2020 has been a year like no other. Many Thanksgiving celebrations will likely look a lot different, with smaller gatherings and simpler fare. Despite everything that has happened this year, there are still reasons to be thankful. For readers, one of them is the abundance of positive, hopeful, love-filled stories like the ones featured today.

Let It Snow

Young widow Holly Farthing finds herself Snowbound with the Viscount in a house party at Christmastime. Holly accepts her friend’s invitation when she finds out that her longtime crush, her brother’s friend at school, Lord Ivy, is also attending. Too bad he’s only ever seen her as a little sister. Getting snowed in gives her the chance to make him see her differently.

Adam, Viscount Ivy, has always been drawn to Holly, even when they were young. He hopes to see her at the house party but fully expects her to come with a betrothed. To his surprise, she comes alone. He’s attracted to her but is uncertain if she only sees him as a friend. When a fellow guest threatens Holly’s future and reputation, he steps in with an offer of a fake engagement.

As the snow continues to fall, heat sizzles between Holly and Adam. Can a fake betrothal turn real for these two childhood friends?

Shana Galen is three-time Rita award nominee and the bestselling author of passionate Regency romps. She taught English at the middle– and high-school level for eleven years. Most of those years were spent working in inner-city Houston. She still lives in Houston and now writes full time, surrounded by three cats and one spoiled dog. She’s happily married and has a daughter who is most definitely a romance heroine in the making.

A Temporary Home

In A Sheriff’s Star, single-mother Tess Harper moves to Oak Hollow in the Hill Country to take up a job while waiting for her daughter Hannah’s heart surgery in Houston at the beginning of the new year. As Tess shops for their temporary residence, four-year-old Hannah wanders off and is found by Chief of Police Anson Curry, who returns the special-needs child to her frantic mother. Anson quickly falls for the lovable child and is attracted to Tess, his new tenant and neighbor. He’s had his heart broken in the past in his desire to build a family. Could he risk it again for a woman who is intent on leaving?

Tess has suffered losses in her life and is wary of falling for a man with a dangerous job like her police-officer father and sailor brother, who both died in the line of duty. Four years after her husband abandoned her upon learning of Hannah’s Down Syndrome, Tess remains cautious about men and relationships. Anson’s growing closeness with Hannah slowly breaks down Tess’s resistance until an incident involving his job brings all of Tess’s fears to the forefront. Will she run or will she give this temporary stay a chance to become a permanent home?

Makenna Lee is an award-winning romance author, living in the Texas Hill Country with her real-life hero and their two children. Her oldest son has Down syndrome and taught her to appreciate the little things. He is the inspiration for A Sheriff’s Star. Makenna is often drinking coffee while writing, reading, or plotting a new story. Her wish is to write books that touch your heart, making you feel, think, and dream.