New Web Location for My Book Bag

In my ongoing attempt to simplify my life (ha!), I'm changing the web location of My Book Bag. Since all my other blogs are here on Blogger, it just makes it easier for me to keep everything streamlined. In future, my reviews and interviews will be found here at this blog site - the new My Book Bag. Reviews and interviews posted prior to Aug. 17, 2009 remain at the old site on Wordpress.

Sweetwater Gap

by Denise Hunter

Josie Mitchell left Sweetwater Gap with no intention of ever returning to her childhood home. Running from ghosts of shame and self-recrimination, she flees a horrible secret that’s destroying her, body and soul. She makes a life for herself in the big city, well and truly away from her hometown, her family, and the apple orchards she once loved. Not even the death of her beloved father brings Josie back to Sweetwater Gap.

But when her sister Laurel needs help through a difficult pregnancy, the troubled young woman can’t say no. Carefully guarding two secrets—one old, one new—she reluctantly makes the journey back home.

With the family’s apple business rapidly approaching disaster, Laurel assumes her sister is home to help in the orchards. Laurel’s husband Nate hopes Josie can convince his wife to sell the trees and land and forget the bothersome family business. And then there’s Grady Mackenzie, the new orchard manager, who simply wishes Josie would go back to her fancy city life and let him do his job, which is bringing the business back into the black.

Josie just wants to get her sister’s twins into their mother’s arms and herself back to her little city apartment. She’d like nothing more than to forget her childhood home with it’s guilt-ridden memories, along with the handsome, arrogant, frustrating orchard manager who showed up out of nowhere in her absence.

But God has other ideas for Josie, and her unplanned trip to Sweetwater Gap delivers His wayward, hurting child right into His loving hands, where He can shape her and her future according to His will. The path to that goal is a rough one to follow—rocky and crooked and painful—but Josie Mitchell could very well find that Sweetwater Gap is still her home sweet home.

A sweet story with all the necessary components to make it a memorable one. Love, longing, religion, secrets, family, guilt … it’s all there, skillfully interwoven into a wonderful tale of hurt and healing, stubborn pride and sweet surrender. Great storytelling!

Thirsty

by Tracey Bateman

Nina Parker is an alcoholic—a recovering one, recently released from rehab. She’s lost everything, including the husband she loves. But returning to her hometown with a reluctant daughter in tow may not be the easiest way to re-enter the world. Abbey Hills holds the parents Nina abandoned at age sixteen, her perfect sister, the man who stole her innocence, and a heart full of terrifying memories she’s not quite ready to confront.

It also houses the handsome, mysterious Markus Chisom. He’s as much an addict as is Nina … but his thirst is dark and unspeakable, though centuries of practice have given him more control than Nina has yet achieved. His obsession with Nina is older than she can possibly imagine. But an old acquaintance is in town as well. Eden is darker and stronger than Markus, and she neither has nor desires control of her thirst.

Will Nina find the strength she needs to save herself and her daughter? Will Markus help her, or will Eden sway him to return to the old ways?

Tracey Bateman does an astounding job of interweaving a spiritual message within a tapestry of dark desires. Thirsty is a spine-tingling story of addiction and recovery, love and loss, hope and healing … good and evil. It’s a witness to God’s power to quench a raving thirst, heal a hurting heart, and mend a broken life. A well written, tightly woven, wonderfully mesmerizing tale.

Releasing October 6th, WaterBrook Press.

The Blue Enchantress

by M.L. Tyndall

Hope Westcott has a lifetime of bad choices under her dainty little belt. The most recent one—an affair with a married man—lands her on an auction block to be sold into slavery.

Captain Nathaniel Mason is running from God’s call to the ministry. He is determinedly building a shipping business, ensuring himself a lifetime of security, which he mistakenly believes wealth can buy. His weakness is a secret love for the vain and frivolous Hope Westcott. When he sees her on the auction block, love demands he sacrifice his ship and its cargo to save her.

Nathaniel has every intention of returning his lovely new possession to her home in Chares Towne, but God uses stormy seas, shipwreck, illness, and pirates to waylay the headstrong couple until they see things His way.

The Blue Enchantress is a captivating tale of love, forgiveness, acceptance, personal and spiritual growth, and learning to yield to the Master’s will. M.L. Tyndall breathes such life into her characters that the reader is reluctant to bid them farewell on the last page. This second installment in the Charles Town Belles series is chock full of laughter and tears, sin and redemption, love and its seedier counterpart. The Blue Enchantress is a pirate’s chest of literary treasure … more than worth the voyage!

