A Home for Christmas

I have a book that released this week called

A Home for Christmas

I didn’t even know it would come out for sure until the day it did. It’s an ebook and this is a brave new world for sure. People were emailing me that they’d bought it and they were reading it about ten minutes after I found out it was there.

AND it costs (brace yourselves) 99 cents.

We’re experimenting with ebooks and decided to start with a very REASONABLE price to lure people in. (that sounds diabolical, I apologize for that!)

I contains two novellas. One by me called The Sweetest Gift and one by Robin Lee Hatcher called The Christmas Angel.

Here is a little bit about the books.

 

The Sweetest Gift by Mary Connealy 
A spinster with a master’s degree who is a world traveler, librarian by day and concert pianist by night, marries a Nebraska rancher with an eighth grade education. Their worlds are so far apart that each is afraid to admit their marriage of convenience is turning into a love match.

When Christmas draws near Adelaide must decide if she can give up her hopes of owning a beautiful piano so her husband can have the stallion he needs for his ranch. And Graham may need to risk his perfect brood mare to show his love for his wife by buying her the Christmas gift of her dreams.

A Christmas Angel by Robin Lee Hatcher

Idaho 1892
Ten-year-old Annie Gerrard, stuck in a wheelchair since falling from the barn loft, hopes for a beautiful angel to go atop the Christmas tree, but God’s answer to her prayer is completely unexpected.

Annie’s widower father, Mick, hated to ask his in-laws for help, but he had no other choice. He never imagined they would send his wife’s stepsister, Jennifer Whitmore, to care for his daughter. Nor did he foresee the love she would bring into their home. Did he and Annie dare hope that Jennifer might choose to stay?

 
To buy it for Kindle click HERE
To buy it for Nook click HERE
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Author of Romantic Comedy...with Cowboys including the bestselling Kincaid Brides Series
https://petticoatsandpistols.com/sweepstakesrules

20 thoughts on “A Home for Christmas”

  1. Mary,

    Both of these stories sound beautiful! And you can’t even get a cup of coffee anymore for .99, so I’m heading over to Amazon to pick up an early Christmas gift for me. :o)

    –Kirsten

  2. I am in the midst of reading my Christmas books and this one sounds lovely. With that great price, it certainly is a nice Christmas treat for myself. Thank you!

  3. Here’s a tidbit about my book. It’s based on the real-life marriage of convenience of my mother’s parents. So the most difficult to believe parts of the book are the truest.
    I’ve had a wide assortment of cousins, siblings, plus my mom say, “You should write grandma and grandpa’s story.”
    I’d started it a couple of times. But LET ME TELL YOU it’s HARD. It really is. It felt like LYING. And I HAD to take liberties because a book needs TROUBLE. Two cordial people who marry and get along fine for 50 or so years is NOT a romance novel.
    So then I’d tell my mom what I was trying to do with the book and she’d say, “But that’s not how it happened.”
    And it would just stop me dead in my tracks. It was really a struggle to let go of that whole TRUTH thing and tell the fun story I had rattling around in my brain.
    And, here’s the thing, my grandparents by all accounts got along fine. My mom said they were always perfectly pleasant to each other. They had four children, the first born 18 months after they married, so this was in all ways a REAL marriage. But it is NOT a book.

    I won’t tell the details of how they came to be married because that’s the foundation of the book, just let’s say it was sort of wild. They were almost complete strangers.

  4. Even if you had to spice it up to make a better book, Mary, just think of how wonderful it is to have the story your grandparents inspired living on forever. I can just imagine them smiling over you and sharing a fond little laugh.

    I’m heading to Amazon now!

  5. Mary, I found this book two days ago, and started reading it last night. When I read the blurb I thought this is too fantastic to be true, then I read that it was based on real people.
    That’s what I love about your heroines. Every time I think no woman could or would have done that in real life I come across a woman from history that did that very thing! Your stories always encourage women to think outside the box and push their limits.
    At $.99 this one is a steal! I also love Robin Hatcher’s books, so that is an extra bonus.

  6. Mark Twain once said, Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

    We deal with that a LOT as authors. Our characters have to make sense. then you see such craziness in real life and it’s IRRITATING. LOL

  7. And my grandparents story, how they got together is just outlandish, really. I talked with my mom about this a lot while I was writing this story.

    AND, my father’s parents had (I believe) a marriage of convenience but it wasn’t like my maternal grandparents. For one thing my dad’s dad passed away before I was born so he wasn’t a very REAL part of my life.

    But my mom’s parents, the way they got together was sort of this family mythology. We heard this story a LOT. But my dad’s parents, I don’t know how happy that was. My grandpa almost died in WWI and was somewhat disabled. His lungs were damaged and he was prone to pneumonia and he had disability payments the rest of his life, though my mom said he was a nice man, up and around, a farmer, though he had spells when he couldn’t work and then my grandma did everything. Mom said it was so odd. Grandpa would sit in the house with her and Grandma would go out to do the chores.

    But Grandpa was 30 when he married Grandma who was 19 and they were married ten years before they had one child, my dad. And my grandma was really CRANKY. (probably because she had to do all those chores). But I never heard GRandma talk about GRandpa. It was like, once he was dead he was gone. And we never asked about it. Why didn’t I ever ask my grandma, “So, how did you meet Grandpa?”
    But no. It never came up. I think Grandma was more a nurse to a sick man than a real wife.
    Except of course, there is my dad.

    Then she was widowed at age 50 and never remarried and absolutely NEVER was there another man, not a date, nothing. Of course I thought my grandma was super old. But seriously, she was FIFTY.

  8. Mary, your story reminds me of my favorite O’Henry story “The Gift of the Magi.”

    Thank goodness you overcame your difficulty in writing your story. Fiction is not about facts; it’s about truth.

    Lucky for readers that the truth of your grandparents’ love story won out over facts.

    Hugs!

  9. You know, Margaret, thats a sweet thig to say, but i don’t think it’s right. My grandparents love story was pretty boring. They got along fine. They were decent people who made a committment and kept it. That’s nice, a great thing really, but not all that gripping.

    I had to make the book interesting. And that is all made up. 😀

  10. Hi Mary, what a fun Christmas present for….me. I love Christmas stories, and those written by people I actually know are The Best. I love the name Adelaide. I love how you based the story on a piece of your family lore. Best wishes! oxox

  11. Hi Mary,
    I bought this book for my Nook the other day and I’ve been reading it on the subway to and from work. What a lovely story! I’m totally loving it.

  12. I NEED to get an e-reader sooner than later. So many books I would like are coming out in e-form only. Soon. My husband wanted to get one for me for Christmas last year, but I made him wait while I decided which one I wanted. Still haven’t decided. Whenever I do get one, this book will be added to my collection. We have 3 trips planned in the near future. It would be easier to pack a NOOK or Kindle than the bag of books I always bring.

    I hope this works out well for you.

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