Tag: #WomensFiction

Posted in Book Tours

A Wyoming Family Holiday

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

A Wyoming Family Holiday: A Clean and Uplifting Romance
Virginia McCullough
(Back to Adelaide Creek, )
Published by: Harlequin Heartwarming
Publication date: October 28th 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Holiday, Romance, Women’s Fiction

Can saving a town landmark…

Restore her faith in love?

When attorney Sloan Lancaster returns to Adelaide Creek to care for his father, he’s shocked at Winding Creek Rehab and Care Center’s run-down state. He considers moving his dad but is drawn to his high school crush Bethany, in charge of the facility’s restoration. Moved by Bethany’s community spirit and her adorable young daughter, Heidi, Sloan makes an anonymous donation to the center as the holidays bring them all closer. But when Sloan’s identity is revealed, Bethany pulls away, anxious about conflict of interest. Can she overcome her fears to embrace Sloan’s support—and build the loving family she’s always wanted?

From Harlequin Heartwarming: Wholesome stories of love, compassion and belonging.

Back to Adelaide Creek

Book 1: The Rancher’s Wyoming Twins
Book 2: The Doc’s Holiday Homecoming
Book 3: His Wyoming Surprise
Book 4: Finding His Wyoming Sweetheart
Book 5: A Wyoming Family Holiday

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Apple Books / Kobo

—

EXCERPT:

Sloan Lancaster raised the hood of his jacket and raced through the downpour, skirting the water overflowing dips and deep potholes in the asphalt parking lot. This, plus the rundown brick and wood exterior, was all he needed to conclude that the Winding Creek Rehab and Care Center was past its prime. Especially dreary was the aging paint job, once white, but now a dull, dirty gray. Sloan summed up his first impression of this facility in one word: neglected.

As he ducked into the hands-free revolving door a commotion in the lobby caught his attention. Women and men in scrubs or lab coats were pushing and pulling furniture across the carpeted floor, while a couple of burly guys in maintenance uniforms dragged an oversized tarp into the far corner of the room where rainwater ran down the wall.

Two women a few feet in front of him struggled to pull a couch across the middle of the lobby. He approached from behind and called out, “Wait, let me help with that. Tell me where you want it.”

A woman spun around. “Thanks. We can use the help.” Her eyes opened wide in surprise. “Sloan?”

“Bethany?” He struggled to find his next words as he grasped the wooden armrest on one end. “I’d know you anywhere.” It was true. He hadn’t seen her since high school and she’d barely changed at all.

Not the time to ask a lot of questions. He made his early morning workouts pay off as he dragged the couch to the only empty spot on the other side of the lobby big enough to accommodate it. The space was already filled with a hodgepodge of tables and armchairs that had escaped the leaking roof and ceilings.

Bethany pushed the couch from the other end. Her expression turned serious as she straightened up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re here to see your dad, I assume. Medical transport brought him here a couple of hours ago.”

Her burgundy pantsuit and crisp tailored white shirt gave her a professional look in the style of the women lawyers at his firm. That led Sloan to guess that his old friend Bethany Hoover was an administrator in this place, where, for better or worse, his dad was now a patient. The worn out exterior and general disarray in the lobby weren’t filling him with positive feelings about that.

The opposite, in fact.

Author Bio:

A writer all her adult life, Virginia McCullough has had the opportunity to write the stories of her heart in her novels, including Girl in the Spotlight, the first book in her Two Moon Bay series for Harlequin Heartwarming. (Book 2 is scheduled for release in January 2018). Her award-winning romance and women’s fiction titles include The Jacks of Her Heart, Amber Light, Greta’s Grace, The Chapels on the Hill, and Island Healing.

Born and raised in Chicago, Virginia has been lucky enough to develop her writing career in many locations, including the coast of Maine, the mountains of North Carolina, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and currently, Northeast Wisconsin. She started her career in nonfiction, first writing articles and then books as a ghostwriter and coauthor. She’s written more than 100 books for physicians, business owners, professional speakers and many others with information to share or a story to tell.