A Sensible Match

by Teryl Cartwright

One young woman’s attempt to forestall the arranged marriage thrust upon her by a well-meaning parent. A dutiful suitor’s efforts to decide how far he’s willing to go to fulfill his mother’s long-ago promise to a friend. A series of humorous encounters between the young couple arouse a genuine response in the reader, who longs to remove the meddling mothers and allow Abby and Edwin the chance to experience courtship the way it was intended to happen. Can they trust God enough to give their hopes and dreams to Him and allow the Creator of the Universe to mold their futures however He will? Teryl Cartwright’s beautiful love story is woven with wonderfully time-authentic detail and threaded with a fine spiritual thread. A captivating plot, well-rounded characters, a touch of suspense, and a couple of surprising twists keep the pages turning from cover to cover.

Maggie Rose

by Sharlene MacLaren

1904. Maggie Rose is the middle daughter of Jacob Kane. She’s spunky and innocent at twenty years old when she leaves her family’s home in Sandy Shores, Michigan in response to God’s call to work with orphans in New York City.

Upon settling in at her new job, Maggie Rose is appalled by the painful pasts of many of the children at Sheltering Arms Refuge. Though she misses her family, she’s amazed by her immediate response to the unfortunate orphans. Each of the children touches Maggie Rose’s heart in a special way, and she finds herself loving them all with whole-hearted love and compassion.

Luke Madison is a news reporter who’s recent losses have left him cynical, hard, and obsessed with finding someone to blame for a tragic shipboard fire that took the lives of over a thousand women and children, including his own aunt and his adored fiancée. His editor firmly removes him from the story that’s too close to his heart, and hands him an assignment covering the city’s street orphans—starting at a family-owned and operated orphanage called Sheltering Arms Refuge.

Between Maggie Rose and the handsome reporter springs up an instant, indefinable animosity…and unwelcome attraction. She needs to focus on her ministry with the children. He’s still in love with a memory. She can never give her heart to a man who doesn’t share her love for Christ. He holds God responsible for his pain and loss. Even the orphans’ sad fates give Luke more reason to turn his back on his Creator.

In this second volume of The Daughters of Jacob Kane, the author paints a vivid picture of caring and compassion, of obedience and dedication to the call of Christ, of love and loss and love renewed. Sharlene MacLaren’s ability to breathe warm, heart-pumping life into her characters is key to the success of her wonderful tales. Maggie Rose is without a doubt character-driven, yet an equally strong, believable plot helps keep the pages turning and the reader’s interest and emotions invested right up to the last line of the last page. Within its pages is a masterpiece of storytelling that contains all the essential ingredients: mystery and suspense; poignancy and pathos; love and romance; humor and heart.

Maggie Rose is an enlightening ride on the early nineteenth century orphan train. By the last rail station, the reader’s heart is waylaid and held hostage by the children, captivated by the innocence and fervor of young Maggie Rose, and forever lost to the journalist who didn’t want to be a part of the story.

Don’t miss this one…

Love Finds You in Revenge, Ohio

by Lisa Harris

She’s been jilted twice, and Catherine Morgan has no intention of letting it happen again. Every man in her life has failed her – including her father, whose abandonment left her responsible for her three younger sisters and her mother. She’s vowed off of love and marriage and devoted herself to running the family’s general store and keeping her sisters safe and happy until they find good husbands to take over the job.

Things are handled. Everything’s going smoothly.

Then Sheriff Corbin Hunter shows up in the small town of Revenge, Ohio and turns Catherine’s world on end. He left her once, and now she must decide whether she can trust him again – this time, with her sister’s heart. Corbin’s evidence points to Audrey’s fiancé as the head of an infamous criminal gang. In her efforts to prove otherwise and save her sister from heartbreak, Catherine finds her own heart responding once again to the man who jilted her seven years ago.

As if Corbin’s reappearance isn’t upheaval enough, news of their father’s death arrives to further upset the Morgan sisters. Though Catherine has no love left for Isaiah Morgan, who couldn’t be bothered to be a husband and father, she must deal with her sisters’ grief and her own lingering resentment.

Corbin Hunter wants the man who killed his father, and he’ll let nothing and no one—certainly not the girl who broke his heart seven years ago—stand in his way. His desire for revenge could cost him the love of his life.

Love Finds You in Revenge Ohio is packed with the essentials of good reading: fun, faith, mystery, romance, bad bad guys and a heroic hero. Well written, with lots of plot twists to keep those pages turning, details authentic to the time period, likeable (and some not-so-likeable) characters, and the kind of ending that makes for loyal readers. Good stuff!