Read and enjoyed March 02, 2023

It’s that time again. Time to clear out the big pile of enjoyed books. There is one thing very different about the list this time though.

I found myself giving out an unprecedented number of five stars. I’m not sure what I was thinking except that I couldn’t come up with a good reason not to.

Maybe it has something to do with downloading fewer books. Choosing to be more selective. Whatever it is I’m liking it.

My favorite stories all have something different about them. Not a whiff of familiarity. This first one had that brand new smell. Of course there were elements similar to other stories but the way it was all put together was new. The rest were just as good, each in their own way.

A Castaway in Cornwall

Set adrift on the tides of fate by the deaths of her parents and left wanting answers, Laura Callaway now lives with her uncle and his disapproving wife in North Cornwall. There she feels like a castaway, always viewed as an outsider even as she yearns to belong.

While wreckers search for valuables along the windswept Cornwall coast–known for its many shipwrecks but few survivors–Laura searches for clues to the lives lost so she can write letters to next of kin and return keepsakes to rightful owners. When a man is washed ashore after a wreck, Laura acts quickly to protect him from a local smuggler determined to destroy him.

As Laura and a neighbor care for the survivor, they discover he has curious wounds and, although he speaks in careful, educated English, his accent seems odd. Other clues wash ashore, and Laura soon realizes he is not who he seems to be. Despite the evidence against him, the mysterious man might provide her only chance to discover the truth about her parents’ fate. With danger pursuing them from every side, and an unexpected attraction growing between them, will Laura ever find the answers she seeks?

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The Legacy of Rose Bodeen (Silver Cross Ranch Legacy Series Book 1)

Imagine opening a long-forgotten trunk to find diaries written by your foremothers. Four generations of thoughts, heartaches, challenges and triumphs. What lessons did they write inside the yellowed pages? What lessons could they gift you now?

THE LEGACY OF ROSE BODEEN – Book One of the Silver Cross Ranch Legacy

Rose Bodeen is a hard-living kind of girl who can out-ride any hand on the ranch. After being jilted, she sets out for adventure and finds it with Bill Cody’s Wild West Extravaganza. Yet the land draws her back like warm sun draws flowers from the ground in spring, just as her sweet Mama said it would the day she rode away. With matter-of-fact conviction and bull-headed determination, she strives to survive during the fast-changing times that follow—The Great War, the fight for a women’s right to vote, the Industrial Revolution, the high-kicking Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression and yet another devastating world war. She celebrates thrilling triumphs and endures deep tragedies, along with losses that go hand-in-hand with loving. With hard-won faith, Rose comes to accept what she calls God’s anvil time that hammers and hones her into all she’s meant to be.

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Edgewater Road (The Rumors in Ross County Series Book 1)

The first in a new series from New York Times bestselling author Shelley Shepard Gray, Edgewater Road invites us into a world of family mysteries, small-town secrets, and perhaps a little romance along the way.

When Jennifer Smiley’s grandmother, Ginny, leaves her an old farmhouse on Edgewater Road in seemingly quiet Ross County, Ohio, Jennifer can’t pass up the opportunity for a new beginning. Almost immediately she meets a group of men who generously help her move in. When she realizes that they work for Lincoln Bennett, her next-door neighbor, she’s intrigued. Lincoln is gorgeous and has dark, lapis-blue eyes she could get lost in … but he doesn’t seem all that friendly. She’s torn between getting to know him and sticking with the solitude she knows so well. Maybe she could let down some of those walls she’s built around her emotions?

Lincoln Bennett likes to keep his head down and get his work done. He’s been to prison and he knows that a lot of folks don’t take kindly to a man with that kind of history. Plus, he’s busy helping other ex-cons get back on their feet. But when he meets Jennifer, he can’t help but feel an instant attraction. Will she be able to look past his unsavory history? Will she be able to accept the men he’s working so hard to help?

While Jennifer gets to know Lincoln and his friends, she also begins to unravel her grandmother’s story, putting together the pieces from scraps of memories and things she finds in her new home. She soon discovers that Ginny Smiley harbored some dark secrets on Edgewater Road—and that those secrets include both Lincoln and her own absent father. Is learning the truth worth the heartache it could bring?

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The rest , we will run through them quickly. The were all excellent reads though.