From This Moment by Elizabeth Camden

Romulus White has tried for years to hire illustrator Stella West for his renowned scientific magazine. She is the missing piece he needs to propel his magazine to the forefront of the industry.
But Stella abruptly quit the art world and moved to Boston with a single purpose: to solve the mysterious death of her beloved sister. Romulus, a man with connections to high society and every important power circle in the city, could be her most valuable ally.
Sparks fly the instant Stella and Romulus join forces, and Romulus soon realizes the strong-willed and charismatic Stella could disrupt his hard-won independence. Can they continue to help each other when their efforts draw the wrong kind of attention from the powers-that-be and put all they've worked for at risk?

About The Author

Elizabeth Camden is the author of eight historical novels and has been honored with a RITA Award, Christy Award, and Daphne du Maurier Award. With a master's in history and a master's in library science, she is a research librarian by day and scribbles away on her next novel by night. She lives with her husband in Florida. 
Learn more at www.elizabethcamden.com. 


My Review

I found myself unable to put this one down, just one more chapter and I’ll turn off the lights, and then one more.
Living in England and living a dream life Stella West is called home to Boston for the unthinkable, her sister has died. Now Stella does not believer her sister Gwendolyn drowned, she knows she was a strong swimmer, and her sister had been corresponding with her about helping A G to bring down the corruption rampant in the City.
Romulus White runs a successful scientific magazine and for years has been trying to coach Stella Westergarrd, a brilliant illustrator, to come and work for him. When he finds out she is in town, he pursues her and ends up becoming involved in the evil that is being perpetrated in Boston.
I didn’t see who or whom the perpetrators were, and was really surprised how the story unfolded, and who will survive the evil that abounds here, and in the form of greed and murder.
There are historical elements here with the building of the subway under the streets of Boston, and I learned something that I had never heard before. This is one really great read, and one you won’t want to put down.

I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Bethany House, and was not required to give a positive review.

Where Courage Calls by Janette Oke, Laurel Oke Logan

Her courage and her heart will be tested in ways she never expected…
Beth Thatcher has spent her entire life in the safe, comfortable world of her family, her friends, and the social outings her father’s wealth provides. But Beth is about to leave it all behind to accept a teaching position in the rugged foothills of western Canada. Inspired by her aunt Elizabeth, who went west to teach school several years ago, and gently encouraged by her father, Beth resolves to put her trust in God and bravely face any challenge that comes her way.
But the conditions in Coal Valley are even worse than she’d feared. A recent mining accident has left the town grieving and at the mercy of the mining company. The children have had very little prior education, and many of the locals don’t even speak English. There isn’t even a proper schoolhouse. In addition, Beth’s heart is torn between two young men–both Mounties, one a lifelong friend and the other a kind, quiet man who comes to her aid more than once.
Despite the many challenges, Beth is determined to make a difference in the rustic frontier town. But when her sister visits from the East, reminding her of all the luxuries she’s had to give up, will Beth decide to return to her privileged life as soon as the school year is over?

Purchase a copy and read an excerpt here.

About The Authors

**Janette Oke** Celebrated for her significant contribution to the Christian book industry, Janette Oke is the recipient of numerous awards. Her novels have sold more than 30 million copies and are beloved by readers around the world. Janette lives with her husband, Edward, in Alberta, Canada.
**Laurel Oke Logan**, is the daughter of Edward and Janette Oke, is the author of “Janette Oke: A Heart for the Prairie,” as well as the novel “Dana’s Valley,” which she co-wrote with her mom. Laurel and her husband have six children and two sons-in-law and live near Indianapolis, Indiana.


Find out more about Janette at http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/authors/janette-oke/932.

My Review:

When I saw that one of my all time favorite author had a new book out, co-authored by her Daughter Laurel Oke Logan, I knew I had to read it. Again, I was not disappointed.
In this book we have Elizabeth's niece Beth. Beth comes from a well to do family, and has always had a delicate health. When she decides to take a teaching job out West in Coal Town. Her Mother doesn't want her to go, but her father prevails and Beth is off on a new adventure in her life.
Long time family friend Edward, meets her as she gets off the train, he has been there on the train with her all along. He precedes to help Beth getting to her hotel, and hires a man to take her things there. I find this quite a funny part of the story, as Edward is in his Royal Mounted Police uniform, and pays the guy....who steals everything.
What a start to a new life?? Arriving in a new town as the teacher, with no clothes or books, or anything...no underwear! Now this is a small, small town, you cannot go out and buy what you need. Thank goodness Mom comes to the rescue.
Through out all of her stay here, she finds a new family. The people make her feel so welcome, and Beth keeps coming up with new ways to help these miners and their families. I can see God's hand in a lot of what happens here. He seems to answer a lot of prayers.
We will sympathize with the plight of the families here, and hope something can be done for them. Beth sure is trying!
You will wonder if there is a bit of romance in the air, and I see at least three possibilities. Will any of them work out?
I hope that there will be more stories coming, I feel like I need to know what is going to happen next! Enjoy!

