A Few More Books to add to your TBRs

No giveaway today. Just wanted to stop by and share a few more finds that I’m excited about. Again, I apologize if any of these have been mentioned on previous days — so many books to remember! — and it’s better to mention twice than not at all. 🙂

JANUARY RELEASES

Water’s Break by Sophia I. Hansen – Enclave Escape – YOUNG ADULT, FANTASY

What if fear itself is the deadliest undercurrent of all?

Nica would do anything to avoid the hassles of her sister’s bonding ceremony—the wrap fittings, hairstyles, and braided fire coral—but she never imagined that the waters covering her planet would be broken. As the heavens rained fire and stone, mountains erupted from the sea and dry ground was birthed on the Deep, dividing the water—and the Olomi people—for the first time in their history.

In the wake of her world’s violent re-formation, Nica’s family is shattered. When the rookie Guardian leaves the safety of the Deep to find her sister, she is abducted by strange landwalkers who possess strength and technology beyond her imagination. Nica realizes that the disaster from above was by their design—a calculated plan to terraform the water planet and conquer her people. All Nica wants to do is find her sister and swim home to safety, but with the landwalkers closing in, escape may not be possible. And if Nica can’t save herself, how can she hope to save her sister—or her people?

Once a Queen by Sarah Arthur – WaterBrook Press – YOUNG ADULT, FANTASY

An American teenager discovers that her estranged English grandmother was once a queen in another world in the debut novel from bestselling author and speaker Sarah Arthur.

When fourteen-year-old Eva Joyce unexpectedly finds herself spending the summer at the mysterious manor house of the English grandmother she’s never met, troubling questions arise. Why the estrangement? What’s with the house’s employees and their guarded secrets? Why must Eva never mention trains, her father, or her favorite childhood fairy tales?

After strange things start happening in the gardens at night, Eva turns to the elderly housekeeper, gardener, and the gardener’s great-grandson, Frankie, for answers. Astonishingly, they all seem to believe the fairy tales are true–that portals to other worlds still exist, though hidden and steadily disappearing. They suspect that Eva’s grandmother was once a queen in one of those worlds.

But Eva’s grandmother denies it all. After a horrific family tragedy when she was young, her heart is closed to the beauty and pain of her past. It’s up to Eva, with Frankie’s help, to discover what really happened, whether family relationships can be restored, and if the portals are closed forever. As she unravels generational secrets, Eva wrestles with the grief of a vanishing childhood–and the fear that growing up means giving up fairy tales forever.

Nightfall (Benson First Responders; 6) by Lisa Phillips – Indie – SUSPENSE

Big City Crime. Small Town Heroes. A woman determined to save lives.

Violet Anderson fights for survival every day, as an EMT and volunteering at a center for teens. But nothing will erase the fallout of hitting rock bottom. Determined to keep going, Lettie has to juggle her callings and pray nothing falls out of her grasp. When her personal and professional lives crash into each other, she lands in the middle of a police investigation. Her carefully constructed boundaries are about to fall. But facing the path God puts in front of her head on means she could gain everything she’s ever wanted.

A cop looking for a place to call home. Detective Blake Reed might be new to Intelligence, but he’s spent years training for this. All his skills will be put to the test when he’s given an assignment to sniff out drug deals at the Benson Teen Center. When he realizes who Lettie really is, the flimsy foundation of his career is shaken. Will the past come back to bite him and destroy the good he’s been able to do?With a dangerous bomber on the loose, Violet and Blake have to figure out how to keep it all from burning down. This time the entire first responder community is on the line.

FEBRUARY RELEASES

Operation Scarlet by Rachel McMillian – Thomas Nelson – HISTORICAL, WWII

The future of the country depends upon their secret lives, but the things they keep from one another are tearing them apart.

France, 1944 : The clever and dashing Phineas Fulham is deeply involved in the resistance movement. Entrenched in the Black Market, he determines dealers and buyers sympathetic to working against the growing spread of Nazi hatred. While in Paris, fate reintroduces him to a beautiful opera singer from his past, Marlena Sartin. Their romance blossoms as the occupied city becomes more tightly held by the vise grip of Germany.

Meanwhile, Marlena is holding secrets of her own. She has her own part to play in the changing landscape of France, but she can’t help being drawn to Phin. It is on their wedding day that they both learn that the other’s secrets could threaten them both. And with D-day looming, the things they’re keeping from each other threaten not just the future of their love, but of the country and the war itself.

Transporting readers to war-occupied Dover, Rouen, and Paris, Operation Scarlet breathes new life into a classic revolutionary story with fresh wit, romance, and the spirit of swashbuckling heroism that transcends wars and centuries.

Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson – Tyndale – WOMEN’S FICTION, SOUTHERN FICTION

When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.

Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.

Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.

Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.

At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.

MARCH RELEASES

Allie’s Amish Family Miracle by Tracy Fredrychowski – Indie – AMISH, CONTEMPORARY

Two worlds collide when true love enters an Old Order Amish community. Can this young woman go against tradition and find happiness in forbidden love?

Allie Mast struggles to fit into her new community. Determined to prove herself to the Raber family, she can’t help but notice how her Mennonite background and Rueben’s Amish roots are causing tension between them. Every family has hurts and deep wounds, but the constant conflict pushes her to a place where she will do anything to get what she wants.

Reuben Raber has no desire to take over Raber Farms. When his overbearing mother, Saloma, is set to ruin any hopes of him making a life with Allie, his faith is tested beyond measure, and he experiences a crisis of conviction.

Can this determined couple find the courage to step out in faith and pursue peace and healing even when persecuted for their unconventional union?

This Ain’t No Promised Land by Tina Shelton – Kregel – WOMEN’S FICTION

No matter how far you run, you can’t escape yourself–or outrun the love of God.

When her husband dies, Charlotte can’t face the things she’s done, things that could tear her family apart. So she drops a goodbye letter in the cookie jar and flees south to escape everything–her life, her three daughters, the mistakes she’s made, and the secrets that have been eating her alive. She’s desperate to find the peace she’s looking for somewhere out there.

Now Gracey and her sisters are alone on Chicago’s South Side with nothing but their home and their belongings, not a parent to be seen. They’re doing everything they can to stay together as a family. But three young girls–sixteen, fourteen, and twelve–aren’t meant to parent themselves. The close-knit community gathers around them to keep them fed and clothed with the utilities on, but it isn’t enough. The girls are struggling and making destructive decisions as a way of coping with abandonment.

Hundreds of miles away, Charlotte is trying to keep her own head above water. She’s made a close friend who talks to her about God in a way Charlotte’s never heard before. But when her demons catch up to her, she must face her past head-on. Will she be able to find the courage to embrace motherhood? And will that be enough not to lose her family altogether?

Debut author Tina Shelton drops readers straight into 1980s South Side Chicago. Her raw, authentic writing welcomes those who are willing to come alongside characters dealing with generational trauma, abandonment, hidden abuse, destructive choices, and the desire to be set free