In a Word, yes by Kit Tosello

 Lucy hides behind boundaries. Her mother hides behind busyness. But love and grace have a way of finding us wherever we hide.

Lucy Montgomery excels at drawing boundaries and avoiding risk. Her favorite word is no, and she's not afraid to use it. It's been five years since she picked up the leftovers from a crumbled marriage and started over with her brilliantly unique autistic son in Charity Falls, Oregon. As a single mom, she now works behind the scenes at a local newspaper. Enter Wyatt Hayes--an affable local police officer with the soul of a poet and the kindness she's always craved. A man who's more than eager to help her break free from her security blanket of an adventure-free life.

Lucy's celebrity mother, Carly Montgomery--a vivacious and beloved women's Bible study leader--can't deny a sense of weariness. But if she doesn't remain in perpetual motion, her regrets are bound to catch up with her. Despite the outward appearance of a perfect empty-nester life, she's kept her daughter at arm's length and has already missed so much of her young grandson's life. Is it too late to turn that around?

For Lucy and Carly to restore their relationship, and for Lucy and Wyatt to embrace the risk of loving, it will take a big step of faith to reconcile the past together.

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Amazon.com: In a Word, Yes: Contemporary Christian Romance in a Small Town with a Single Mom and Mother Daughter Relationship: 9780800747770: Kit Tosello: Books

Kit Tosello is an award-winning writer of evocative, small-town, contemporary women’s fiction with heart and humor, as well as inspirational essays and devotionals. Her debut novel, The Color of Home, releases September 24, 2024 with Revell Publishing and is now available for preorder.

Kit's recognitions include a 2016 Cascade Award for published article and a 2019 Cascade Award for unpublished nonfiction book. Her inspirational essays appear in The Kitchen Devotional (Revell, 2024), So God Made a Grandma (Tyndale, 2025), So God Made a Mother (Tyndale, 2023), and Miracles Do Happen: 101 Glimpses of the Hidden Hand of God (Guideposts, 2019).

A former kitchen designer, Kit is a freelance newspaper correspondent and book editor. But her favorite gigs are wife, mom, and nana. When not writing or editing, Kit can be found in the loose-tea shop she operates with her husband, exploring the great Pacific Northwest, or enjoying the “great indoors”—which is to say, bookstores & libraries. Most likely with a matcha latte in hand.

Pop Star and Playbooks by Juliet Rhodes

 She's a chart-topper. He's a football player. Together, they're a love story no one saw coming.

Griffin Hayes is football's golden boy--charming, talented, and completely out of his depth when a video of him belting out pop star Aria Wilder's breakup anthem goes viral. Overnight, he's crowned the internet's favorite meme, and Aria's #1 fan. Aria, the reigning queen of heartbreak ballads, sees an opportunity to turn the moment into good PR and invites Griffin to her next concert. When their onstage chemistry sets the internet ablaze, her team suggests the unthinkable: a fake friendship to keep the buzz alive.

Griffin reluctantly agrees, but as they spend more time together--posing for cameras, attending events, and sharing inside jokes--he realizes there's nothing fake about the way Aria makes him feel. For Aria, Griffin is a breath of fresh air in a world that's always demanding more from her. Beneath the viral fame and public scrutiny, their connection feels real.

But when Griffin suffers a career-threatening injury and Aria battles creative burnout, their carefully constructed "performance" starts to crumble. With their worlds pulling them in opposite directions, they'll have to decide: Is this just a PR stunt gone too far--or the kind of love worth risking everything for?

Pick up your copy here...                                                                                                                                     Amazon.com: Pop Stars and Playbooks: An opposites-attract, kisses-only, fake friendship-turned-love story between a football star and a pop icon eBook : Rhodes, Juliet: Kindle Store

The author wishes to remain anonymous therefore there is no headshot.

Juliet Rhodes is a hopeless romantic with a soft spot for slow-burn love stories and swoon-worthy heroes who fall first. When she’s not writing, you can find her binge-watching rom-coms, obsessing over celebrity gossip, or cheering on her favorite teams (while secretly imagining the players in love triangles). She lives in a cozy apartment with her two rescue cats, Hemingway and Zelda.

