Lake of Destiny (Celtic Legends Collection) - Softcover

Boone, Martina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 194677300X ISBN 13: 9781946773005

Publisher: Mayfair Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

Helping her aunt organize a festival among the quiet lochs and braes of a Highland village in Scotland seems like the perfect escape from Anna Cameron's broken engagement and the mistake that ended her legal career. But to succeed in helping the struggling community, she'll need to wrangle kilt-wearing villagers, dangerous sheep, meandering dogs, generations of family secrets, and the secretive Highlander who refuses to open his property for the ancient tradition of "Sighting." "Delightful, charming, and heartwarming!" NYT bestselling author Wendy Higgins A captivating and uplifting new romance about women, family, history, food, men in kilts, a haunting Highlands legend, and the sometimes twisted path to love from the award-winning author of Compulsion. For centuries, the small village of Balwhither has been known to locals as a "thin" place, one where the veil between worlds peels back on Beltane morning and reflects the face of a person's one true love in the tranquil waters of the loch. The tradition could draw much-needed tourism by the busload, but that's exactly what Connal MacGregor doesn't want when he's desperate to keep himself and his daughter out of the public eye. Struggling to mediate between Connal and the needs of the village, Anna finds herself falling in love with all of them: Connal and his disfigured daughter, the villagers, and the magical glen. But opening the "Sighting" to strangers reveals rivalries the women in her family have kept locked away to brood to long, and old scars within Connal and Anna themselves. Confronting those wounds could finally set them both free to love with their whole hearts--or endanger their every chance of happiness. An enchanting contemporary international romance filled with love and healing, perfect for fans of Nora Roberts' trilogies, Susanna Kearsley's suspenseful historical fiction, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, Sarah Addison Allen's magical women's fiction, and the heartwarming romances of Susan Wiggs, Susan Mallery, Lauren K. Denton, and Inglath Cooper. THE CELTIC LEGENDS COLLECTION The novels in the Celtic Legends collection are all heartwarming and uplifting stand-alone international romance novels. They can be read in any order, but characters from previous books are sometimes mentioned. While the settings are exotic, the books create a small town romance series atmosphere where characters know each other on deep levels, meddle in each other's business in the best--or worst--ways, and where the protagonists also deepen their relationships with friends, neighbors, and family as they fall in love. Food, sisters, parents, children, pets with distinct personalities, and the issues important to women all feature prominently. Because many readers of Martina Boone's young adult fiction also read her adult novels, all her work can be classified in the realm of contemporary clean and wholesome romance. The focus is on the characters being attracted to each other emotionally and intellectually as well as physically.

About this title

From the Author:

Dear Reader,
   
I was driving in the Highlands of Scotland years ago and came across a rusting black-and-white road sign pointing to Rob Roy MacGregor's grave. Now, being a sucker for Scottish history, Sir Walter Scott, and Liam Neeson in a kilt (not necessarily in that order), I had to take the detour. Right? No choice at all. And I fell utterly in love with the Balquhidder Glen.
    
The location itself was beautiful, of course, in that wild way of Scottish glens with steep-sided, heather-covered braes and lochs glittering silver beneath an endless sky. But it also had an aura of something magical.
    
In addition to the grave where Rob Roy, a "MacGregor Despite Them," lies buried beside his wife and two of his sons, the glen houses the ruin of an old stone church where a soberly Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Robert Kirk, preached in the seventeenth century. While engaged in said preaching, he also reportedly wandered into an enchanted world. Years later, according to legend, instead of dying, he was taken back to that Otherworld to become the chaplain to the Fairy Queen.
    
As if that wouldn't have been enough to fire my imagination, I also had an encounter with a flock of meandering sheep, a lonely horse bit the side mirror of my rental car when I tried to stop petting him, and a shaggy Highland bull charged over to lick my camera lens while I was trying to take his picture. (I have the photo of his tongue somewhere, I swear.) Add to that a lovely meal and a passionate conversation with a Scottish nationalist, and it was a day I've never forgotten.
   
I always knew I would write about the glen someday. Of course, it's changed some since I visited that first time. And because it has changed, and because my story is fiction which has resulted in some alterations to the landscape, while I'm keeping much of its history and the names of the clans who've traditionally resided there, I am calling it Balwhither instead of Balquhidder. For what it's worth, Balwhither is how you pronounce the name anyway, and it's also how Robert Louis Stephenson wrote about it in his books.
     
If you've been to Balquhidder, you'll find yourself a little disoriented. The people, places, and events that populate my glen are fictitious, and even the historical events and figures, actual geography, and landmark businesses in the glen are fictionalized. But I hope I've captured the beauty of the place, and I hope it inspires my readers to go and see it for themselves.
    
In case you're sad to leave the charm of small-town life in a magical setting behind when this story is over, keep an eye out for additional free-standing books in the Celtic Legends series. And if you like Scottish food, try the recipes included in the book. Maybe they'll turn out well enough at your house to help persuade your own man to try a kilt!

About the Author:

Martina Boone was born in Prague and spoke several languages before learning English. She's the award-winning author of the romantic southern gothic Heirs of Watson Island series, including Compulsion, Persuasion, and Illusion from Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse. She's also the founder of AdventuresInYAPublishing.com, a three-time Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers Site, and YASeriesInsiders.com, a site dedicated to encouraging literacy and reader engagement through a celebration of series literature. She's on the board of a literacy foundation and runs the CompulsionForReading.com program to distribute books to underserved schools and libraries.

She lives with her husband, children, and a lopsided cat, she enjoys writing contemporary fantasy set in the sorts of magical places she'd love to visit. When she isn't writing, she's addicted to travel, horses, skiing, chocolate flavored tea, Quality Streets, and anything with Nutella on it.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mayfair Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 194677300X
• ISBN 13: 9781946773005
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336