Look what our authors published in August!

Only one of our authors published in August.

The rest of us were on vacation or preparing our autumn releases!

Harvest at the Weavers (Romance Sprinkles Book 1) by Kit Morgan She came for a two-week visit. She didn’t expect to be drafted into the harvest… or fall in love before the last apple was picked.       Celia Hart has spent years making herself indispensable at her mother’s boardinghouse. But with her younger siblings nearly grown and her mother no longer needing her help, Celia suddenly has no idea what comes next.       A visit to her brother at the sprawling Weaver farm should give her time to figure it out. Instead, Ma Weaver hands her an apron, the orchard explodes with apples, and handsome freight man Matt Kendrick assumes she won’t last a day.       Celia is determined to prove him wrong.       Matt wants Nowhere to become his permanent home, but falling for a woman with a return ticket in her trunk is asking for heartache.      Between rattling orchard wagons, bruised apples, moonlit porch kisses, and an entire Weaver clan watching their every move, two weeks begins to feel much too short.      When family obligations threaten to send them in opposite directions, Celia and Matt must decide whether love is another duty to fulfill—or the first future either of them has chosen for themselves.       Harvest at the Weavers is a lighthearted, closed-door historical romance filled with family, laughter, meddling matchmakers, apple butter, and the sweet discovery that being wanted is even better than being needed. Release date: August 12, 2026 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF1BCFRG

     Not all of our authors make their books available on pre-order. For those who do, those advance sales go a long way to help their book ratings.

Below are some future books. 

September Releases: 

Isleen, Sequoia Bride: National Park Brides Book 27

By Linda Carroll-Bradd

     Dreamer Isleen Quigley dreads the upcoming trial of her four brothers for illegal logging in a national park. Her aunt frets about the notoriety affecting Isleen’s marriage chances and the family business. A request from cousin Floree to spend the summer in Sequoia Park, where her husband has the park manager job, to help tend her six-month-old twins is most welcome.
      Engineer Hayes Freeland volunteers his skills at roadway design to the closest national park to complete his master’s degree. On the trip to the park, he’s intrigued by a woman always reading poetry. Drawn together by this common interest, they are surprised when their destination is the national park.
      Time spent together in the mountain forest brings the pair closer until she discovers the truth about Hayes’ family and the threat Hayes’ brother poses. How can Isleen choose between family loyalty and new love?

Release date: September 4, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKQV1MCP

Marriage and Mayhem: Mail-Order Brides Undercover

By Marisa Masterson

Who’s who? What difference will it make in the end to this mail-order mess?
      Clementine Bradley knows her stuff. Too bad men were so intimidated by that. She has little choice on her latest assignment but to pretend she is helpless—defenseless, even—when she arrives in Dodge City, Kansas. If she allows her confident and, yes, aggressive personality to shine, her target most likely will take one look at her and run for the mountains. And, if she cannot string along the would-be husband, he will never lead her to the truth.
      Trouble! The smell of it wafts from her as surely as the enticing aroma of lemon soap. Somehow, Pinkerton Milo Edgars will need to put off marriage with the mail-order bride. But how to do that and not give away his real identity?
      A series of tangled ropes, stampeded cattle, and enmeshed hearts follow. When the twists and turns finally straighten, will this couple each accept the person hidden behind a mask? Can they even make love work, considering their personal ambitions?

       Mayhem has never felt so good. Don’t miss out on this clean Western historical romance. Grab a copy today!

Release date: September 8, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9B16F2X

 

Emily Yosemite Bride: National Park Brides

By Zina Abbott

     Athletic and prone to seek out adventures usually considered more suitable for boys, Emily Darlington never did fit in with most of the girls with whom she has associated. Even at the special girls’ academy in New Ponca, Oklahoma Territory, she was tolerated, at best. Years after she graduates, she learns her father is ill. Pops plans to leave her what he can, but his financial wealth is no longer what it was during her growing up years. After learning some startling facts about her family, Emily decides she needs to be with someone she trusts—someone who, in spite of their occasional squabbles, has always been a friend—Joey Milton. Unfortunately, Joey moved from New Ponca to accept a job working in Yosemite National Park in California.
      Joseph Milton, who now prefers to go by Joe, appreciates the construction skills he learned at the hands of his legal guardian. While living and working in and around Yosemite National Park, everything about his life appears to be running smoothly. Then his childhood friend, Emily, shows up asking to be hired as part of his paint crew. After all, she reminds him, from the time Pops allowed her to spend her summers painting the shacks at his various mine sites, he always assured her that she paints “real good.”

