In this charming collection of novellas, join three generations of residents from Mapleview, Michigan, who are longing for love—and finding it—during the most wonderful season of the year.
'Hopes and Fears' by Amanda Wen
Emma Trowbridge is determined to give her students the Christmas pageant of a lifetime. The last person she wants to encounter in her one-room schoolhouse is her childhood rival, Frederick Oberstein. Truth be told, he would rather be far
away himself. Can they learn to see each other in a new light—and embrace a new season of hope and faith together?
'While Mortals Sleep' by Janyre Tromp
While World War II rages overseas, reporter Eleanor Sweers returns home from the West Coast where she faces the death of her sister and her nightmare of Christmases past. But the home front isn’t safe either: a bomb has landed in the
middle of the US, right on the Sweers family property. Now news-minded Eleanor and family friend Gideon Braum may have to choose between the scoop of a lifetime and the love of a lifetime.
'The Wondrous Gift' by Deborah Raney
High school football coach Caleb Janssen and music teacher Rachel Hamblin bond when they both lose their jobs at the county’s Christian high school. But when they discover their plans for the future are mutually exclusive, the fallout threatens to tear them apart.
Charlotte Anne Mattas longs to turn back the clock. Before her husband, Sam, went to serve his country in the war, he was the man everyone could rely on-responsible, intelligent, and loving. But the person who's come back to their family farm is very different from the protector Annie remembers. Sam's experience in the Pacific theater has left him broken in ways no one can understand-but that everyone is learning to fear. Tongues start wagging after Sam nearly kills his own brother. Now when he claims to have seen men on the mountain when no one else has seen them, Annie isn't the only one questioning his sanity and her safety. If there were criminals haunting the hills, there should be evidence beyond his claims. Is he really seeing what he says, or is his war-tortured mind conjuring ghosts? Annie desperately wants to believe her husband. But between his irrational choices and his nightmares leaking into the daytime, she's terrified he's going mad. Can she trust God to heal Sam's mental wounds-or will sticking by him mean keeping her marriage at the cost of her own life? Debut novelist Janyre Tromp delivers a deliciously eerie, Hitchcockian story filled with love and suspense. Readers of psychological thrillers and historical fiction by Jaime Jo Wright and Sarah Sundin will add Tromp to their favorite authors list.