When Paris Whispers by Marianne Bohr

 

Twenty-two-year-old Catrine arrives in Paris, the city she's dreamed of since childhood, and it speaks back-but not in ways she expected. Drifting through the streets of 1981 Paris, the voices of French writers she once read in solitude whisper back, intimate and insistent. Rather than reassure her, they unsettle her, exposing cracks in the person she believed herself to be.

When a brief romance ends in abrupt eviction, Catrine is left broke and unmoored, suspended between a city that won't release her and a past she refuses to reclaim. An unlikely friendship with a widowed Sorbonne professor leads to an impulsive road trip to Normandy and everything begins to unravel. What follows is not the Paris she expected, but something more unsettling-and more honest.

Is the City of Light rescuing her, haunting her, or revealing something she's been too afraid to see?

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When Paris Whispers: Bohr, Marianne C: 9781960226341: Amazon.com: Books

Marianne C. Bohr is a published author and award-winning essayist with a lifelong weakness for faraway places. A former travel blogger for The Huffington Post, she married her high school sweetheart-now her She wrote her first book, Gap Year Girl: A Baby Boomer Adventure Across 21 Countries, over the course of the yearlong sabbatical she and her husband took to explore Europe. It was published by She Writes Press in 2015. Kirkus Reviews said, “Bohr shines… providing glimpses of herself as a whole person, not simply a traveler. Gap Year Girl is an excellent choice…a travelogue filled with historic places, but its personal stories provide its highlights.” Marianne’s illustrated article on her gap year, The Year of Living Spontaneously, ran in Bethesda Magazine in 2013.

The author’s second book, The Twenty: One Woman’s Trek Across Corsica on the GR20, tells the story of hiking across the mountainous French island with her husband to celebrate their sixtieth birthdays.

Husband hike the 124-mile GR20, Europe’s toughest long-distance footpath. They find themselves confronted with universal themes: coming to terms with aging, surmounting physical limitations, and being kind to oneself along the way. The Twenty was published by She Writes Press in June 2023.

The 10:12 by Anna Maloney

 Claire Fitzroy was on the way home to London when her train from Manchester was hijacked by a group of armed men. In one terrifying moment she faced the starkest of choices: to passively stand back or act and fight back—knowing that with either choice, she could die.

With nothing to lose, the middle-aged art lecturer gathered and led a squad of passengers who, against all odds, overcame the hijackers and saved hundreds of lives. But what at first looks like heroism may play out very differently in the courts of law and public opinion. Especially when you have the blood of two men on your hands.

Opinions are heated and divided. Was she a selfless and quick-thinking hero? Or an attention-seeking vigilante and unrepentant murderer? Until now Claire has remained silent. Now, she’s finally speaking out about what happened that morning on the 10:12.

But is it the whole story?

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Amazon.com: The 10:12: A Novel: 9780063487888: Maloney, Anna: Books

The 10:12 is Anna's first novel, for which she won the CWA Emerging Author Dagger. She also writes for TV, film and radio and won a BAFTA award for the TV drama Falling Apart. Previously she worked as a lecturer, in factual TV, journalism and PR - as well as being a qualified playleader and sometime usherette. Anna lives in south east London, near where she grew up, and also spent some years in Australia.

I Know The Ants by Lang Leav

 Mei’s life isn’t what she thought it would be. She's still entangled in a love triangle with Jacques and Kath that began when they were teens; her parents are drowning in debt; and she’s stuck pulling off identity fraud jobs for her cruel auntie and her auntie’s nauseating son, who won’t leave Mei alone.

But Mei’s world begins to truly unravel when she hears her childhood best friend Soey’s voice for the first time in years, being interviewed on the radio about her new memoir, chronicling the childhood attack that left Soey with brain damage and killed her younger sister. When Mei reconnects with Soey, the leader of their childhood friend group known as the Daisy Chain, their encounter kicks off a series of events that culminate in another shocking death, putting Mei squarely in the public eye. As past and present collide, Mei starts spiraling after Soey implores her to find out who killed Daiyu—a search that leads Mei to uncover what happened that dark day in the woods behind their school, all those years ago.

