For Your Christmas Reading

 At Thanksgiving dinner we discovered that my middle granddaughter, Riley, has become an entrepreneur. At sixteen. She's been making necklaces of polished stone for sometime, but she has recently added necklaces featuring fossilized sharks' teeth she found herself while accompanying her mother on her fossil expeditions. Many are quite different colors from the black ones found along Venice beaches where we used to live. Those imbedded in INLAND sand (covered by water millennia ago) are varying shades of blue-gray and beige. 

And this week Riley fulfilled her first mass order for display at Colonial Room Country Store on Main Street in Sanford. Photo below. (And yes, the double entendre of her brand name is deliberate.)

BLAIR'S CHRISTMAS STORIES

 Over the years I've written three stories that feature Christmas:  two novellas for Christmas anthologies, and a traditional Regency in which Christmas plays a strong role. The novellas have many poignant moments on the way to Romance. The trad Regency is more of a tug of war between two strong personalities.

 

After suffering social disaster at her very first ball—severely aggravated by the horror of an unfeeling family—Miss Pamela Ashburton hides herself in the country, expecting to live out her life as a spinster. Major Will Forsythe, injured in body and spirit at Waterloo, comes to the country to escape the concern of well-meaning relatives. Privacy, peace and quiet—that's all he wants. Until he meets a holiday sprite in search of mistletoe. And the Christmas spirit, in the form of a cluster of white berries, gives them both a second chance.

 A Lady Learns to Love is the poignant tale of a family faced with tragedy, amplified by unforeseen circumstances, who still manage to survive, aided by the spirit of Christmas.

Marriage, yes. Love, no. Lady Christine Ashworth's glorious Season in London comes to an abrupt close with the death of her father. Her home now belongs to someone else; her fiancé is conspicuous by his absence; and her younger sister is as miserable in their new home as she is. What can Christine do but accept an offer from the despised heir, even if she now considers all men anathema, particularly the perfect stranger who has taken her father's place?

Miss Aurelia Trevor has a problem. Until she reaches the age of twenty-five, she will have no control over her beloved Pevensey Park, and by that time her unscrupulous uncle will have run it into the ground. Marriage to someone other than her uncle's leering son is her only way out, but, one by one, she rejects the men on her list of suitors. In desperation, Aurelia does the unthinkable. She hires a solicitor to find her a husband strong enough to stand up to both her uncle and her cousin. And soon learns the truth of that old adage: Be careful what you wish for.

Thomas Lanning is a man of the City. Unlike Aurelia, who stands to inherit vast land and wealth, he has made his own place in the world. He is not at all tempted by the suggestion of marriage to an heiress, but other considerations, such as a power base for a seat in Parliament, tweak his interest. Plus an unexpected twinge of chivalry when he hears the full extent of Miss Trevor's difficulties with her uncle and his family.

Aurelia, who only wants to live in peace on her acres, finds she has acquired a ready-made family in Thomas's younger sister and brother, as well as a head-strong husband whose campaign for MP fills her household with a shockingly odd assortment of characters. It seems her marriage of convenience is fast becoming a marriage of inconvenience. Just how far will this strong-willed pair bend to accommodate each other? And will they do it before it's too late?

~ * ~

 

For a link to Blair's website, click here.

 For a link to Blair's Facebook Author Page  click here.

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)