I received this book through Litfuse Publicity Book Tours, and was not required to give a positive review.

Kill Devil by Mike Dellosso

Jed Patrick is convinced he's doing all it takes to keep his family safe--new names, new location, new identity. But just when he thinks he finally has his life back, trained men claiming to be CIA agents break in and threaten his wife and daughter, proving once and for all his family will never truly be safe until he eliminates the agency dead set on hunting him down.Not knowing if Karen and Lilly are better off by his side or in hiding, Jed is determined to protect them while finding a way to use the classified information that he possesses to dismantle the Centralia Project. But he soon learns that eliminating Centralia may require compromising his own values. As danger escalates, Jed isn't sure whether there's anyone or anything he can trust--including his own senses.


About The Author

Mike Dellosso, writing also under the pen name Michael King, is the author of numerous novels of suspense, including Darkness Follows, Darlington Woods, and Scream. Mike is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and is a popular conference and workshop teacher. He earned his BA degree from Messiah College and his MBS from Master's International School of Divinity. He lives in Hanover, PA, with his wife and daughters. Mike is also a survivor of colon cancer, diagnosed in 2008.


My Review

 
Mike Dellosso new book is a continuance of Centralia, and I have not yet read it, but Kill Devil picks up where that book left off, and I didn’t feel at all lost.
This book is about corruption at the highest levels of our Government, and is there anyone left to trust? Our hero has served his country in Afghanistan, and we flash back to his time there, and he is a renowned sniper, which now puts him in danger, along with his family.
These people will go to all means to make their plans work, and that includes using Jeb Patrick to do their dirty work. You will never see coming the lengths these people will go to, I rather guess one of their evil stunts, but still wasn’t sure. They hit him in the juggler by using his family, and what they do to his eight-year-old daughter Lilly is atrocious.
The author really made me think, and this may be far fetched, but could or is our government out of control? I also love the Christian factor in this story, Lilly is a little one of great faith, and God is with her when they torture her.
I do recommend you read this book; it will really make you think!
I received this book from the Tyndale Book Blog Network, and was not required to give a positive review.

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet comes a novel of suspense and passion about a terrible mistake made sixty years ago that threatens to change a modern family forever. 

Twenty-five-year-old Cassie Danvers is holed up in her family’s crumbling mansion in rural St. Jude, Ohio, mourning the loss of the woman who raised her—her grandmother, June. But a knock on the door forces her out of isolation. Cassie has been named the sole heir to legendary matinee idol Jack Montgomery's vast fortune. How did Jack Montgomery know her name? Could he have crossed paths with her grandmother all those years ago? What other shocking secrets could June’s once-stately mansion hold?

Soon Jack’s famous daughters come knocking, determined to wrestle Cassie away from the inheritance they feel is their due. Together, they all come to discover the true reasons for June’s silence about that long-ago summer, when Hollywood came to town, and June and Jack’s lives were forever altered by murder, blackmail, and betrayal.

As this page-turner shifts deftly between the past and present, Cassie and her guests will be forced to reexamine their legacies, their definition of family, and what it truly means to love someone, steadfastly, across the ages.

Purchase

About The Author

I write novels. My third, New York Times bestseller Bittersweet, is set at the home on Lake Champlain where I spent my summers as a little girl. But that's where the resemblance to life ends - the place, renamed Winloch in the book - is inhabited by a family of deliciously bad people. I wrote Bittersweet for people like me, who love The Secret History and The Emperor's Children; it's a literary beach read.

My first two novels were published in 2005 and 2007. My next novel, June, will be out in 2016.

Based in some part on my own experience being photographed by two fine arts photographers, Jock Sturges and Mona Kuhn, I started my first novel, The Effects of Light, to answer the question most Americans seemed to ask when I explained this photographic work to them--would I still love it if an innocent died because that work had been made?