Virginia’s books feature characters who could be your neighbors and friends. They come in all ages and struggle with everyday life issues in small-town environments that almost always include water—oceans, lakes, or rivers. The mother of two grown children, you’ll find Virginia with her nose a book, walking on trails or her neighborhood street, or she may be packing her bag to take off for her next adventure. And she’s always working on another story about hope, healing, and second chances.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Bookbub / Newsletter


GIVEAWAY!

A Wyoming Family Holiday Blitz

https://widget.gleamjs.io/e.js

—

Posted in Book Tours

Where Birds Land

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

An inspiring story of determination and grit . . .


Where Birds Land

by Mary Ruth Barnes

Genre: Native American Women’s Fiction


An inspiring story of determination and grit . . .

Ella McSwain is a Chickasaw woman raising her family amidst evolving turmoil within the budding state of Oklahoma. After Ella is left with an unusable plot of land, she finds herself fighting for her family’s rightful allotment. Faced with crooked businessmen, land grifters, and grueling court battles, can she summon the strength to persevere against all odds?

In this stand-alone companion to Little Bird, Mary Ruth Barnes crafts an engaging family saga that spans from Indian Territory to Oklahoma statehood against the backdrop of the state’s changing landscape.

 

Amazon * B&N * Bookbub * Goodreads



Mary Ruth Barnes graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina State with high honors and a Master’s Degree from Montana State. After college, Barnes taught high school and college English, Art and Computer Science for 14 years. Barnes has received numerous awards for her art and writing on the state and national level from 2011-2022. Barnes recently published her first novel “Little Bird” with the Chickasaw Press about her great-great-Grandmother’s journey in Indian Territory. “Little Bird” won two 2022 Ippy awards, receiving gold for the cover design and silver for best Midwest regional fiction. Barnes is extremely active in her community through Rotary (a member since 1996), P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization), and Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumni Association. She is also a current member of the National Watercolor Society.

In 2022, Barnes was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame and Capitol Hill High School Hall of Fame for leadership in her community. She also won the 2022 “55 Over 55 Inspiring Oklahomans” award for making a difference in the lives of others. In 2019, Barnes won the Women in the Arts Recognition award from the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. And in 2015, Barnes was selected as the Chickasaw Dynamic Woman of the year.

Barnes has had many short stories and watercolors featured in several issues of the journal of Chickasaw History and Culture, Ishtunowa. She was also honored as a Chickasaw Artist in the July 2015 issue of the Distinctly Oklahoma magazine. Her story of inspiration leading to painting and drawing was featured in a book by Allison Fields, Chickasaw Artisans. In 2017, Barnes was selected for the registry of Native American Artists located at the Heard Museum in Scottsdale, AZ. While traveling and vacationing in South Texas with her art, Barnes was interviewed and featured in the RV Wheel Life Magazine for the 2017 issue. Barnes retired from a career as the Director of Planned Giving for American Cancer Society in 2017, where she raised over 35 million dollars for cancer research. Her artwork “Fight of Hope” is currently featured in the Cancer Journal of Native American Research and is on display in the surgery waiting room of the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center. Her watercolors can also be found at several locations across the State of Oklahoma, including the Artesian and the Welcome Center located in Davis. 

She has been a long-time equestrian, Barnes and her husband, Mike live on a ranch in south central Oklahoma. They have two sons, Wiley and Selby Barnes, and six grandchildren. Both sons work for the Chickasaw Nation. Mrs. Barnes enjoys traveling with her husband in retirement.

 

Website * Facebook * Instagram * Amazon



Follow the tour HERE for special content and a $10 giveaway!


Where Birds Land


https://widget.gleamjs.io/e.js
Posted in Book Tours

Wild Flowers

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Three elder stateswomen in the music industry, scarred by scandal, addiction, and forced retirement, go all in to create a killer comeback album.


Wild Flowers

by Merie Robie

Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction

Three elder stateswomen in the music industry, scarred by scandal, addiction, and forced retirement, go all in to create a killer comeback album. As they learn to trust themselves and dive back into songwriting, they entwine their lives and voices in ways they couldn’t have imagined alone.