Publication date: September 11, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/Emily-Yosemite-Bride-National-Brides-ebook/dp/B0H8X4PN1J/

October Releases: 

Booked for Love

Nine authors including Marisa Masterson

      Book clubs have always been about more than stories. What happens when a group of faith-filled matchmakers uses their love of books to pair hearts?
      Matchmakers have been around since long before musicals began singing their praises. Seniors at church, friend groups, and even families try to pair people of like faith, shared passions, or familiar community. But what if your people, book people, got together and drew two book-loving (or soon will be!) hearts together? It’s a match made in literary (if not literal) heaven!

Monday Meddlers by Marisa Masterson
Introducing a book club that would rather scheme and matchmake than actually discuss the book. When the local librarian becomes their latest focus, secrets, laughter, and a little chaos follow. Will they reconcile the broken romance between a stubborn librarian and a proud rancher?

Release Date: October 1, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8B77Q39

Johnny Appleseed: The Man Behind the Legend

By Kimberly Grist

Mention Johnny Appleseed, and most of us picture a barefoot fellow wandering across the American frontier, wearing a cooking pot on his head and scattering apple seeds wherever he went.

But how much of that familiar story is true?

As it turns out, the real Johnny Appleseed may be even more interesting than the legend.

Johnny Appleseed Was a Real Person

Born September 26, 1774, John Chapman became known as Johnny Appleseed as he traveled through the developing American frontier.

And yes, he really did carry apple seeds—but he wasn't simply tossing them along the roadside and hoping for the best.

Chapman deliberately established nurseries, often choosing locations where he expected pioneers to soon arrive. He planted seeds, protected the young trees with fences, and returned to tend his nurseries. Once the seedlings were large enough, settlers could transplant them to their farms and homesteads.

So instead of picturing Johnny scattering seeds as he walked along a trail, perhaps we should picture a surprisingly savvy frontier nurseryman.

Not the Shiny Red Apples We Picture

The apples growing on Chapman's trees probably looked nothing like the perfect red apples pictured in storybooks.

Apple trees grown from seed don't produce an exact copy of the apple the seed came from. The resulting fruit can vary considerably in size, color, flavor, and quality.

On the early American frontier, apples weren't grown only for eating fresh, either. Seedling apples could be used for cider and vinegar and served many household purposes.

Johnny's trees may not have produced the sort of apple you'd tuck into a lunchbox, but they were valuable to pioneer families nonetheless.

Did He Really Wear a Cooking Pot on His Head?

Maybe—at least for a time.

In 1871, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published W. D. Haley’s “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero,” along with several illustrations of Chapman. Written twenty-six years after his death, the article is one of the early sources that helped shape the Johnny Appleseed legend.

When describing Chapman’s unusual headgear, Haley wrote that “his first experiment was with a tin vessel that served to cook his mush.” Unfortunately, the vessel didn’t protect his eyes from the sun, so Chapman reportedly replaced it with a homemade pasteboard hat with an enormous peak in front.

So the famous cooking-pot hat wasn’t a myth. Instead, it originated from a colorful detail in an early account of the real man and evolved alongside the legend.

Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), woodcut illustration from W. D. Haley’s “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1871. Image source: Harvard University copy via HathiTrust; reproduced by the Linda Hall Library.

The Man Behind the Legend

John Chapman really did plant apple seeds, establish nurseries, live simply, and dress rather unusually. But over time, those facts grew into the Johnny Appleseed that generations of children have come to know.

And perhaps that's part of the fun of American folklore—discovering that sometimes the true story behind a legend is just as interesting as the legend itself.

Did you grow up hearing stories about Johnny Appleseed? Which part of the real story surprised you most?

CAN'T RESIST MASTERSON! by Marisa Masterson

Since Dodge was a key hub for cattle from the 1870s up to 1884, I could have chosen any year in that window. Could have, but I didn’t. I selected 1880 for a specific reason. Two reasons, actually, and those two were brothers—The Masterson brothers.

One, Marshal Jim Masterson, eliminated guns on the streets of Dodge. The other, Bat, served as sheriff of Ford County, where that town is located.