My second novel, Set Me Free, was based in part on the time I spent on the Crow reservation in highschool, the legacy of my countercultural parents, and the complications of their generation of liberal do-gooders. The book was also an homage to my theater school-aged days and based on The Tempest. 


My Review

This story takes place in St Jude, Ohio, and our main character Cassie Danvers is living in an old, disrepaired mansion, that she has inherited from her grandmother June. When the story opens, Cassie appears to be very depressed, and experiencing wild dreams, that give her a glimpse into her grandmother’s life back in 1955.
The story flashes back and forth into the past and then back to the present 2015, and we learn a lot about grandma June, and her friend who idolizes her Lindie, whom it seems is always getting herself in a bit trouble.
The dreams that Cassie experiences seem to answer a lot of questions, we have an open camera to the past. What defines all of this is who Cassie really is, that is, is the father she knew during her short time with him, really her dad?
What a turn of events happen in this young woman’s life, is she about to find out life changing news, or is she going to find out about her roots to this old town?
A very different, and entertaining book, from the first page forward, there are a lot of bomb shells dropped and you won’t see most of them coming.
I received this book through Crown Publishing, and was not required to give a positive review.

The Alliance by Jolina Petersheim

When Leora Ebersole sees the small plane crash in her Old Order Mennonite community, she has no idea it’s a foreshadowing of things to come. Once the young pilot, Moses Hughes, regains consciousness, they realize his instruments were destroyed by the same power outage that killed the electricity at the community store, where Englischers are stranded with dead cell phones and cars that won’t start.

Moses offers a sobering theory, but no one can know how drastically life is about to change. With the only self-sustaining food supply in the region, the Pacifist community is forced to forge an alliance with the handful of stranded Englischers in an effort to protect not only the food but their very lives.

In the weeks that follow, Leora, Moses, and the community will be tested as never before, requiring them to make decisions they never thought possible. Whom will they help and whom will they turn away? When the community receives news of a new threat, everyone must decide how far they’re willing to go to protect their beliefs and way of life.

About The Author

Jolina Petersheim is the bestselling author of The Outcast, which Library Journal called “outstanding . . . fresh and inspirational” in a starred review and named one of the best books of 2013. That book also became an ECPA, CBA, and Amazon bestseller and was featured in Huffington Post’s Fall Picks, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and the Tennessean. CBA Retailers + Resources called her second book, The Midwife, “an excellent read [that] will be hard to put down,” and Romantic Times declared, “Petersheim is an amazing new author.” Jolina and her husband share the same unique Amish and Mennonite heritage that originated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After years of living in the mountains of Tennessee, they moved to a farm in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, where they live with their two young daughters.


My Review 

Wow! What a different type of Plain story, an old order Mennonite community is our setting in Ohio. Can you imagine seeing a small plane falling out of the sky and crashing, and the pilot is really not seriously injured.
At the same time the plane crashes everything else stops working, and he seems to have landed, or crashed where he is needed, in an Old Order Mennonite Community, in Ohio. Now why would he need to be here?
As you turn the pages of the book, all law and order has ceased, and people start coming for handouts, as you would expect, but gangs are on the horizon, and out for no good.
The compassion and love these people showed others, but they are Pacifists and who will be able to help them. Moses Hughes is the pilot, and Leora Ebersole is the other main character, and these two opposites seem to click. The community takes in others, and a few other non-mennonite along with Moses take on an alliance to help.
When things go from bad to worse, I loved Moses reference of why he was staying where he was, back to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and who told he wasn’t that Moses, made me chuckle.
We rather end this story on a cliffhanger, and I don’t know who made it, and how they are going to survive, or what happens. Sure can’t wait for book two in this, I need to know!
I received this book through Tyndale House Publishers, and was not required to give a positive review.

 

A Simple Vow by Charlotte Hubbard

Housed in a rustic red barn, the Simple Gifts crafts shop celebrates the talents of the Amish of Willow Ridge--and the faith that inspires them. For the acceptance of simplicity opens the path to love.

As far as Edith Riehl is concerned, the baby twins thrust suddenly into her arms are a heaven-sent gift. Unable to conceive, she longs to be a mother with a home of her own. She's going to abide by her promise to handsome Asa Detweiler to take care of them while he looks for their real father. And even if her domineering dat Cornelius refuses to countenance Asa's suit, she can only pray the bachelor's honesty and persistence will uncover the truth--even as he's kindled an impossible hope for a love of her own . . .

