How delightful to travel back (virtually) to New Zealand’s Stewart Island via Tracey Alvarez’s new entry in her Due South series, Melting Into You. I found the description of this wild island’s winter most refreshing as I swelter here in 90+F degree days. Once again, Alvarez has written about real-to-life characters who are facing major issues in their lives.

Ben, the swinging bachelor whose longest commitment was measured in just a few months (and that to guarantee an assistant for his tourist shark dives), is faced with the result of a long ago one night fling. A nine-year-old …

Jayne Denker’s second novel based in the small, quaint Catskills town of Marsden, Picture This, will be released next week (17 July 2014). If you haven’t already read Denker’s Down on Love, the novel that introduces Marsden and it’s inhabitants, then I’d suggest you might want to take a look at it now. But don’t feel you have to as Picture This is a really self-contained story. However, there is so much laugh-out-loud humor in Down on Love that I don’t think you’ll want to miss it.

Celia Marshall, the almost girlfriend of Carey in Down on …

This spring, on the recommendation of a friend whose taste in books is quite similar to mine, I began to read Rachel Lee’s Conard County series. I immediately became hooked, but was so disappointed to find (or not find) digitized versions of her early Conard County books (1-9, 12-13): Exile’s End, Cherokee Thunder, Miss Emmaline and the Archangel, Iron Heart, Lost Warriors, Point of No Return, Thunder Mountain, A Question of Justice, A Conard County Reckoning, The Catch of Conard County, and Boots & Badges.As both book 10, Nighthawk (see: Nighthawk & The …

I usually mark the day I receive a new Laura Florand book in my Kindle with a delectable piece of chocolate or a rich cup of hot cocoa. When I received Sun-Kissed, the most recent book in Florand’s sinfully tempting and passionate Amour et Chocolat series, I didn’t bother with any extras. I simply clicked on the cover and began immersing myself in her sinfully rich, decadent prose that is so addictive.. It definitely had been too long since I last visited her passionate and arrogant French chefs, chocolatiers, and patisseries, the Corey sisters, and all other significant others.…

Behind the Scenes by Trish Jensen

Bell Bridge Books | ISBN 9781611943856 | $4.99 | Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2013
Purchase from Amazon

Trish Jensen is one of those outstanding authors who’s words just sparkle on the page. Her stories are fast-paced, humorous, and also heart-tugging. It was a great loss when she died last February, but her gift to all of us of her books lives on.

Behind the Scenes is a hilarious novel by Trish Jensen about the vagaries of Hollywood. This behind-the-scenes look at a beauty makeover reality television show, to be hosted the self-effacing Tanya Pierce, …