Tess Brennan: Hope Valley Romances
A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR KATE (Book 1)
Kate has lost almost everything — house, her old friends, her lifestyle.
Now, Kate’s daughters deliver another bombshell.
After her husband’s business fails and he leaves her for another woman, Kate has managed to rebuild her life in Hope Valley, and is happy with her lot — until her daughters come to visit and tell her that her husband did not, as he told Tess, lose all his money when his business collapsed.
Kate doesn’t care. She has rebuilt her life and the last thing she wants is to invite stress by opening old wounds. Her daughters, however, have other ideas — especially her difficult eldest daughter Amy, who is determined to fight her father and get the money that she sees as rightfully hers.
Just when Kate thinks that things can’t get any worse, she meets and is instantly attracted to Tolly Nelson, the son of her elderly neighbor Grace. He’s the first man she’s met for a long time who sets her pulse racing…but when her problems with her ex-husband escalate, her relationship with Tolly seems doomed.
Christmas is coming, and all Kate wants is a quiet life — but it seems that this is a gift that will cost her dearly!
A NEW START FOR LILY (Book 2)
When everything around her falls apart, Lily Carella abandons her old life and runs for her life.
Finding her way to sleepy little Hope Valley, she impulsively decides to stay and takes on a job in the local diner.
Short of funds, living in a tiny apartment, and still scared, Lily grits her teeth and makes the best of her situation. Gradually, she makes new friends, semi-adopts a timid pup called Nameless, and starts to feel at home—but Mike Agnew’s interest in her has her worried. She can’t afford for anyone to find out about her past: it’s too dangerous for them.
Then a late-night phone call from an old friend threatens her newfound peace, and Lily has to make a decision—should she take her new friends into her confidence and stay, or run again?
Mike and her new friends vow they will not let Lily become a victim again. Mike, particularly, has earned a special place in Lily’s heart.
Can she really start again—or should she quietly slip away to protect the people she has come to trust in Hope Valley?
A VALENTINE FOR SARAH (Book 3)
Sarah Clancy, raising two children alone after the death of her husband five years before, has a problem.
That problem comes in the shape of her rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter, Ruby, who has been skipping school—along with her friend Dylan, who just happens to be the son of the high school principal, Cam Hyde.
Cam has his own set of problems: not only does he have to put in long hours to do the right thing by his staff, the parent body, and the students, but he has to mend the rift with his teenage son.
Together, Cam and Sarah face not only the challenge of steering their children back on the right path but giving the feelings between them room to grow.
Then the kids really start acting out. Whatever happened to a peaceful life?
A MOTHER FOR MANDY (Book 4)
Take one taciturn army vet
Add one a fiery four-year-old daughter he didn’t know he had
Mix with a pre-school teacher determined to help them both
Amber Meadows can’t help feeling drawn to Blake Roebuck, the introverted army vet who goes to the same weekend outings as she does. She senses something special in him and tries to draw him out.
But… he has never mentioned his family, and he certainly never spoke of having a child! So when he turns up on her doorstep one Friday afternoon, looking frazzled and holding tight to the hand of a tiny red-haired spitfire called Mandy, Amber is somewhat taken aback.
She discovers that this little mite is the daughter that Blake never knew he had… and she has not had a happy life so far. Amber and Blake join forces to give a brave but fearful little girl the security she has never had. The problem is, little Mandy wants nothing to do with this taciturn man who says he’s her dad—she just wants to live with Amber!
Blake, who has faced all manner of life-threatening challenges, finds that being a Dad to a rebellious four-year-old is the biggest hurdle he’s ever had to face.
A MYSTERY MAN FOR JO (Book 5)
Jo Bailey has had enough of her high-pressure job in the city. With no idea what the future holds, she quits.
But managing her Mom’s country bookstore is not the walk in the park she thought it would be!
Jo goes back to sleepy Hope Valley to manage her newly-married mother’s ‘little hobby’—a quirky bookstore that seems to be more of a community center than a real business. Clearly, her mother has no clue about how a business should operate. For heaven’s sake, what kind of bookstore has a craft group taking over on Fridays and ladies playing canasta on Thursday mornings?
Not only that, she learns that her mother has saddled her with some old geezer who sets up camp daily in a corner of the bookstore to write his memoirs. His memoirs.
Isn’t a bookstore about buying books, not writing them?
Determined to make the bookstore pay, Jo starts planning changes—but meets with gentle resistance from all the locals, including Mr. Smith, the writer of memoirs. He is not the doddery old octogenarian that she expected, but a mystery man who is bent on keeping his real agenda a secret.
Jo is determined to find out what he’s really doing, tapping away at that laptop every morning for three and a half hours. He appears to be taking far too much interest in the townspeople and Jo’s own affairs for someone who is merely writing his life history. So… what’s going on?
By the time Jo manages to winkle out The Mysterious Mr. Smith’s secrets, it’s all too late. She has already lost her heart to him.
But maybe she should be worried…
A VILLAIN FOR VALENTINE’S DAY (Book 6)
A dog named Villain is doing his best to live up to his name.
An ultimatum from her landlord.
A business that’s struggling to survive.
Could things get any worse?
Edie Calhoun has always been a disappointment to her parents. She’s not fashionable enough, not talented enough, and in the forthright opinion of her successful father, is wasting her talents on her fledgling graphic design business.
It all becomes too much when her charming but feckless brother Alex begs her to look after his dog Villain while he takes his latest girlfriend to Hawaii for Valentine’s Day. Edie, always a pushover, finds herself trying to meet deadlines while coping with a pooch that seems determined to wreck her life as well as the house.
Then Jake Miller turns up at the door: a dog obedience trainer that her brother hired just before he flew out. Edie is suspicious of Jake immediately: handsome like her brother, he is just as charming. There’s no way, she tells herself, that she’s falling for that! Edie has watched her brother leave a trail of broken hearts, and she knows the type only too well.
But Edie can’t help thawing as Jake works his magic with Villain. Before long, she’s just as enraptured with the dog trainer as her pooch—but then her world starts to disintegrate.
Edie has no savings, an eviction looming, and now Jake seems to have fallen under the spell of a curvaceous blonde called Sherri!