A Sensible Arrangement by Tracie Peterson Litfuse Blog Tour

About the book: A Lone Star Brides book.

Marty Dandridge Olson is ready to leave behind the pain of the past.

Answering an advertisement for a "Lone Star bride," she leaves her Texas ranch and heads to Denver to marry a man she doesn't know.

Jake Wythe is the man waiting for her.

Burned by love, he marries now simply to satisfy the board of Morgan Bank, which believes a man of his standing in society should be wed. Together Jake and Marty agree they are done with romance and love and will make this nothing more than a marriage of convenience.

When missing money and a collapsing economy threaten his job, Jake's yearning to return to ranching grows ever stronger, much to Marty's dismay. But a fondness has grown between them, as well, further complicating matters.

What will happen when their relationship shifts in unexpected ways . . . and dreams and secrets collide?

Purchase a copy: http://ow.ly/vlp1S

Landing page: 

http://litfusegroup.com/author/tpeterson

My thoughts:  What do you do when you are unhappy in your current life?  Make a big change, of course!  When Marty answers and ad for a man seeking a wife for a marriage in name only she thinks she has the answer to her prayer.  Of course, she stopped praying when her beloved husband was killed on their ranch, she hardened her heart to church and to God.  She loves her family, but she misses all that she could have had with her Thomas and the children they were unable to have. 

Jake has been unlucky in love, but his boss insists a man of his standing at the bank should have a wife, so he places an add for a bride from Texas. He may work in a bank for now, but he hopes to be able to one day return to Texas and run a ranch.

The two get along well and form a friendship, but will that be enough?  Marty worries about her own sins and finds her way back to prayer.  Should she reveal to Jake that she owns a ranch in Texas, just what he has dreamed about, but one which she hoped to be able to avoid returning to because of bad memories?  Is it sin if she didn't lie about it in words, simply failed to mention it to him?

We all have our own difficulties in life, many of which play out inside our own minds.  There is relief to be found by being truthful with oneself and with others.  It can be better to know you were honest in word and action, even if it was hard and cost you some moments of peace, than to worry inside about that which you are keeping hidden from all.



About the Author: Tracie Peterson is the award-winning author of over eighty novels, both historical and contemporary. Her avid research resonates in her stories, as seen in her bestselling Heirs of Montana, and Alaskan Quest series. Tracie and her family make their home in Montana.

Learn more about Tracie at: www.traciepeterson.com

Maybelle in Stitches by Joyce Magnin Litfuse Blog Tour

About the book: Maybelle Kazinzki can't sew. She was after all, the only girl in the seventh grade Home Economics class to sew the zipper in the neck hole of the A-Line dress they were supposed to make. But when she finds an unfinished quilt in the attic of her mother's house she gets the crazy idea to finish it---somehow, come heck or high water. She thinks it will help fill the lonely nights while her husband, Holden, is serving overseas during World War II.

Her recently departed mother's quilt is made from scraps of material Maybelle traces back to her mother's childhood, her grandmother's childhood and her own childhood. She tries to add one of Holden's stripes to it but the sewing is not going well and neither is her life. After receiving some harsh news, Maybelle's faith falters and she puts the quilt away and stops trusting God. But God is faithful---no matter what. And it'll take a group of neighborhood women armed with quilting needles to help Maybelle believe that.

Learn more about this book and the series at the Quilts of Love website.


About the Author: Joyce Magnin is the author of the Bright's Pond novels, including the award-winning The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow. A member of the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Fellowship, Joyce is a frequent workshop leader and the organizer of the StoryCrafters fiction group. She lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Learn more about Joyce at: http://joycemagnin.blogspot.com

About Quilts of Love: Quilts tell stories of love and loss, hope and faith, tradition and new beginnings. The Quilts of Love series focuses on the women who quilted all of these things into their family histories. A new book releases each month and features contemporary and historical romances as well as women's fiction and the occasional light mystery. You will be drawn into the endearing characters of this series and be touched by their stories.

Landing page: 

http://litfusegroup.com/author/JMagnin

 

 

 

My thoughts:  I love how this book brought the time around WWII and what was going on for those who stayed behind.  The rationing, women in factories, blackout curtains and V Mail.  I never really considered what they did with the remains of the soldiers killed overseas, how many of them were buried far from home and the families had no body to honor at a funeral.  We are so used to knowing about news instantly and being able to reach those even far away with the push of a few buttons, but imagining what it was like to wait for short letters or dreaded telegrams to find out what was going on days or weeks after it had already happened is so far from our regular way of life.

Maybelle feels that she is inept at household matters and misses her late mother.  She doesn't know how to sew, after a disastrous school assignment, and isn't so sure about cooking or cleaning either!  It takes her friends and an unfinished quilt of her mother's to show her how much friends, faith and taking a chance can change matters for her.