Revered for her lyrical imagery, emotional acumen, and thoughtful voice, Lang Leav uses her gifts to brilliant effect, exploring unsolved mysteries, cycles of trauma and abuse, and the answers to a timeless question: how do you honor someone's memory without losing sight of yourself?

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Amazon.com: I Know the Ants: A Novel: 9780063382039: Leav, Lang: Books

Novelist and poet, Lang Leav is an international bestselling author and winner of a Qantas

Spirit of Youth Award, Churchill Fellowship and Goodreads Choice Award. Often credited

with popularizing poetry among a new generation of young readers, Lang’s poetry books,

and hit novel, Sad Girls continue to top best seller charts around the world.

Lang has been featured on CNN, SBS Australia, Intelligence Squared UK, Radio New Zealand

and in various publications, including Vogue, Newsweek, the Straits Times, the Guardian,

and the New York Times. She currently resides in New Zealand with her partner and fellow

author, Michael Faudet.

Failure Point by Rebecca Hodge

 When a child’s life is on the line, failure isn’t an option.

Jordan Winthrop, an experienced security agent, has built her career on precision and control. But when a high-profile protection assignment leaves a public figure dead, her confidence plummets and her career skitters onto life support. Her last chance at redemption is almost insulting: babysit a single mother suspected of stealing corporate secrets. Her boss is adamant—observe, report, stay invisible.

Then the woman’s eleven-year-old daughter is kidnapped at gunpoint, and orders become irrelevant. A child’s life is at stake, and Jordan can’t stay on the sidelines.

Off the grid and out of options, she allies with the desperate mother in a race to track kidnappers whose motives reach into a multimillion-dollar corporate conspiracy.

But has she identified the real enemy? At the failure point, even trust shatters.

FAILURE POINT is a gripping story of emotionally rich suspense by award-winning author Rebecca Hodge. Dive in for a story you’ll long remember.

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Failure Point - Kindle edition by Hodge, Rebecca. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Rebecca Hodge is the award-winning author of WILDLAND, OVER THE FALLS, and ISLAND ENDGAME, books of page-turning suspense that have plenty of heart. When her characters find themselves in impossible situations, they take the initiative instead of watching from the sidelines. In doing so, they discover unexpected inner strength, resilience, and courage.

Following a scientific career as a veterinarian and clinical research scientist, Rebecca discovered how much fun it is to create fictional worlds of her own. She lives in North Carolina, where you’ll find her sipping tea on the screened-in porch with a dog at her feet and a computer on her lap. Visit her online at rebeccahodgefiction.

The Christmas yes List by Melissa Ferguson

 Have you preordered you copy of the Christmas Yes List by Melissa Ferguson yet?

What are you waiting for?

All she wants for Christmas is a rejection.

Chloe Hollis is done being a people-pleaser. After one too many bad decisions--including a job that asked her to cross a line she couldn't--she's determined to change. Her plan? Collect ten nos before Christmas by asking strangers for the most ridiculous favors she can think of.

It should be easy.

But then? Then she meets James.

Instead of shutting her down, the charming out-of-towner keeps saying yes--to Christmas karaoke, to small-town holiday traditions, to every spontaneous, hilarious, totally chaotic idea she throws his way. And the more he says yes, the harder it becomes for Chloe to stick to her plan . . . or protect her heart.

Because James has a reason for saying yes to everything, too--and it might cost them both more than they bargained for.

As their opposite missions collide in a swirl of festive mishaps, unexpected courage, and undeniable chemistry, Chloe starts to wonder if the biggest risk isn't rejection after all . . . but saying yes to something real.

#uplitread #thechristmasyeslist #fiction #holidayromance #feelgoodromance

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The Christmas Yes List: A Heartwarming Holiday Novel: Ferguson, Melissa: 9781400356713: Amazon.com: Books

Melissa Ferguson is the bestselling author of titles including Meet Me in the Margins, Famous for a Living, and How to Plot a Payback. She lives in Tennessee with her family in their growing farmhouse lifestyle and writes heartwarming romantic comedies.

You can find her on her socials at @ourfriendlyfarmhouse.