Showing results by author "Teresa Ives Lilly" in All Categories

Deanna is supporting her small family while her father recovers in a nearby sanatorium, but just before she starts her job, the neighbor's child is found to be very sick and the father nowhere. Deanna calls to a stranger for help, skating on the frozen lake nearby...not knowing the man is also her new boss. Ryan finds pleasure in helping the small family with the neighbor's sick child, and he offers to help the girl's father as well. Although he is from a very wealthy family, he wishes to be part of the quaint Russell home.

Birch Tree, Maine, is experiencing a rash of deaths, all mysteriously linked to food trucks that frequent the Birch Point Lake Park. Angel’s new donut truck was doing great, until deathly rumors started. Shanice thought she had customer support when taking over her grandpa’s potato truck, until one started complaining. Marisol’s taco truck is a fixture in the park, until linked to a food judge’s death. Mey’s noodle truck was her ticket to a new life, until her ex-boyfriend threatens to take it away. Could competition between vendors have led to this murder and mayhem?

All Holly wants is to join her younger brother in Golden, Colorado with his adopted father for Christmas, so when the opportunity to ride on the Orphan Train arises, she jumps at the chance. However, her unexpected arrival in town right before Christmas is not what Jake Carson had planned for Christmas, but since she is his adopted son Tommy's sister, he feels he must take her in for the holiday. Will Holly find a new home in Golden, Colorado and perhaps a true love by Christmas?

Ida has been taken away from her lovely childhood home, The Cottage on Ivy Lane, and forced to live with her unloving step sister. The only joy she has is going to school and church and believing that the boy next door will some day help her to return to the Cottage on Ivy Lane.

Shay Martin has been collecting houses and buildings for her Christmas Villages since she was a child, but this year, she has a specific looking cottage in mind. While searching for just the right addition for her collection, she finds a picture of the perfect Evergreen Cottage. However, on further research, she finds the photo is of a real cottage. Shay had already decided to travel for the holidays to get away from sad memories and just be alone. After meeting the trail ride instructor, she's no longer sure she wants to be completely alone for the season.

A tea shoppe along the coast of Maine is connected to a year's worth of mysterious deaths. Starting one winter day, Georgina finds the mayor poisoned by a plate of petite fours. That spring, Evie's favorite customer and recipe tester is killed. While out delivering scones for her summer job, Ashley discovers a crime scene to practice her student training in forensics. Against a backdrop of vibrant fall foliage, Ladessa discovers a corpse at table number four. How can one small shoppe's employees be connected to so many deaths, and will the business ever recover?

Sheila didn't want to live in Slaton, Texas where she was too old to attend school. Yet hungry for reading, when she discovers the new Harvey House is hiring she accepts the job to help her family get out of the tent they've been living in for two years. Although, the work of a Harvey House Waitress is hard and time consuming, Sheila finds time to visit the local Railroad Reading Room where she meets Dale; a man who inspires and helps her. The Harvey House rule is: no waitress may get married before her one-year contract is ended.

When scar-faced Griffin catches an old miner stealing from his store, he insists the man work off the debt. However, when the man gets too sick to work, Griffin sends for Izzy, whom Griffin thinks is the old man's wife. When the girl turns out to be the man's beautiful and kind daughter, Griffin finds himself torn between continuing to wear the façade of a beast, or lowering his defenses and allowing Izzy's beauty to soften his soul.

In this novella, Maribelle is asked to leave the orphanage at age 18. She isn't sure where to go or what to do, so she jumps at the chance to ride the Orphan Train and help take care of the 24 children. At the final stop in Missouri, she is once again concerned about her future return to Boston, but when a handsome man asks if he can "adopt" her to help take care of "Connie", she immediately agrees. Will Maribelle, "Belle", find a home and love in Missouri or have to return to the orphan life in Boston?

Jaimyn Jones wants to experience a real Thanksgiving, but she has no family or friends to do this with. She hopes to find a bit of the holiday season by staying at the Thanksgiving Cottage, even though she knows it's too big for just one person.

