Fiction Books
Coming October 2023 –
A Hill Country Christmas: Truths for Troubled Trails
A Hill Country Christmas~Truths for Troubled Trails is a collection of 13 holiday tales representing the varied cultures and communities of the Texas Hill Country. Eight authors, each with their own distinct style, bring historical events to life in these heartwarming stories about the blessings of Christmas and truths that transcend time. In every era it’s been said that “man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward,” but these inspirational stories from Christmases past reassure us there will always be truths we can trust.
- A youthful generation celebrates the season though civil war looms.
- A fatherless boy, temporarily homeless, helps a wild camel find a home.
- When an unlikely thief robs a stage carrying three unlikely companions, he experiences a most unlikely change of heart.
- With her husband critically ill, Florence Butt risks everything to start a business she hopes will provide shelter and food for her growing boys.
- Desperate times call for desperate measures when a flash flood strands a gnarly old mule driver with a family in dire straits.
- The price is high when two lost souls are given one last chance to correct their past choices.
- Three ragamuffin refugees present a confirmed bachelor with a slew of unexpected challenges, but could they be gifts in disguise?
- When it comes to doing the right thing, Honor Thielbar lives up to his name, but his efforts to balance duty and compassion in an especially difficult case uncover a family mystery that will change his life forever.
- Regina comes to Texas to escape painful memories and finds a new life in service to others.
- The men who returned from WWII often carried unseen scars of mind and soul. The therapy that helped them still helps others today.
- In the midst of Texas’ record drought, German families found ways to shield their children from worry to give them a happy holiday.
- It’s been said “No good deed goes unpunished,” but sometimes the reward for doing the right thing comes as a gift unwrapped.
- As they approach their golden anniversary, Dieter is less and less aware of the present, but his loving wife discovers ways to meet him in their shared memories of Christmases past.
A Hill Country Christmas: Hope for Hardscrabble Times
A Hill Country Christmas – Hope for Hardscrabble Times is a collection of 18 holiday stories from every corner of the Texas Hill Country. Five authors make history come alive in these multi-cultural Christmas stories about life and death, humor and sadness, heartache and romance, the blessings of Christmas and the triumph of the human spirit.
The holiday season isn’t always easy, but these regional stories are filled with inspiration from Christmases Past that offer hope for the difficult times we live in today.
- After surviving the Siege of Bexar in December 1835, Deaf Smith and his son-in-law Hendrick Arnold prepare their family for Santa Anna’s reprisal while attempting to celebrate Las Posadas one last time in their San Antonio home.
- Despite a harrowing journey across 5000 miles of ocean and frontier, two Sisters of Divine Providence find reason to give thanks for the blessings of Christmas 1868 at a mission school in Castroville.
- Fiery circuit-riding preacher Andrew Jackson Potter stirs Uvalde pioneers with an 1872 visit that erupts to cause surprising results.
- An Indian attack on Christmas Eve 1876 brings tragedy to a family in Denman (Junction), but even a difficult Christmas offers hope.
- Unaware that a Great War looms just ahead, two sisters seek vastly different objectives when student pilots from Stinson School of Flying make a chivaree wedding reception in Kendalia the social event of the 1916.
- When the Spanish Influenza epidemic threatens Boerne while the town’s only physician is serving in World War I France, Sheriff Joe Saunders institutes a lockdown and pays a personal price for “cancelling Christmas.”
- By Christmas 1918, World War I is over, but soldiers are still in Europe awaiting Armistice agreements. A flash flood in Comfort, Texas compels one family to set aside their own grief and concerns to find “room in the inn” for a stranded stranger.
- In the midst of the Great Depression, a young widow struggles to give her daughter a happy Christmas and discovers unexpected joy in Menard, Texas.
- Beset by needs on every hand, a Gatesville physician working with World War II veterans at Waco’s VA hospital confronts his own lingering PTSD and encounters new possibilities for life and love.
- With two brothers deployed in WWII, a Kerrville teen longing to enter the Schreiner Institute’s military program must finds other ways to serve at home in a heartwarming 1943 holiday story.
- In an old-fashioned Christmas story reminiscent of Earl Hamner’s stories about the Waltons, war’s consequences teach one Fredericksburg boy that friends and family are life’s most important gifts.
- Hilarity ensues when two sisters take jobs to help their family make ends meet and are presented with opportunities they never dreamed of in Cherry Springs, Texas.
- Preparing to leave for college, a Mason youth reflects on Christmases past and the sacrifices his parents made to assure his future.
- A San Marcos policeman volunteering as a Blue Santa builds bridges of goodwill with the family of a former criminal.
- A recent immigrant accepts the challenge to learn German as well as English, embracing her adopted New Braunfels community as new traditions become her own.
- Worlds collide when an event planner for Austin’s elite finds common ground with a Wimberley cedar chopper who exemplifies “goodwill to all.”
A variety of Christmas delights can be found in every town, era, and culture in the Texas Hill Country!
Stronger Than Mountains ()
Millie Morelle married her cowboy, Zeke, expecting to live happily ever after.
She was young and beautiful, he was strong and hard-working. How could their future be anything but wonderful?
Each had dreams to last a lifetime . . . but after fifteen years of heartbreaking disappointments, their dreams seem to lie in opposite directions. They may share a cabin and a passel of kids, but they’re living separate lives, and no one is happy. Some days they can’t remember why they ever fell in love in the first place!
Reaching a point of desperation, each makes the choices they must to survive—choices that may destroy the very things they’re trying to save.
Will they be able to salvage, separately, a relationship that can only be built together—a love that is stronger than mountains?
More Precious Than Gold ()
The bullet that killed Eliza Gentry’s fiance shattered her dreams as well. Clinging to her battered faith, she heads west to escape her grief and runs headlong into the man who caused it. Tall and headstrong, Eliza expected to remain an “unclaimed treasure.” Devastated in the wake of the Civil War, she leaves her home in Texas and sets out for New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains in search of peace and new purpose but discovers a wild western frontier where former enemies–Yankees and Rebels, Freedmen and Indians–square off in the quest for land and gold. Eliza must confront her prejudices and fears, and Jacob Craig embodies that conflict. The mountain man wins her trust with his gentle strength, but he harbors a secret. As a Union sharp-shooter, he met her fiance on the field of battle and cost him his life. Can she forgive him? To find peace and the future she yearns for, Eliza must first find in God a faith more precious than gold. A real ghost town comes to life in this award-winning story of love, forgiveness, and the sovereignty of God. Christian historical fiction readers will love the way this story combines the adventure of classic historical western fiction with a dash of romance.
Chasing Christmas
When Angela Bell’s dream of writing children’s literature outgrows her small Texas town, she moves to New York City hoping to find new opportunities by Christmas. Will she find what she’s looking for? Or is happiness waiting at the end of her own country road?
A sweet contemporary holiday romance.
Home Sweet Hole – A Folio of “Feasible Fantasy” Floor Plans
“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit…”
but Hobbits aren’t the only ones with down-to-earth dreams.
This folio of “feasible fantasy” floor plans gives you a fun-loving peek inside a dozen earth-bermed dwellings in an imaginary borough of burrows–all drawn to scale as if the builder, himself, were offering an open house tour.
Nabbing Saint Nickolas
No matter how dark it gets, no matter how bad things seem, hope will be rewarded. Sometimes it comes to you…and sometimes you have to chase it down in the streets!