The Gingerbread Man by Kim Turner

 

Hannah Tate is raising her children alone after her husband's death. It hasn’t been easy but after chores get done which she nor her adolescent son completed, she wonders who her mysterious helper might be. While her daughter insists it’s The Gingerbread Man who comes late at night, Hannah has no time for such nonsense.

A veteran of the War of Aggression, John Sullivan lives alone outside Harper Falls, trapping for a living and coping with horrific memories of too much violence and death. When circumstance brings him to meet the woman he’s been secretly helping, he doesn’t expect to find love once again.

But he’ll risk his life more than once to finally hold her forever.

 

Our Review: This delightful Western romance is made that much better with author Turner’s flair for using the costumes, customs and speech patterns common to the time. Featuring two lonely people who have lost everything—only to find it again. This is the perfect solution to the rush and bother surrounding modern holiday celebrations. Treat yourself by taking time to sit by a glowing fire with a warm cup of tea, and perhaps a warm gingerbread cookie, and travel back in time to meet John and Hannah and follow their adventures in finding love again. It’ll warm your heart. Promise.

Based on a scale of 1-5, The Gingerbread Man deserves a 5.

Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

Scarlet at Crystal River

 

. . . It’s Christmas on Florida’s lush west coast and two honeymooners, looking for sun, sea, and other adult activities are haunted by the ghosts of two immigrant children who continually plead for help . . .

 Scarlet at Crystal River, a paranormal suspense, is part of the Haunted Shores Mystery series, written by Randy Overbeck and released by the Wild Rose Press.

 Derrell Henshaw and Erin Caveny are at it again. This time the ‘gifted’ high school history teacher/football coach and the OB nurse are honeymooning in Crystal River, Florida, about as far from cold New Jersey December weather as two people can get. Life is bliss—until the ghosts of two small children intrude at the most inopportune times, imploring their help. Unable to resist their pleas, the two set out, with the help of a Latino interpreter, to uncover exactly what happened—and why.

 Our Review: Fans of Randy Overbeck are again treated to a fast-paced page turner that features well-developed characters and exceptional plotting for suspense and action. Well done!

 On a scale of 1-5, Scarlet at Crystal River deserves a 5.

 Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

 

 

Happy Holidays from The Wild Rose Press

 

New Romance and Fiction Click on covers for more information

A Wyld Night for St. Nick by Laura Strickland $3.99 When a train jumps the rails near Wylder during a blizzard one December night, mountain man Nick Robinson rushes to the rescue. It's only a few days before Christmas, and the young boy he saves from the wreck is convinced his rescuer is St. Nick. Read More

Christmas in Wylder by Sarita Leone $3.99 Meg Channing is on the run from her home in Boston. She's on her way to a new life—until a horrific train crash strands her in Wylder just days before Christmas. Read More

Christmas in the Wylder County Jail by Nicole McCaffrey and Kim Turner $3.99 Adelaide Willowby is having a bad day. It’s a week before Christmas and she has just kicked out the love of her life. Her sister and her daughter are barely speaking to her, one of her best girls is getting married, and ownership of the Wylder County Social Club is in jeopardy. Now she has landed in jail—for murder. Read More

Date Pinwheel Devotion by Christine Smith-Allison $1.99 Betty Granger took a job teaching in an elementary school three hours from home to escape the heartache 1948 has brought her. Life on a working farm has always been busy with plenty of chores to do, and her older sister marrying the man she was supposed to marry didn't help. Read More

Lights, Cameras, Holidays by Rachelle Paige Campbell $4.99 Actress Kara Kensington flies to New Hope, Wisconsin, where she'll spend the winter holidays filming a movie. Her entire career depends on the success of the feel-good story based on her best friend's life. To salvage her strained friendship with Dani, Kara asks the cute guy from the flight to act as her new boyfriend. But the longer she spends with him, the less she's acting. Read More

Tinsel and Tea Cakes by Jill Piscitello $2.99 Hair stylist Scarlett Kerrigan lost her job and her apartment. To alleviate a touch of self-pity, she succumbs to her stepmom's pressure to attend a wedding in the New Hampshire White Mountains. Unfortunately, she runs into the vacation fling who promised the moon but disappeared without an explanation. Months have passed, but she is not ready to forgive and forget. Read More