Charlene Trumbel is 29 years old, a spinster daughter of a wealthy New York family. However, she is appalled at the wasteful lifestyle her family lives. When given a chance to ride on the Orphan Train to get firsthand experience to write an article to induce wealthy families to support the Orphan Train, Charlene jumps at it. However, her poor eyesight, which has caused her to remain a lonely wallflower her whole life, almost stops her from the trip. That is until she meets a young city boy who agrees to come along with her and be her eyes. Along the way, Charlene learns.

Ruby’s mother has informed her that it's time for her to start dancing at the Golden Dawn saloon, and has replaced all of Ruby’s clothes with saloon ball gowns. To escape that lifestyle, Ruby answers a mail-order bride ad from a man in Waterhole, Texas, looking for someone with upstanding morals to help clean up his town. When Ruby arrives in town, dressed in a saloon gown and toting her younger brother, Timmy, Seth thinks he's been duped, and the last thing he wants is a child in his life, having recently lost his own.

When Shera Logan stepped off the train to stretch her legs, she never expected to twist her ankle and be abandoned at a coal stop, 60 miles from the next town. After walking for hours, she realizes that she can go no further, so she lays down in the snow, makes a snow angel and her most special prayer asking God to either send someone to help her or to take her home. Mathew Tucker, intent on returning to his ranch after a visit to town, never expected to find a woman collapsed in the snow almost frozen to death. Will Shera's prayers be answered by this cowboy who tries to save her?

When Angelica Cartwright heads to Kentucky to begin her teaching career, she never dreams she will be waylaid in Mistletoe, Kentucky, with a broken foot and cared for by a handsome wood-carver and his daughter. However, she soon finds that Luke Tanner is also carving himself onto her heart

Chloe Raymond has been living in an orphanage in Boston all her life and sees very little hope for her future, until she saves Mildred Crenshaw's life. The woman promises to find Chloe a husband through her Matrimonial Agency, but before she is able to do so, Chloe is assigned to take three children across the country in a train to Iowa. Mildren Crenshaw doesn't approve of Chloe traveling alone, so she asks one of her clients, Sylvester Gaines, to chaperone. When they reach Iowa and discover the children's relatives are not there, Sylvester takes Chloe and the children home with him.

Franklin thought his estate and businesses belonged to him, until an unknown grandmother shows up with proof that she owns the billionaire's fortune. She plans to give him all rights to his empire if he can do just one thing: work for two weeks before Christmas at Sprucewood, Colorado's Camp for Special Needs Kids, and perhaps learn that work and making money are only of value in God's eyes if mixed with a bit of charity. When he's paired off with Sprucewood's own mayor's daughter Audrey, who has recently discovered "Jesus", the two of them begin to have their eyes opened.

When Mammie announces that Stephen needs to go to town and pick up his mail order bride, he is flabbergasted. Mammie has been writing to Sally Jersey and now expects him to marry her. Stephen has every intention of putting her back on the stage and sending her home, until he sees her lovely face and the nieces and nephews she brought. Will Stephen allow himself to fall in love, or will Sally be given away to the most eligible bachelor in Waterhole, Texas?

As wealthy debutante Violet Beauchamp travels across country on Route 66, she finds a small dog hurt on the road. Unwilling to leave the dog, she stops at a small Hopi Indian souvenir stand, where she is advised to go to the Holbrook Wigwam Motel. She is also given an enchanted rock, and told that the next man she sees will be the man she marries. When she meets motel clerk Lee, although handsome and kind, she still believes she is destined to marry a wealthy man in California whom she has never met.

Harbor has come to Tasoca Texas to help her brother civilize the town by opening a school, but the first things she hears is that a mysterious person is acting the part of a Christmas angel in town. Harbor wants the children and townspeople to put their faith in God, not the Christmas angel. Drake can't understand why Harbor's brother would bring her to such a wild place, but he takes it upon himself to make sure she is safe each day. He isn't sure he agrees with her opinion of the Christmas angel until he see's her faith in God.

When Sylvia May, owner of the Good Old Days Antique store in Harbor Inn, Maine, attends an estate sale, she finds a diary hidden in a lovely old desk. Before she knows what's happening, her store and her garage have been broken in to, and one person is dead. Can Sylvia figure out who the killer is, and are there clues in the diary?