Everyone has forgotten about soul singer Honey Conaway, except that she stabbed a producer’s eye out at a party and left drunk and stumbling like some glitzy Medea. Everyone loves Gloria Redmond: Girls grew up listening to her country-tinged, smart-alecky tunes, but she has become irrelevant past her prime. And everyone knows Sian Star, not for her time fronting the pop band The Whirlygirls, but for driving a red Porsche into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. When these three women create an award-winning comeback album together, each is challenged by the version of herself that pushed her out of the spotlight in the first place.

 

What readers are saying:

“A beautiful novel about three vibrant, memorable women who refuse to abandon their passion for music despite their struggles with aging, caretaking, and the frustration of thwarted dreams. Gloria, Honey, and Sian are an inspiring reminder that nothing is over until it’s over.”

Jane Delury, Author of Hedge

 

“Drop the needle on this power chord of a novel and feel it pull you in. A resonant story about friendship, songwriting, and serendipity, and about how all of us, even aging country stars, can reinvent ourselves.” — Elisabeth Cohen, author of The Glitch. 

 

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Bookbub * Goodreads

 


Meri Robie is a writer and editor living in Baltimore. Her novel Wildflowers will be published by Watertower Press in 2025. Her play, “Light Strikes a Deal” was included in the Rapid Lemon Theater’s Variations on Night festival (2025), and she earned Honorable Mention for the 2023 Page One Contest by Gutsy Great Novelist (gutsygreatnovelist.com). She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. You can find her volunteering as an usher for various Baltimore theater productions, driving Baltimore School for the Arts students to local art events, or scribbling away notes in the front seat of her car at stop lights.

 

Amazon * Goodreads



Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!


https://uplup.com/scripts/embed.js

Posted in Book Tours

Dorothy’s Gift

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

A modern-day, inspiring story of two women who, when their paths merge discover love, growth and redemption that changes their lives forever. 


Dorothy’s Gift

By Christine C. Schneider

Genre: Women’s Fiction


Dorothy is content with her life as a wedding seamstress. She loves her two adult children, her husband, and her church. She is gifted with the ability to turn heaps of pink satin, lemon-yellow chiffon, and white lace into exquisite gowns. Her clients are beautiful, well-bred, and pay her well. Dorothy doesn’t like change, but even volunteering at the crisis pregnancy center doesn’t shake her peaceful life too much. She does what she can to offer help to women who are dealing with real, life-changing decisions.

Then Bailey wanders into the clinic: angry, abrasive, and hiding the pain of a dark secret.

In a moment of wild compassion, Dorothy convinces her wonderfully supportive husband, Gary, to allow her to invite Bailey to live with them until the baby is born.

Suddenly, Dorothy’s life is overwhelmed by change, and unable to keep up, Dorothy makes some huge errors in judgment. Instead of helping Bailey, everything Dorothy does seems to hurt the girl more.

Only Dorothy’s son, Daniel, begins to recognize Bailey’s potential, as he sees her reach out to support Dorothy when Gary has a heart attack and her daughter has a miscarriage. Meanwhile, Bailey is suffocated by the realization that this wonderful, loving family would not want her if they knew that she had allowed her first child to be aborted.

As Dorothy sews her way through a year of weddings, Bailey challenges Dorothy’s compassion and points out her lukewarm, Christian hypocrisy. The poor girl doesn’t know how to clean her room, run a washing machine, or cut up a cucumber. In addition, Dorothy’s church doesn’t want “people like Bailey” to taint their youth and college group. Worst of all, her son, Daniel, has decided to try to win the heart of Bailey. As the year progresses, Dorothy is confronted with her own ungodly self-centeredness, lack of spiritual depth, and stubborn resistance to changing her plans for herself and her family.

This is the story of the growth of love between a young woman in need of a mother and a mother with enough love for more than her own two children.