Her Sugar Cookie Heart by Sarita Leone $1.99 Willie Sharpe and Liz Klein were high school sweethearts but their plans to marry in December 1940 are put on hold when war in Europe calls him away. When he returns to the States, he brings a French wife with him. Read More

Renovating Hearts by Kira Anderson $4.99 Widower Jack Ransom's family-owned café is going bankrupt. He needs help, but not the kind his eight-year-old daughter dreamed up. Writing a letter to her favorite television celebrity, Sydney Ryan, star of Ryan to the Rescue, is bad enough. Now the station decides to use his restaurant and sends the star to seal the deal. Read More

Christmas in Brookside Falls by Lita Harris $4.99 When tragedy places her seven-year-old nephew in her care, hairstylist Kristen Anderson deserts her idyllic life at the Jersey Shore. She arrives at the family's Pennsylvania inn, hoping over the Christmas holidays to mourn her loss and reevaluate her future. Read More

Oh, Gingersnap! by Sonja N. Griffing $2.99 Event planner, Grace Stewart, learned the hard way that the only thing more painful than broken bones was a broken heart. When her fiancé dumped her after learning she had Osteogenesis Imperfecta ('brittle bone disease'), Grace swore off all men. That is, until she and super sexy pediatric orthopedic surgeon, Raphael Herrera, are partnered up to host the hospital's annual Pediatric Holiday Cookie Bazaar. Read More

A River for Gemma by Deborah Whiting Alexander

 

. . . Three spirited women. One perilous past. And an unlikely heroine.

Miracles abound in Sugar Creek, a small-town nestled near the horse trails and hazelnut orchards of Oregon’s lush countryside. It is here, where twenty-six-year old Gemma Porter lives a vibrant life chasing her dreams. But Gemma is underestimated by a world that pigeonholes her as “intellectually disabled.”

While the naysayers and bullies only see Gemma’s limitations, her beloved grandmother sees the heart of a genius—and a soul of divination. When Gemma’s longing to be a mother collides with her grandmother’s hidden past, three generations of Porter women are put in peril.

A harrowing adventure unfolds into a heroic quest to save their lives. As Gemma’s bravery is tested, she will need to prove that regardless of age or intellect, a mother’s love knows no bounds.

 A River for Gemma, written by Debra Whiting Alexander, was an August, 2021 release by the Wild Rose Press.

Our Review: Rarely have we read a book which brought us to our feet, cheering for three very different, extremely brave characters. Each faces their own individual challenges—for different though valid reasons. Each stands on their own and the reader is better for knowing them. This is a truly exceptional book.

Based on a scale of 1-5, A River for Gemma deserves an 8.

Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews.

Red Velvet Crinkles and Christmas Sprinkles by Maria Imbalzano

 

Competitive, work-obsessed Bella Simonetti has just been fired from her high-paying job at a Manhattan law firm. At an all-time low, she returns home and helps her parents at their small-town gift shop, but the business is failing and may not make it past the Christmas holidays.

Successful landscape architect Dean Jackson is like a son to Bella's parents. But he's a persistent annoyance to her—he seems to have forgotten his unforgivable blunder thirteen years earlier.

When Bella transforms her parents' gift shop into a cookie cottage, Dean's generosity and magnetic smile are hard to resist, and those feelings of unrequited adolescent love come rushing back. But can Bella let go of the past and accept Dean for the man he is today?

Our Review: Author Maria Imbalzano continually treats her many fans to another of her sweet, contemporary romances. This one features Bella and Dean, two people who knew each other as teenagers and now are thrown together when they attempt to help her parents reinvent their gift shop into a cookie haven. In more ways than one, Red Velvet Crinkles and Christmas Sprinkles is a story of starting over, putting the past in its proper spot: the past in order to forge a future filled with love and promise and hope.

Based on a scale of 1-5, Red Velvet Crinkles and Christmas Sprinkles earns a 6.

Christmas in Wylder by Sarita Leone

 

…in that moment she realized she didn’t know the man’s name but she put her life and trust in him, and willingly followed him through Hell…

And so describes the plight of Margaret Channing, a young Boston woman who escaped brutality and ran—somewhere, anywhere—in order to be free of one man’s power and abuse. Meg is brilliantly portrayed in Christmas in Wylder, a short historical romance by Sarita Leone, and part of the Wylder West series out of the Wild Rose Press.

