Tamera Alexander is quickly becoming one of my favorite historical authors. There is something about her novels set in Antebellum Nashville that draw me in and keep me reading. Yesterday her latest, To Whisper Her Name released…I couldn’t read it fast enough. Besides the GORGEOUS cover, the characters were wonderful.

 Olivia Aberdeen is a widow in a desperate situation who is welcomed at Belle Meade Plantation. She knows she is a charity case, but fights to come into her own. Ridley Cooper is a huge part of that happening. He sees a depth and strength to her that she doesn’t acknowledge and teased, cajoles, and drums it out of her. At the same time he has deep secrets that he can’t reveal…and so he dances a line of telling almost the full truth as he works with the thoroughbreds at Belle Meade. Neither can marry the other for big and oh-to-real reasons despite the growing reality they may be in love.

Add in the rich history that is woven through the pages, an incredible cast of secondary characters, and this is a story that is going on my keeper shelf. Wonderful, truly wonderful book that is perfect for those who love a compelling romance set in another time.

Julie Lessman is another one of my favorite historical authors. Her books are set in Boston during the 1920s and follow the O’Connor family. Julie writes stories with a vividness and depth of passion that makes them so compelling. I get drawn into the world, and I love it when characters reappear from book to book. In her newest, A Love Surrendered, readers get to follow Stephen’s story. Here’s more:

Orphaned in Iowa, Annie Kennedy moves to Boston to stay with her spinster aunt. She longs for romance to fill the void left by her parents’ death. But when she falls hard for Steven O’Connor, the man who broke an engagement to her sister, Annie is worried. Will he break her heart too when he discovers who she really is?