Wkipedia

Bat Masterson stands out among the illustrious names from the Old West. No doubt in part because his life was serialized in a television program that ran in the late fifties and early sixties, an age when Westerns dominated entertainment. Even without that, he would have been remembered because of his time as a gunfighter and then a lawman.

It is all too easy to forget that this fictional hero was also a flesh and blood man, one who did his best to provide order and justice to a county during the early years of Kansas’s statehood. Though a lawman, he was invested in a local saloon and was a known gambler. No doubt, he must have turned a blind eye to some goings on in Dodge. Regardless, what does matter was that he served Kansas as a cautious and cool-headed lawman, helping his brother control a wild town, a place populated for a time by cowboys fresh from the trail and looking for a good time.

At first a buffalo hunter and an army scout, Bat reinvented himself as a lawman when he became sheriff of Ford County. Later, he found a new role as a sportscaster. What an excellent reminder that the Old West was not that far removed from the modern age!

From Marriage and Mayhem:

After breakfast, he [Clint] scooped up the ledgers. With those tucked under one arm, he led Clementine down busy Front Street to the two-story building that sat next to the Courthouse and its limestone basement. The front door of the wooden jail stood open to catch a stray breeze. Clint took it as an invitation and entered.

“Hey, Masterson, you here?” He hollered as he handed Clementine into a chair that fronted a scarred desk.

Bump-bump. Bump-bump. Footsteps sounded below them, and then a door near the rear of the room opened. A dome-shaped hat appeared first, followed by the handsome face of Bat Masterson. The man’s neatly trimmed mustache twitched. “Well, if it isn’t the newlyweds. What’s brought the two of you to the jail?”

“My wife and I want to report a shooting. The bullet nearly lodged in her head.”

Clementine widened her eyes and nodded. “I was so scared.”

Clint threw a frown at her. She exaggerated her innocent act too much, and he needed to warn her. Seeing his hint, she merely winked.

“Shot at you, huh? My brother doesn’t allow guns in town. We’re not having another death like our brother Ed.”

“Yeah, I heard tell that Jim took over as marshal after your brother was killed. But I am telling you, Bat. There’s someone out to kill us. It wasn’t a stray bullet, not with the way the marshal controls the guns in town.”

Bat reached up a finger to rub the left side of his mustache. “Well, we’ll need to talk to Jim. I’m the sheriff of Ford County, not the law here in Dodge.”

Those two men drew me to that specific year. It was a more controlled time in the town. One when I believed my main characters would get the support they needed from the law.

It was later, in 1881, that Masterson left Kansas and traveled to Tombstone, Arizona, where he joined his friend Wyatt Earp. Earp asked him to deal faro and ferret out robbers terrorizing local stagecoaches. Later, he was part of Earp’s vendetta to punish the cowboys who killed Earp’s brothers.

So, my choice of 1880 was specific. I wanted Masterson to be the county sheriff in my story, and I had to time it right to line up the historical events. (By the way, it is no coincidence that my last name is also Masterson. I chose that for my pen name to honor Bat. Of course, I had to include him in this story!)

As much as I focused on the characters and their story, I also wanted to recreate the busy main street of Dodge City in 1880. I chose a time during the town’s peak years when cattle and cowboys streamed there to ship beef back east, mostly to Chicago’s slaughtering houses. Imagine it. This was a time before fences ended the open range, and the West was wild.

From Marriage and Mayhem:

The breeze puffed, stirring the already disturbed dust. It gave a last effort to blow on it, like a blacksmith reviving a dying forge. As the wind gave up, allowing the earth to return to the earth, the stagecoach door flew open.

A boot appeared, followed by the hem of a blue skirt. More of the traveling suit showed until a frowning woman with arms akimbo stood outside the coach. No boardwalk invited her to escape the hard-packed dirt that was the street. 

Clementine Bradley’s nose and chin tipped upward, ever so slightly, but there it was. She allowed dislike for the situation—and her discomfort—to show. A glance to the left and to the right might have signaled that distress to any male observers. It should have signaled it to them, if any bothered to glance her way. Alone, she stood in the street without so much as one masculine arm willing to escort her to the hotel.

Dodge City’s main street teemed with men. Roughly dressed cowboys rode past her on horses, skirting her while never meeting her eyes. Others stumbled along with whiskey bottles clutched in their fists. Their hoots and hollers nearly sent Clementine’s hands up to cover her ears.

Reserve your copy of the book at a special price! Click here.