christmas is usually a magical time, but Elana James is fed up with living on a building site! The renovations on her beautiful cottage – like her heart – have been frozen in limbo ever since she was unexpectedly widowed.
Elana calls in a professional, Luke Stevenson, to help finish the cottage, so her little girl can send letters to Santa up the newly-repaired chimney. Luke’s kind, capable and sexy – but he’s also ten years younger than Elana. So why has her heart decided it’s finally time for a thaw?
They thought their love story was over. They thought their divorce was final. They were wrong.
Following his divorce, Noah gave up his dream job and settled at a remote horse ranch in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northern Georgia, putting much-needed distance between himself and the former love of his life. But then Noah gets a letter from the IRS claiming he and Josephine are still married. When he confronts Josephine, they discover that she missed the final step in filing the paperwork and they are, in fact, still married.
Josephine is no happier about the news than Noah. Maybe the failed marriage—and botched divorce—was her fault, but her heart was shattered right alongside his, more than he would ever believe. The sooner they put this marriage behind them, the better for both of their sakes.
But when Josephine delivers the final paperwork to his ranch, the two become stranded in his cottage during the worst spring snowstorm in a decade. Being trapped with Josephine is a test of Noah’s endurance. He wrestles with resentment and an unmistakable pull to his wife—still beautiful, still brave, and still more intriguing than any woman he’s ever known.
As they find themselves confronted with each other and their shared past, old wounds surface and tempers flare. But when they are forced out into the storm, they must rely on each other in a way they never have before. Josephine finally opens up about her tragic past, and Noah realizes she’s never been loved unconditionally by anyone—including him. Will Noah accept the challenge to pursue Josephine’s heart? And can she finally find the courage to trust Noah?
A new start can come from the most unexpected places…
It’s been years since Lizzie Lockhart spoke to her parents. But she was safe in the knowledge she knew everything about them. Once upon a time, they were as close as could be. Until they weren’t.
After receiving the earth-shattering news of their passing, Lizzie decides it’s time to unearth some family secrets and find out just who her parents really were… starting with Streamside Cottage. A cottage Lizzie never knew existed, in a place she’s never heard of: the beautiful English village of Leafton.
Leaving behind London, and the tattoo parlour she called home, Lizzie finds herself moving to the countryside. Faced with a tight-lipped community, who have secrets of their own, Lizzie is at a loss for what to do, until her rather handsome neighbour, Ben, steps in to help.
Connected through time to her great-grandmother by a shared English countryside home, an American nurse tries to piece together her family’s tangled history in this new historical novel from the acclaimed author of At Summer’s End.
England, 2014: Audrey Collins knows only two things about her beloved grandmother’s past: She was born into nobility and she immigrated to America at seventeen years old. So when Audrey inherits her gran’s home in North Yorkshire, she arrives expecting a sprawling country estate fit for lords and ladies. Instead, she finds an abandoned stone cottage perfectly preserved as Gran left it when she fled in 1941—ration book and all—and begins to uncover what secrets her family has been keeping.
France, 1915: Lady Emilie Dawes is working as a nurse on the Western Front, grateful to have escaped the restraints of her restrictive, privileged home life. But the independence she fought hard to earn is suddenly jeopardized when a familiar man shows up in one of her hospital beds. Facing him means facing her past, and the decisions she had made in fear. As the war rages around her, Emilie realizes she cannot continue running from who she is until she decides who she truly wants to be.
Over a hundred years apart, Audrey and Emilie each struggle to find purpose, love, and a place to call home in this enchanting family saga celebrating the courage of underestimated women—and the power a secret can hold across generations.
A gripping story of family secrets as the heartbreaking consequences of one woman’s manipulation spill across three generations.
1967. Thunder booms as the ocean threatens to drown the jetty where Martha Ryan stands defiant, heart-broken from what she saw through a window a few moments earlier. Her fiancé begs her to listen, to trust him but a wave drags her into the sea…
Fifty years later. Christie Ryan inherits a dilapidated cottage in a seaside town she’s never heard of. The brief visit for her grandmother’s funeral extends when she discovers unopened, fifty-year-old love letters from a young man she suspects painted a damaged seascape left behind in the cottage.
Determined to solve the mystery behind the letters, Christie seeks help from reclusive artist Martin Blake, but he has reasons to protect the past. As Christie falls in love with the cottage and the town, her own relationship falls apart and she goes home to mend it.
But River’s End and its mystery call her back, as does Martin, in spite of their differences. As the secrets unravel, and time runs out to repair the past, will the happiness Christie longs for finally be hers, or will the Ryan family heartache be her future?
