Historical Books

FROM WINE TO WATER

First book in the Angels & Outlaws series will be published in December.

Three nuns. Three outlaws. A long journey and many surprises ahead of them !

THE BLACK SWAN

HISTORICAL TRILOGY

Praise for

PUSHIN' UP DAISIES
"A great story. From start to finish, you read eagerly hoping to learn the truth. I really enjoyed the O'Shea sisters and can't wait to see if Bridget or Alice finds romance next. Plus, a peek at what Catherine and Quincy are up to will be an added treat." --Roundtable Reviews

"The always engaging Brown begins a sprightly new historical romance series set just after the 1918 influenza epidemic that claimed millions. She also explores the concerns of war veterans returning home to no jobs, while introducing a new setting, an inn and its environs near the Arkansas-Louisiana border." --Booklist

"The setting--a post-World War I factory town-- is nicely done." --Publishers Weekly

Praise for

FROM THIN AIR

Alice is the middle daughter––artistic and air-headed rather than pretty or sensible like her sisters, and always prone to outrageous behavior. But when Catherine’s presumed-dead fiancé Ira McNewell returns from the war and Alice must tell him that he no longer has family, home, work, or fiancèe, she impulsively offers him a job at the Black Swan hotel, complete with bed and board, to the consternation of her self-righteous neighbors. Alice has secretly loved Ira since they were children, but can she convince him to see her as more than a bratty little sister? Brown’s entertainingly gossipy second installment, set in 1919 in a small town in Arkansas , continues to develop her lively and smart historical romance series about the three O’Shea sisters. As they attempt to conceal the accidental death of Bridget’s abusive husband, and search for the men of their dreams, the sisters must face the great challenges of postwar life in a failing economy, and a new social order in which women begin to value themselves more highly and demand their due. — Booklist

Praise for

COME HIGH WATER

THE ROMANCE READERS CONNECTION: COME HIGH WATER is the last book in the Black Swan trilogy by Carolyn Brwon. While I had not read the preceding two books, and this book stands strongly on its own, I think as a reader you would enjoy going back and reading the first two books in this series before picking this one up. This is a series set in post Great War America about a trio of sisters.

Bridget O’Shea has been left to run her family hotel in Huttig by herself. Her parents died during the flu epidemic of 1918 and both of her sisters have recently married and moved on. Running the hotel alone has been rewarding, yet also a struggle. When a rat appears in her kitchen, she’s had it and walks down to the rail yard to try and find a man to do the chores around the house that she just can’t do. What she finds is Wyatt Ferguson.

Wyatt is avoiding going home. His best friend is marrying the girl he loves and he just can’t face them. Instead, when the feisty redhead propositions him to work at her hotel for $1 a day, plus room, board and food, he agrees for six weeks. What he finds at the Black Swan is nothing of what he expects.

Wyatt and Bridget are both well written characters and their story is an interesting one. I found myself envisioning the time period and how it would have been like to live in that era. This is a sweet love story, and while nothing in it is unusual or out of the ordinary, it was enjoyable to read. Ms. Brown is a prolific writer with 36 other books under her belt and although this is the first book of hers I have read, I can guarantee that it will not be the last. Now where did I put that backlist….?

COFFEE TIME ROMANCE: Raising a baby, running a hotel, and trying to live down the worst year of her life has Bridget O’Shea nearly at her wit’s end. The rat in the kitchen is the final straw; she needs help, and sets her sights on the first man with feet big enough to take care of the job.Minding his own business has never gotten Wyatt Ferguson into any trouble until that day in the train depot. That day trouble comes looking for him, all five feet, strawberry red hair, and packed with attitude who made it a point of singling him out. Wyatt takes Bridget up on her job offer, with every intention of just biding his time until he has to make his way home to Texas, but nothing could prepare him for what is about to occur. He goes from being a mostly anonymous handyman to a nursemaid and baby-sitter when Bridget becomes very ill very quickly, and in one week Wyatt learns more about himself than he has in the previous twenty-five years. Bridget must grudgingly accept Wyatt’s help, and with the doctor quarantining all three of them, there really is no other option. Three weeks of being locked up in an empty hotel with a virtual stranger is scary enough, but when feelings that she swore never to have for another man start emerging, she is terrified of trusting her judgment that proved so devastatingly bad before.

I challenge anyone to read this book, and not fall completely in love with Wyatt Ferguson. His heart is an open book, and his love for baby Ella just comes shining through, but through it all he never fails to be completely masculine and strong. Bridget, by nature, is a little harder to embrace as she takes everything as a challenge to her authority or personal abilities. Their story lightens the heart and warms the soul, making the last of the Black Swan series a real pleasure to read.