Asa can't understand why anyone would think he would be so dishonorable as to father babies and then abandon them. He's determined to clear his name--but Edith's caring ways also inspire him to help heal her wounded spirit and earn her trust. In the face of heartbreaking deception, he and Edith must find the strength to understand, forgive . . . and claim their own hearts' joy.

Praise for Charlotte Hubbard's Seasons of the Heart series

"Another great book centered around the Sweet Seasons Café." --RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars

"These very special books will sit proudly on my keeper shelf!" --Romance Reviews Today
  
About The Author

Many moons ago—like, in 1983 while she was still a school librarian—Charlotte Hubbard sold her first story to True Story. This launched her into writing around seventy of those “true confessions” stories over the years, and she’s been a slave to her overactive imagination ever since. Over the course of her writing career, she has sold nearly 50 books—most recently, Amish romance series she’s written as Charlotte Hubbard or Naomi King.

Charlotte lived in Missouri for most of her life, so her Amish stories are set in imaginary Missouri towns. These days she lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband of 40 years and their Border collie, Ramona.

My Review

I am so happy that the author has brought back to Willow Ridge, and back with old and beloved friends. While this book focus is on the Riehl family, recent arrivals to this Amish town, and with three marriageable aged daughters, my hope is we will be back again, and I really want to know what “Dat” is up to?
This is the youngest daughter’s story, Edith, and her chance meeting with Asa Detweiler, who comes from another Amish community. It seems once he sets eyes on Edith he is about to move heaven and earth to be with her, and tries to convince his brother, with whom he is in a furniture refinishing business with, to move to the progressive Willow Ridge. Asa is convinced that he needs Edith, and that his business is about to flourish if the brother’s move.
There is also a precious set of twins, Louisa and Leroy, who are turned over to the Riehl family, and Edith embraces as her own. Wait until you find out who is accused of being the father of these adorable babies.
Of course life cannot run smooth all the time, and this book will not leave you disappointed with the jaw dropping things that are about to happen. A book not to be missed, and looking forward to the next one!
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Zebra, and was not required to give a positive review.

Through the Shadows (The Golden Gate Chronicles #3) by Karen Barnett & Giveaway

As San Francisco rises from the ashes, an age-old battle looms between corruption and the promise of new beginnings.
The devastating earthquake is just two years past, but the city of San Francisco is still trying to recover. Destruction of this magnitude is not so easy to overcome-and neither are the past regrets shadowing Elizabeth King’s hopeful future.
Hoping to right her wrongs, Elizabeth dedicates herself to helping girls rescued from slavery in Chinatown brothels, even if it means putting her own life at risk to sneak through the gloomy alleys and rooftops where dangers lurk.
Putting her life on the line for a worthy cause is admirable. But opening her heart is even more terrifying. So when Elizabeth meets attorney, Charles McKinley—a man who dreams of reforming San Francisco’s crooked politics—Elizabeth begins to doubt: Can she maintain her pretense and hide her past? Or will her secret jeopardize both their futures?
Learn more and purchase a copy.


Enter to win a copy of Through the Shadows—five winners will be chosen! Click the image below to enter to win. The winners will be announced June 7th on Karen’s blog!






About The Author

Karen Barnett is the author of "Beyond the Ashes," "Out of the Ruins," and "Mistaken." Named the 2013 Writer of Promise by Oregon Christian Writers, Karen lives in Albany, Oregon, with her husband and two kids. When she’s not writing novels, she loves speaking at women’s events, libraries, and book clubs.

My Review

This story brings us to San Francisco, California as it is rebuilding after the 1906 devastating earthquake. As the book opens Charles McKinley is bringing the sad news that the King families fortune has been lost in the fires that came after the quake, and the buildings their father had invested in are destroyed.
Elizabeth King had been staying with her mother when they learn the news, and at the same time she meets Miss Cameron and finds a calling for herself, and maybe a reason to go on. Charles was also at the meeting with Miss Cameron and is also feeling led to help her mission. Miss Cameron life’s work is rescuing children whom have been sold into slavery, and worse.
There are sparks flying between Elizabeth and Charles, but not always sweet ones. Elizabeth is hiding a horrible secret, and Charles is trying to make his uncle proud as he begins his career after graduating law school.
Poor Charles is really up against it at the law firm, will he play along, or will he stand up for himself and beliefs? When some of the findings would help people he cares about, will he give up all that is going to come his way?
You will be turning pages pretty fast, as you pursue answers to what is going on, and you may be surprised what it is all about, and will all the secrets be found out?
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Abingdon, and was not required to give a positive review.