Love Heart Lane – where friends are there for you no matter what
A new start…
When Jinny Birdwhistle is pushed over the edge one time too many times and quits her job as a tabloid journalist, an impromptu – and rather unconventional – job search leads her to a new house, car, and career making honey and chutney in the small Scottish village of Heartcross. And with handsome beekeeper Gabe Warner to help her learn the ropes, she’s ready to embrace ‘country girl life’ and leave the past behind her.
…uncovers an old secret
Yet there’s more to strong and silent Gabe than meets the eye and though Jinny planned to leave her journalistic instincts in London, she can’t help doing a little digging. Now, as she uncovers a mystery that links to her own history, Jinny realises that you can’t outrun the truth and the only way to move forward is to face the past. But now that she’s at home in Heartcross, she won’t have to do it alone…
This summer, they’ll learn that home is where the heart is.
Somerset Lake is the perfect place for Trisha Langly and her son to start over. As the new manager for the Somerset Cottages, Trisha is instantly charmed by the property’s elderly residents and her firecracker of a new boss, Vi Fletcher. But Trisha is less enchanted by Vi’s protective grandson Jake. No matter how tempting she finds the handsome lawyer, Trisha knows that if Jake discovers the truth about her past, she’ll lose the new life she’s worked so hard to build.
Jake Fletcher left Somerset Lake after a tragic loss, but he’s returning for the summer to care for his beloved grandmother, hoping Vi will sell the run-down cottages and finally slow down. There’s just one problem: Trisha, Vi’s new employee. She’s smart, beautiful, and kind, but Jake’s job is to protect his grandmother’s interests, and his gut is telling him Trisha’s hiding something that could jeopardize Vi’s future. However, as they spend summer days renovating the property and bonding over their love for the town, Jake realizes that Trisha is a risk worth taking—if only she can trust him with her secrets . . . and her heart.
n this perfect beach read, a recent divorcee and a woman independent to a fault form a spectacular bond as they move forward and help each other through love, loss, and big life changes—perfect for fans of Jill Shalvis and Susan Mallery.
Dr. Becca Weiland had the perfect life—or so she thought, until she learned her husband cheated on her after a decade of marriage. With divorce papers signed, Becca throws her trademark caution to the wind and agrees to an impromptu monthlong vacation at a beach house with Sadie, a woman she’s known all her life but really doesn’t know at all.
Free-spirit Sadie Bloom is Becca’s opposite in every way, living in the moment and wasting zero energy on what comes next. But the pastry chef’s nothing-bothers-me exterior hides a fear she’s not ready to face—one that may jeopardize a future she never realized she wanted.
At first, Sadie’s go-big-or-go-home style bumps up against Becca’s perfectionism, but soon they’re bonding over too much Schnapps, a leaky roof, a bikini wax gone awry, and awkward meet-cutes with two of the hottest men in town. Best of all, in getting to know each other, they’ve gotten to know themselves, and together they find the courage to discover what it really means to live.
Christi Reece is desperate. The one-time golden girl’s life has tarnished, and a cascade of setbacks has left her reeling. She needs help, and she’s certain Jack Colby is in a position to provide it.
When she shows up in Hope Harbor, however, Jack wants nothing to do with the woman who betrayed him. He’s built a new life on the Oregon coast–and there’s no room in it for Christi, even after she takes refuge in a charming but mysterious cottage nearby. Yet it soon becomes apparent his opinion of her may need revising . . . especially when he ends up needing her help.
Can these two hurting souls make peace with their past and open their hearts to a new beginning?
Come home to Hope Harbor–where hearts heal . . . and love blooms.
t’s beginning to look a lot like murder in Agatha-awarding winning author Maddie Day’s latest Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery, as Cape Cod bike shop owner Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida and her book club sleuths must solve a murder before Mac and her fiancée’s New Years Eve wedding…
‘Tis the day after Christmas, following a wicked-busy time of year for Mac’s bike shop. It’s just as well her Cozy Capers Book Group’s new pick is a nerve-soothing coloring book mystery, especially when she has last-minute wedding planning to do. But all pre-wedding jitters fade into the background when Mac and her fiancé, Tim, begin a cottage renovation project and open up a wall to find a skeleton—sitting on a stool, dressed in an old-fashioned bridal gown . . .
As Mac delves into the decades-old mystery with the help of librarian Flo and her book group, she discovers a story of star-crossed lovers and feuding families worthy of the bard himself. Yet this tale has a modern-day villain still lurking in Mac’s quaint seaside town, ready to make this a murderous New Year’s Eve . . .
Will any of these books be going on your to read list? Have you read any of them yet, did you enjoy them?
Thanks for joining me today for Top Ten Tuesday.
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