What Readers are Saying:


I finished the book because I couldn’t stop reading. I love the story, I love the characters, I love the message, I love the writing style, I love it all. I want to go back so I can better appreciate the character development and story arc. I cried multiple times throughout the book.
—Betty, missionary and missionary wife in Kenya

Carolyn’s Rewrite
The book was hard to put down until it was finished. Dorothy is an empty nester, encouraged by her son to volunteer at a pregnancy center. She does, but struggles some since her gifts to help are not typical to other volunteers. She connects with one woman, Bailey, who has made some bad decisions and needs a role model. The book answers the real question about what is more important in life. –Carolyn, Austria

 

Amazon * Bookbub * Goodreads





Christine Schneider is passionate about showing people how to dig treasure from God’s word. She is a Bible teacher, conference speaker, and “idea person.” She and her husband have been in missionary and church work since their marriage in 1973. She has written several Bible study guides and two historical novels. Christine and Floyd, her husband, live in Plains, MT. They have two sons, two excellent daughters-in-law, and eight wonderful grandchildren.

 

Website * Facebook * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads

 


Follow the tour HERE for special content and a $10 giveaway!



https://uplup.com/scripts/embed.js












Posted in Book Tours

Scare Thee Well

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Meet Tansy Shackleton. 

She’s just the witch to finish what her ancestors started.


Scare Thee Well

Laurel Haven Witches Book 2

by ReGina Welling

Genre: Paranormal Women’s Fiction



Three hundred years ago, one witch had to live with her mistakes. Today, another might have to die for them.

 Tansy Shackleton has spent her entire life carrying the guilt of her family’s legacy. If not for her ancestor’s mistake, good witches might not be trapped in the coastal town of Laurel Haven, Maine. But no matter how hard she tries to make amends, she can’t stop seeing the stain on her soul. Not even at the cost of her marriage.

 Connor Shackleton has tried everything he can think of to get his wife to see that she’s not to blame for the unwitting actions of a long-dead witch. At his wit’s end and unable to watch Tansy work herself into the ground for something that wasn’t even her fault, he proposes they take a break for a few days, just to get some perspective.

 He should have known Tansy would martyr both their happiness on the alter of guilt, but he didn’t. He wanted her back almost from the minute he walked away, but she’s shut him out of her life as firmly as the door she closed behind him.

 The problem is, life and death in Laurel Haven go hand in hand for witches of the blood, and just like Tansy, Connor’s one of them. The only way to move forward is to turn and face the past head-on. Together with her new coven, Tansy will have to put all of Laurel Haven’s ghosts to rest or die trying.

  

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Bookbub * Goodreads



Rue the Slay

Laurel Haven Witches Book 1


Three hundred years ago, four witches went into the forest to cast a spell of protection against the evil creeping into their town but they were too late.

Today, Rue Channing never sees it coming, and she should because seeing is her special power. Still, who would have expected to be kidnapped and hauled off to a small coastal town in Maine?

But that is exactly what happened. Now, Rue, a lover of order and strict routines, is dragged out of her comfort zone and into a new life in the small, coastal town of Laurel Haven.

Things could not be worse, she thinks, until she meets the man next door and decides they could. Ry McFadden is the most infuriating man on the planet. He’s a study in contrasts; grumpy yet generous, intensely private, but somehow open. Rue can’t think what to do with him, except she can, and that just makes things worse.

The problem is, Ry McFadden just might be part of Rue’s destiny as she learns she’s been brought to Laurel Haven to finish what her ancestors started.

  

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Bookbub * Goodreads




ReGina Welling prefers not to talk about herself in the third person so…

I live in Maine with my husband, a silly flufferpup named Dash, and a crazy cat named Cricket. I write full time and also create mixed media artwork when I get the chance.

When I was three, my mom brought home a new book and when she went to read it to me, I read it to her instead. That was when she realized I’d learned to read. Since then I couldn’t even estimate the number of books I’ve read. It’s a lot!

I love talking to other readers so please visit me in any one of these various places and don’t forget to let me know you stopped by!

 

Website * Facebook * X * Instagram * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads



Follow the tour HERE for special content and a $10 giveaway!


a Rafflecopter giveaway


https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js