RITA and Golden Heart award winner Wendy Lindstrom tops today’s Buffet with Shades of Honor, her debut historical romance that first appeared as a paperback in 2002.
Romantic Times called Wendy “one of romance’s finest writers” and readers rave about her fresh, vibrant characters, impossible situations, and genuine, heartfelt emotions.
Wendy was born and raised in upstate New York. Her first attempt at storytelling was in English composition class at SUNY University at Fredonia. She never finished that particular story, but in the messy, handwritten pages of her journal, an idea began to form. While researching, she came across a Civil War memoir by George K. Collins titled “The 149th NY Volunteers…” and she knew I’d found the premise for her debut, Shades of Honor.
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Shades of Honor (Grayson Brothers)
Historical Romance
Author: Wendy Lindstrom
The one woman he cannot have is the only woman he wants.
Everything Radford Grayson wanted was in his hometown: his beloved mother and brothers, and the unscarred part of himself he’d left behind. After surviving a gruesome war, all Radford wants is to work the family sawmill and make a real home for his young daughter. But Evelyn–his brother’s fiancée–reaches into his darkness with her healing love and makes him feel whole again for the first time in years. Torn between his unexpected and forbidden love for Evelyn and a desperate need to honor and protect his brother, Radford discovers that his fiercest enemy is his own heart. The one woman he cannot have is the only woman he wants.
A Very Special Delivery (Love Inspired)
Religious & Inspirational Fiction > Romance
Author: Linda Goodnight
It was the surprise of a lifetime for recluse Molly McCreight when single dad Ethan Hunter entrusted her with his infant daughter while he delivered medicine to an elderly man during an ice storm. Past experience had taught Molly how fragile life could be, but she was touched by this stranger’s faith in her abilities. Once the storm had passed, though, and her guests returned home, normalcy eluded Molly. The Hunters’ presence had brought much-needed joy to her quiet world, but their absence threatened to crush her forever. Still, was she ready to admit that this tiny family held the key to the future she’d always secretly craved?
Flame of Resistance
Years of Nazi occupation have stolen much from Brigitte Durand. Family. Freedom. Hope for a future, especially for a woman with a past like hers. But that changes the day American fighter pilot Tom Jaeger is shot down over occupied France. Picked up by the Resistance, Tom becomes the linchpin in their plan to infiltrate a Germans-only brothel and get critical intel out through Brigitte, a prostitute rumored to be sympathetic to the Allied cause.
D-Day looms and everyone knows that invasion is imminent. But so is treachery, and the life of one American pilot unexpectedly jeopardizes everything. He becomes more important than the mission to a man who cannot bear to lose another agent and to a woman who is more than just a prostitute, who finally realizes that her actions could change the course of history.
Take a Chance on Me (Christiansen Family)
Christian Fiction > Romance
Author: Susan May Warren
Darek Christiansen is almost a dream bachelor—oldest son in the large Christiansen clan, heir to their historic Evergreen Lake Resort, and doting father. But he’s also wounded and angry since the tragic death of his wife, Felicity. No woman in Deep Haven dares come near.
New assistant county attorney Ivy Madison simply doesn’t know any better when she bids on Darek at the charity auction. Nor does she know that when she crafted a plea bargain three years ago to keep Jensen Atwood out of jail and in Deep Haven fulfilling community service, she was releasing the man responsible for Felicity’s death. All Ivy knows is that the Christiansens feel like the family she’s always longed for. And once she gets past Darek’s tough exterior, she finds a man she could spend the rest of her life with. Which scares her almost as much as Darek learning of her involvement in his wife’s case.
Caught between new love and old grudges, Darek must decide if he can set aside the past for a future with Ivy—a future more and more at risk as an approaching wildfire threatens to wipe out the Christiansen resort and Deep Haven itself.
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Made to Last (Where Love Begins Book #1)
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Melissa Tagg
Miranda Woodruff has it all. At least, that’s how it looks when she’s starring in her homebuilding television show, From the Ground Up. So when her network begins to talk about making cuts, she’ll do anything to boost ratings and save her show–even if it means pretending to be married to a man who’s definitely not the fiance who ran out on her three years ago.
When a handsome reporter starts shadowing Miranda’s every move, all his digging into her personal life brings him a little too close to the truth–and to her. Can the girl whose entire identity is wrapped up in her on-screen persona finally find the nerve to set the record straight? And if she does, will the life she’s built come crashing down just as she’s found a love to last?
Silent
Crime Fiction > Murder
Author: D. M. Mitchell
Hollywood, 1927, at the height of silent-movie production.
Down-on-his-luck movie actor Rick Mason meets Betsy Bellamy, a young actress struggling to make it in Hollywood. She is accompanied by her older brother Davey, a sullen, insular man fiercely protective of his sister. But Betsy and Davey share a dark past which they’re hoping to escape by making a new life in California. A past that will have tragic, murderous consequences.
But for now Rick Mason’s life is about to change beyond his wildest imaginings. He lands a lucrative contract with Metropolitan Studios, who want to cast him as the lead in their new horror movie. And out of the blue a Hungarian lawyer lands the bombshell that Rick Mason isn’t who he thinks he is.
