Taste of Christmas

A delectable trio of Regency romances, capturing the warmth and joy of the Christmas season, features Debbie Raleigh's The Elusive Bride, in which Amanda Worthington, forced to marry Lord Barclay to cancel her father's gambling debt, tries to sell her scrumptious jam cakes to repay him, but Lord Barclay has other ideas. Original.

Romance anthologies allow readers to sample writers new to them, or writers they've lost track of, and this holiday batch is particularly lively and varied.Three Regency tales, each with its own recipe, take their cue from tempting seasonal treats in A Taste of Christmas. A wealthy gentleman who wants his hunting lodge back matches with one of its tenants in Alice Holden's "Lord Nabob's Conversion." A lady who would rather bake cakes to pay a debt discovers she now hungers for the taste a certain lord's kisses in Debbie Raleigh's " The Elusive Bride." An impulsive good deed during the holiday season ultimately leads to an unexpected romance in Joy Reed's original and clever "Mince Pie and Mistletoe." John Charles
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This delectable trio of Regency novellas will add a dash of sugar and spice to any fan's holiday reading list. Cookies come to the fore as an impoverished vicar's daughter plans to keep a wealthy young nobleman from evicting four children and their guardian from his hunting lodge right before Christmas in Holden's delightful "Lord Nabob's Conversion." Debbie Raleigh's "The Elusive Bride" features an independent young woman determined to avoid being "sold" in marriage to pay off her father's gambling debts. Deciding to sell her jam cakes to earn the debt money instead, she ends up falling in love with the man she is trying so hard to avoid marrying. Finally, in Joy Reed's "Mince Pie and Mistletoe," a last-minute Christmas Eve shopping trip to buy lemons for the "lucky" mince pie and a golden guinea found in a gutter start a chain of kindness and generosity that ultimately leads to love for the young girl who first found the gold. Although varying in quality and style, each tale has a charm of its own, and most readers will find something that appeals. The recipes for chocolate jumbles, little jam cakes, and lemon mince pie are a lovely bonus.
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