The man Meg follows through Hell is Tate Taylor, owner of the local mining supply store. He rescues Meg and others after a violent train derailment outside Wylder just weeks before Christmas. While caring for her and other victims of the wreck, he searches for a shipment of explosives lost in the crash. If he fails, the entire town is at risk for annihilation.

 Our Review: Again, author Leone treats the reader to a story filled with non-stop action as well as a deep and touching romance as it develops between two people who, while brutalized in the past, come to find in each other a balm for more than just a broken heart. Well done!

 On a scale of 1-5, Christmas in Wylder deserves a 5.

 Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

 

 

 

 

The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery by Marla White

 

After a serious on the job injury, LA cop Mel O’Rourke leaves the force battered both physically and mentally. Looking for a fresh start, she moves to a quiet mountain town and opens the Babbling Brook Inn. Excited for her new life, Mel decides to participate in the town’s holiday cookie contest, but her newfound joy crashes when one of her guests turns up dead in the Inn’s lobby.

Tempted to attribute the death to natural causes, Mel’s cop sense kicks in after a second guest dies. The local sheriff tells her to stand down, but with her own life in danger, Mel refuses to back off. With everything on the line, she has to push through her own fears to catch the killer before more bodies drop, perhaps even her own.

Our Review: In this fun, fast read, script writer turned author Marla White shows off her talent for writing crisp, snappy dialogue and creating unique, one-of-a-kind characters capable of invoking laugh out loud moments. Just when things are running smoothly, another monkey lands on the pile of wrenches, sending B&B owner Mel O’Rourke off and running—literally if not figuratively. The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery is an homage to small rural communities and those who flock to them—as well as large, Irish families who pass down their traditions—flawed by accident, or maybe not. We hope this story is the beginning of even better stories to come.

On a scale of 1-5, The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery deserves a 6.

Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter Storm

 

. . . She trusts everyone, he trusts no-one. As danger closes in, can they trust each other?

Willow Daniels has a heart of gold and is willing to help anyone who needs it, but when she helps Ethan McCormick one snowy night, she may just have made the biggest mistake of her life. Trapped by a winter storm in a tiny, North Yorkshire village, Willow is forced to re-evaluate everything she believes in, and wonders if anyone is truly who they seem. 

Fate may have brought her to Ethan, but as danger closes in around them, Willow must draw on a strength she never knew she possessed in order to protect the man she has grown to love, not only against his worst enemy, but also against himself.

 Our Review:  Set in a small Yorkshire village, Winter Storm is the story of a gentle, trusting woman who willingly tends to a wounded stranger because that’s her nature. Ethan McCormick is clearly on the run—but from whom he will not say. He cannot say—because it would put Willow, as well as himself, in greater danger. This is also a story of complete opposites. She is sweet, trusting, and kind to all. Ethan is rough, rugged and loathes Christmas and all it stands for. In the middle of a hard December storm, he’s trapped in a home that looks like something out of a Father Christmas catalogue. The culmination is an edge-of-your-seat chase through the twisting corridors, hidden nooks and crannies of a small rural school. An excellent work of sweet romance and brilliant danger.

 Based on a scale of 1-5, Winter Storm deserves a 7.

 Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews.

Christmas in the Wylder County Jail

 

          Adelaide Willowby is having a bad day. First, the madam of the Wylder County Social Club has kicked out the love of her life—for good this time. One of her best girls is getting married and her sister and daughter are barely speaking to her. Then, her long-lost brother-in-law shows up, claiming ownership of her business. What else can go wrong?

          Russ Holt has relied on alcohol to quiet the ghosts from is past for far too long. When his latest bender causes him to let down both Addie and his son, he knows something has to change. When a stranger in town is found dead and Miss Adelaide is arrested for murder, Russ smells a rat. Can he come out of the bottle long enough to save Addie—and win back her heart?

 Our Review: Welcome back Miss Adelaide and the ladies of the Wylder County Social Club! The women, as usual, juggle several balls while assisting a bevy of nuns as they care for victims of a violent train wreck—in the middle of the blizzard of the century—all the while trying to help Addie prove herself innocent of murder charges. Just your average day in Wylder, Wyoming.

With the usual snappy colloquial dialogue authors, Nicole McCaffrey and Kim Turner are known for, the descriptions of the causes and effects of long term alcohol use/abuse are spot-on and detailed for a common sense approach to getting sober. Well done, ladies!  

 On a scale of 1-5, Christmas in the Wylder County Jail deserves a 7.

 Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

 

A Wyld Night for St. Nick

 

When a train jumps the rails near Wylder during a blizzard one December night, mountain man Nick Robinson rushes to the rescue. It's only a few days before Christmas, and the young boy he saves from the wreck is convinced his rescuer is St. Nick. Since the frightened child is crying for his ma, Nick figures the best thing he can do is go back and rescue her, too.

Ella Fielding is instantly captivated by the man who carries both her and her boy to safety. St. Nick or not, she'd like nothing better than to claim such a strong, gentle man for her own. But Ella carries a secret she dares share with no one, not even when Nick asks her to trust him with her heart.

 Our Review: As we’ve read and reviewed other books for the diverse Wylder West series, we’ve heard rumors about the ‘great train wreck’ and couldn’t wait for the real deal to land on our desk. With A Wyld Night for St. Nick we have the details in spades. Right from page one, Author Strickland offers the reader a breath of fresh air for her talent in applying speech patterns common to the West—as well as the late 1800’s. Clothing styles, social mores and taboos are included in subtle ways as well, enriching this delightful story about a lost little boy and his worn to the bone mother who is rescued by a man the little one becomes convinced is Santa Clause. Well done, Ms. Strickland!

 On a scale of 1-5, A Wyld Night for St. Nick deserves a 7.

Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews

Holiday Reads from The Wild Rose Press, Inc

 

New Romance and Fiction Click on covers for more information

Wedding Cookies at a Christmas Party by Ursula Whistler $1.99 Roberto Navarro didn't realize he needed rescuing from the surf and his family until he met beach lifeguard Angel Clarke. After hitting it off on their first date, he takes a chance and invites her to his family's Christmas Eve cookie party. When Angel brings wedding cookies to the party, chaos ensues. Read More

Kisses and Lemon Snowflake Cookies by N. Jade Gray $1.99 Fireman Dustin Keith didn't realize women would be coming out of the woodwork after he posed for the local fundraiser calendar. But the one who catches his eye is a baker with trust issues. Can he scale the wall she's built around her heart, or is fate destined to extinguish the flames of desire before they engulf his heart? Read More

Not a Chocolate Snowball's Chance in Hades by Lianne Kelly $1.99 Held in Demeter's overprotective grip, power burns deep and seductive in Persephone. She will do whatever it takes to win her freedom and the Olympian Duel of Yule. Read More

Caught Up in Candy Cane Kisses by Shannon Robinson $1.99 Emma Porter writes about happy endings, but getting one for herself is a whole other matter. A messy divorce and a dwindling writing career bring her back to her hometown and the man she'd left behind. Read More

Caramelized Pecan Cookie Holiday Hideaway by J.W. Garrett $1.99 Sunny Yates, a witch, laid off from her job in the city, relocates to her late grandmother's hometown to focus on her new business venture. She rediscovers her magical roots and a nostalgic cookie recipe, and sparks fly after a collision meet-cute with handsome business mogul Noah Russell. He seems perfect for her, but how can she tell him she's a witch? Read More

A Maple Cookie Homecoming by Judy Ann Davis $2.99 When Julien Franklin returns home for Christmas after retiring from the military, his first mission is to taste his home town's maple cookies and find office space for his civilian website business. He's delighted to find the apartment above The Book Bin bookstore is for rent and owned by his old high school sweetheart. Read More

Spritz Cookie Showdown by Melanie Hoffer $1.99 In eleventh grade, Shane Brooks gave Tara Smith her first hot kiss under the bleachers. The next day, Shane broke up with Tara after she beat him in a baking contest. Over ten years later, Tara accidentally agrees to attend an unofficial high school reunion Christmas party, complete with an ugly sweater theme and another cookie baking contest. Read More

The Gingerbread Man by Kim Turner $3.99 Hannah Tate is raising her children alone after her husband's death. Keeping her homestead running isn't easy, but when chores get done that she didn't do, she wonders who her mysterious helper is. Her daughter insists it's the Gingerbread Man who comes late at night. But Hannah has no time for such nonsense. Or does she? Read More

Murder over Macaroons by Kay Harris $1.99 Hayley Cutter spent five years building a successful cookie business in the quaint village of Sausalito and even longer pining for the local chief of police. But her dreams are dashed by a ruthless businessman determined to put her out of business right before Christmas. Then her rival ends up dead, poisoned by Hayley's specialty gluten-free macaroon. Read More