To work through missing her husband, Holden, who is missing in action and the husband's of her friends, they decide to finish a "crazy quilt" that has bits of fabric from things that are meaningful to each of the women.  Scraps from wedding dresses, baby clothes, war banners, and husband's shirts are all sewn together to demonstrate their hope in the safe return of the men and their faith that God is making it all work together for a reason.
 

Tilt (Dreams of Chaos) by Ashley Chappell TLC Book Tour

About the book:
Two years ago Trotter discovered that she was a goddess and saved the entire pantheon of Realm from a dark god in the process. But that didn't stop the gods from banning her from Realm and - worst of all - from her parents when she refused to honor the Accord and declare a dominion. Now even her lonely refuge in Aevum has been destroyed when the world itself is violently tilted away from the sun and plunged into permanent night.

Angry and desperate for someone to blame, she's ready to battle whatever demons she might find behind the destruction. Instead of evil, however, she discovers another world even older than Aevum and filled with people the gods created, then abandoned and left for dead.

Trotter will be forced to choose a dominion that will let her save both of the worlds she's come to love, even if it means giving up one of them permanently. Yet throughout her journey she is unaware that the terrifying darkness growing within her means that another dominion has already chosen her...


My thoughts:
Trotter is still coming into her own and getting used to her powers when something awful happens to Aevum, the stars are in the wrong place, the tide is coming at the wrong time and then they are in permanent darkness.  In going to the gods to discover how the world flipped so fast and left them in darkness with many dead and all panicking, Trotter discovers a whole world the gods created, then left to die in darkness.  The leader of these people caused the worlds to flip over, switching who was in darkness and who was in light, but making a mess of both sides of the world.

Trotter has been refusing to claim a dominion over anything, which has all the gods upset with her, and has wanted to live among her friends and people in Aevum, but she feels a kinship as well with the people in Novum and feels her loyalty being torn.

Through trial and error, the people of both worlds must unite within their groups to go against a god, create a new balance and find a way to continue on.  Trotter is a normal teenager in some ways, losing her temper with her parents and wanting time to be herself, plus sleeping great periods of time, but she has a lot more responsibilities on her shoulders and has to make some tricky decisions.

What happens when one is not able to choose their own destiny, but must deal with the one given to them through circumstances and fate?  What if those you care for the most come to fear you?  How do you reconcile yourself with a life that you find you must lead?  It will be interesting to see how things fare for Trotter and this world in the next book.

About the Author

Ms. Chappell currently resides in Huntsville, AL with the love of her life. She is a contractor for NASA in the Rocket City and during her writing time her cats sometimes share her lap with her computer, should they choose to allow the usurpation at all. She is an avid lover of nature who enjoys climbing, camping, hiking and sailing.

 

 

Product Details

• File Size: 789 KB
• Print Length: 299 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1939985013
• Publisher: Center One Books (October 5, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Alice Will by Ashley Chappell TLC Book Tour

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2012

 

 With her leaky powers and premature smiting problem, fourteen year-old Trotter was still just trying to get the hang of the demi-godding business when the apocalypse began. In a world where the gods have withdrawn from humanity, leaving mortals bitter toward magic, she finds herself torn between the human and the goddess in her as the world begins to fade away and she becomes the prime suspect. When her search to determine the cause and prove her innocence ends up revolving around a mysterious little girl named Alice, she discovers that not all of the gods had been as distant as they seemed... Now, with everyone against her and the gods fighting amongst themselves, Trotter is on her own to save her world and stop a spiteful god from using Alice to destroy everything.

 

 

My thoughts: 

Chappell has created a world where magic lives side by side with reality, where gods have been banned from the reality of the humans they created for their own good.  Trotter is a fourteen-year-old girl who lives on her own.  Her father is a god she has never met and her mother died when she was born.  Her companion is a talking cat, a cat who was once human but was turned into an enchanted cat who has more than one life.  It turns out that Trotter is not the only one who has powers in the human world, and the powers of one little girl have the potential to end the world for everyone.  This lonely little girl is Alice.  Alice is a poor servant who lives in a cupboard under a bar in a tavern and her orders are always the things that Alice will do, hence her name is Alice Will.

 

The book cycles through reality, gods, fantastical beasts and creations and the willingness to forget the needs of others for ones own gain and the ability to be selfless and forget the needs of self for the greater good.  It is a journey through great highs and great lows with a  lot of surprises thrown in.  There were strains of Harry Potter (the ability to do magic and the cupboard as a room) and Percy Jackson (gods as parents who don't understand the human or demi-god wants needs and desires).   But through it all it is world of her own creation, one I am not sure I would want to visit, but interesting just the same!

 

 

Product Details

• File Size: 806 KB
• Print Length: 299 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0983002223
• Publisher: Center One Books (November 13, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

  http://www.ashleychappellbooks.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ashleynchappellauthor

https://twitter.com/AshleyNChappell