True Religion: Taking Pieces of Heaven to Places of Hell on Earth
Religion & Spirituality
Author: Palmer Chinchen
Give your life away to change this world and God will change you … for the best.
A rising voice in the missional movement, Palmer Chinchen challenges Christians to a new kind of spiritual formation—one focused on pouring out our life for others and radical dependence upon God. When we get out of our comfort zone, our souls are awakened—everything seems more alive and vibrant. So why don’t we live our faith that way? Why is it that our faith can easily become an old, tired routine instead of an exhilarating, God-honoring lifestyle?
Discover why true religion involves engaging the problems in our world as we go with the good news of the gospel. And in the process of pouring ourselves out for others, we’ll see God radically transform our own hearts as well.
Masters at Arms (Rescue Me)
Genre Fiction > Sagas
Author: Kallypso Masters
Begins the journey of three men, each on a quest for honor, acceptance, and to ease his unspoken pain. Their paths cross at one of the darkest points in their lives. As they try to come to terms with the aftermath of Iraq–forging an unbreakable bond–they band together to start their own BDSM club. But will they ever truly become masters of their own fates? Or would fate become masters of them?
Trinity: Military War Dog (A Breed Apart)
Religion & Spirituality > Fiction > Mystery
Author: Ronie Kendig
A year ago in Afghanistan, Green Beret Heath Daniel’s career was destroyed. Along with his faith. Now he and his military war dog, Trinity, train other dogs and their handlers. Though his passion is to be back in action, the medical discharge has forced Heath—and Trinity—to the sidelines. Military intelligence officer Darci Kintz is captured while secretly tracking the Taliban. Only one dog can handle the extreme conditions to save her. Trinity. Only one man can handle Trinity. Time is running out on the greatest—and most dangerous—mission of their lives.
The Goldfinch
Contemporary Fiction > Literary
Author: Donna Tartt
Regularly $9.99, Today $2.99
It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher’s calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
The Son
Literary Fiction > Historical > Western
Author: Philipp Meyer
Regularly $9.99, Today $2.99
Philipp Meyer, the acclaimed author of American Rust, returns with The Son: an epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th century.
Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon—an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife-edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.
Burial Rites: A Novel
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Hannah Kent
Regularly $9.99, Today $2.99
Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard.
Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?
The Wasteland Saga
Science Fiction > Post-Apocalyptic
Author: Nick Cole
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Includes three novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River.
Nick Cole sends us on a suspenseful odyssey into the dark heart of post-apocalyptic America in this three-part adventure
Forty years after a devastating thermonuclear Armageddon, mankind has been reduced to sal-vaging the ruins of a broken world. In a style that’s part Hemingway and part Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,The Wasteland Saga chronicles the struggle of the Old Man, his granddaughter, and a mysterious boy as they try to survive the savage lands of this new American Dark Age.
With the words of the Old Man’s most prized possession—a copy of Hemingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea—echoing across the wasteland, they journey into the unknown through three incredible tales of endurance and adventure in a land ravaged by destruction.
My Mother Was Nuts
Biograpies & Memoirs > Entertainers
Author: Penny Marshall
Regularly $14.99, Today $1.99
Most people know Penny Marshall as the director of Big and A League of Their Own. What they don’t know is her trailblazing career was a happy accident. In this funny and intimate memoir, Penny takes us from the stage of The Jackie Gleason Show in 1955 to Hollywood’s star-studded sets, offering up some hilarious detours along the way.
My Mother Was Nuts is an intimate backstage pass to Penny’s personal life, her breakout role on The Odd Couple, her exploits with Cindy Williams and John Belushi, and her travels across Europe with Art Garfunkel on the back of a motorcycle. We see Penny get married. And divorced. And married again (the second time to Rob Reiner). We meet a young Carrie Fisher, whose close friendship with Penny has spanned decades. And we see Penny at work with Tom Hanks, Mark Wahlberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert De Niro, and Whitney Houston.
Throughout it all, from her childhood spent tap dancing in the Bronx, to her rise as the star of Laverne & Shirley, Penny lived by simple rules: “try hard, help your friends, don’t get too crazy, and have fun.” With humor and heart, My Mother Was Nuts reveals there’s no one else quite like Penny Marshall.
Into the Whirlwind
Religious & Inspirational Fiction > Historical > Romance
Author: Elizabeth Camden
Regularly $6.99, Today $2.99
As owner of the 57th Illinois Watch Company, Mollie Knox’s future looks bright until the night the legendary Great Chicago Fire destroys her beloved city. With her world crumbling around her, Mollie will do whatever it takes to rebuild in the aftermath of the devastating fire.
Zack Kazmarek, an influential attorney for one of Chicago’s finest department stores, is a force to be reckoned with among the city’s most powerful citizens. Bold and shrewd, he’s accustomed to getting exactly what he wants–until he meets Mollie Knox, the beguiling businesswoman just beyond his reach.
In the tumult as the people of Chicago race to rebuild a bigger and better city, Mollie comes face-to-face with the full force of Zack’s character and influence. Zack believes this may finally be his chance to win her, but can Mollie ever accept this man and his whirlwind effect on her life, especially with her treasured company on the line?
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2