Christmas Calling - Teaser Tuesday

With Christmas only a few weeks away, it seems like the right time to feature CHRISTMAS CALLING on Teaser Tuesday. Two novellas make up this charming book. Colleen Reece's story (Christmas Challenge) is set in Montana during the 1880s. Birdie Etchison's (Christmas Snow) is contemporary and takes place in the Spokane, Washington, area. Both are Christian romances.  

My Teaser is from Christmas Challenge.

TEASER:
Forty-five minutes later Valerie stared into the steely gray eyes of the man who held her future in his ink-stained hands. She swallowed the flutter in her throat and gave him back glance for glance. Danny O'Shea's daughter bowed to no man.
(I stretched the Teaser to three sentences this time. It's from 5% on my Kindle)

Genre: Christian Romance / Fiction
Number of Pages: 156
Amazon Link: Christmas Calling
More books by Colleen L. Reece: Colleen's Books

Amazon Synopsis:
      After the death of her guardian, Valerie Shannon O’Shea feels as adrift as a boat torn free of its moorings on Lake Michigan. She prays about her future and finds a challenge in the newspaper. IS THE PIONEER SPIRIT STILL ALIVE AND WELL? A skeptical financier doubts women in the late 1880s can live the hard life of their ancestors. He is offering train fare to Montana and a substantial cash prize to a young woman courageous enough to live in an abandoned one-room schoolhouse for a full year without help from anyone. 
      The schoolhouse is near Whitewind, where Valerie and her father lived ten years earlier. Danny O’Shea was then convicted of a crime he swore he did not commit. There is little to connect Valerie Shannon, as she signs her paintings, with the gawky fourteen-year-old known as Shannon O’Shea. What if she can meet the newspaper challenge, paint the Montana landscape, and carry out her long held vow to clear her father’s name? 
      The long train trip across country brings back bittersweet memories. Many are of eighteen-year-old Locke Stuart, son of the judge who sent Valerie’s father to prison. Locke had stolen Valerie’s heart but never answered her letters. She wonders if he ever thinks of the girl he fiercely championed in spite of his father’s opposition.    
      Valerie and Locke must ride tangled trails and learn to heed the everlasting whisper, Trust Me, before they can find happiness. 

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's the link to join in: Teaser Tuesday

The Meryl Streep Movie Club - Teaser Tuesday

  

If you like books that explore relationships between women, you'll love THE MERYL STREEP MOVIE CLUB. I'm less than halfway through the story, and last night I had to force myself to stop reading so I could get some sleep!

Here's my Teaser from 3% on my Kindle:

The envelope, like the letter inside, typed on plain white paper, was unaddressed, unsigned:
Your husband is having an affair. I'm not sure if you know, or if you want to know.

Genre: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Length: 352 Pages
Amazon Link: The Meryl Streep Movie Club

Synopsis from Amazon:

In the bestselling tradition of The Friday Night Knitting Club and The Jane Austen Book Club, three women find unexpected answers, happiness, and one another with Meryl Streep movies as their inspiration.

Two sisters and the cousin they grew up with after a tragedy are summoned home to their family matriarch's inn on the coast of Maine for a shocking announcement. Suddenly, Isabel, June, and Kat are sharing the attic  bedroom--and barely speaking. But when innkeeper Lolly asks them to join her and the guests in the parlor for weekly Movie Night--it's Meryl Streep month--they find themselves sharing secrets, talking long into the night--and questioning everything they thought they knew about life, love, and one another.

Each woman sees her complicated life reflected through the magic of cinema: Isabel's husband is having an affair, and an old pact may keep her from what she wants most . . . June has promised her seven-year-old son that she'll somehow find his father, who he's never known . . . and Kat is ambivalent about accepting her lifelong best friend's marriage proposal. Through everything, Lolly has always been there for them, and now Isabel, June, Kat--and Meryl--must be there for her. Finding themselves. Finding each other. Finding a happy ending.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's the link to join in: Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday - The Husband's Secret

Infidelity, murder, revenge ... this book has it all and Tupperware too! Set in Australia, the author creates characters who remind me of people I've known (or could easily have known) who are all too real in their failings. The story fascinated me, and I couldn't stop reading. I'll be looking for more books by Liane Moriarty.

Here's my Teaser:

What did it say? She considered tearing it open right that second, before she had time to think about it, like the way she sometimes (not very often) shoved the last piece of chocolate in her mouth, before her conscience had time to catch up with her greed. 
- At 5% on my Kindle

Genre: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Length: 394 Pages
Amazon Link: The Husband's Secret

Synopsis from Goodreads:

My Darling Cecilia
If you're reading this, then I've died . . .

Imagine your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something so terrible it would destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others too. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive.

Cecilia Fitzpatrick achieved it all - she's an incredibly successful business woman, a pillar of her small community and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband's devastating secret.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's the link to join in: Teaser Tuesday

Eight Cousins - Louisa May Alcott

For today's Book Beginnings on Friday and Friday 56 post, I'm featuring Eight Cousins. I haven't read the book yet, but at 99¢ for my Kindle, it's a bargain!

Here's the Book Beginning:

Chapter 1 - Two Girls
      Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, sombre curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bob-tailed coats or short-waisted frocks. 

Louisa May paints a good picture of the room, but those two sentences are really long! Would an editor let us write that way today? I don't think so.

Here's the Friday 56 excerpt from my Kindle:

      Presently, Phebe appeared with a card. Rose read it, made a grimace, then laughed and said,
     "I'll see Miss Blish," and immediately put on her company face, pulled out her locket, and settled her curls.

*********

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings and Friday 56. 

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