Closed-door romances are novels in which scenes of physical intimacy are not detailed or featured prominently.
Large Print Format
The Lady and the Highwayman
Sarah M. Eden
Authors Elizabeth Black and Fletcher Walker go head-to-head as rival writers of Victorian Penny Dreadfuls. As an upper class schoolteacher, Elizabeth must write under the pseudonym "Mr. King" in order to keep her identity a secret, while former street urchin Fletcher is determined to uncover the truth behind this up-and-coming new talent. But the more time they spend together, the more she loses her heart to him. It's author against author where readers, reputations, and romance are all on the line.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
The Recipe Box
Viola Shipman
Growing up in northern Michigan, Samantha “Sam” Mullins felt trapped on her family’s orchard and pie shop, so she left with dreams of making her own mark in the world. But life as an overworked, undervalued sous chef at a reality star’s New York bakery is not what Sam dreamed. When the chef embarrasses Sam, she quits and returns home. Unemployed, single, and defeated, she spends a summer working on her family’s orchard cooking and baking alongside the women in her life—including her mother, Deana, and grandmother, Willo. One beloved, flour-flecked, ink-smeared recipe at a time, Sam begins to learn about and understand the women in her life, her family’s history, and her passion for food through their treasured recipe box. As Sam discovers what matters most she opens her heart to a man she left behind, but who now might be the key to her happiness.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Secrets
Jude Deveraux
At age twelve, Cassandra Madden fell in love with Jefferson Ames, a young man she met at one of her mother's business conferences. Over the years, during periods of loneliness and struggle, Cassandra held on to this unrequited love in order to cope with her isolated heart and the pain of a cold mother. Even when Cassandra grew up, went off to college, and met a man she thought she'd marry, her heart yearned for Jeff. In a decisive moment, she breaks off her pending engagement and travels to Williamsburg, Virginia, where the now-widowed Jeff lives with his young daughter. Cassandra becomes the child's nanny but, even though she sees the object of her desire every day, Jeff has yet to even notice her. Then, one day, she hears shots coming from the mansion of Althea Fairmont, an eccentric woman who is thought of as the world's greatest living actress. Cassie runs to investigate and, in an instant, her safe little life is turned upside down. She begins to learn that all the people around her aren't who they claim to be. Everyone has secrets - and until Cassie unravels those secrets, she and Jeff will never have a chance to be happy together.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
A Mind of Her Own
Rosie Harris
Recently widowed after 50 years of marriage, Betty Wilson wants to remain fiercely independent and free of romance. But when the unwitting septuagenarian is faced with conmen and dangerous technology everywhere she turns, will she accept her friend Peter Brown's help and realise there can be other loves before it is too late?
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Cottage by the Sea
Debbie Macomber
Annie Marlow has been through the worst. Rocked by tragedy, she heads to the one place that makes her happy: Oceanside in the Pacific Northwest, the destination of many family vacations when Annie was a teenager. Once there, Annie begins to restore her broken spirit, thanks in part to the folks she meets: a local painter, Keaton, whose large frame is equal to his big heart--and who helps Annie fix up her rental cottage by the sea; Mellie, the reclusive, prickly landlord Annie is determined to befriend; and Britt, a teenager with a terrible secret. But it is Keaton to whom Annie feels most drawn. His quiet, peaceful nature offers her both comfort and reprieve from her grief, and the two begin to grow closer. Then events threaten to undo the idyll Annie has come to enjoy. And when the opportunity of a lifetime lands in her lap, she is torn between the excitement of a new journey toward success and the safe and secure arms of the haven--and the man--she's come to call home. In this heartwarming tale, Annie finds that the surest way to fix what is damaged within is to help others rise above their pain and find a way to heal.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Frederica
Georgette Heyer
Determined to secure a brilliant marriage for her beautiful sister, Frederica seeks out their distant cousin the Marquis of Alverstoke. Lovely, competent, and refreshingly straightforward, Frederica makes such a strong impression on him that to his own amazement, the Marquis agrees to help launch them all into society. Normally Lord Alverstoke keeps his distance from his family, which includes two overbearing sisters and innumerable favor-seekers. But with his enterprising — and altogether entertaining—country cousins chasing wishes and getting into one scrape after another right on his doorstep, before he knows it the Marquis finds himself dangerously embroiled.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Nights Of Rain And Stars
Maeve Binchy
Tourists enter the hilltop tavern, alone and in pairs, for a casual lunch. But a sudden tragedy in the harbor below causes these perfect strangers to become unlikely friends as their lives begin to entwine... Fiona left her nursing career in Ireland to be with the man everyone thinks is wrong for her. Elsa fled Germany and her high-powered television job once she learned what the man she loved was hiding from her. Thomas mourns his failed marriage and misses his young son in California, while David yearns to reconcile with his family in England without having to go into the family business. Chance has brought them together, and together they will find new ways of looking at the lives they left behind.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Leaving
Karen Kingsbury
The Bailey Flanigan series begins with Bailey leaving Bloomington for the adventure of a lifetime. She has won an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway musical in New York City. She’s determined to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but is she really ready to leave family and friends for the loneliness of the city? And what of Cody? His disappearance has her worried about their future and praying that their love can survive. In order to be closer to his mother in jail, Cody takes a coaching job in a small community outside Indianapolis. New friends, distance, and circumstances expose cracks in his relationship with Bailey Flanigan. Love, loneliness, big opportunities, and even bigger decisions highlight the first book in the new Bailey Flanigan series that features members of the popular Baxter family and finally completes the Bailey Flanigan/Cody Coleman story.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Embers of Love
Tracie Peterson
Deborah Vandermark plans to assist her family's logging business now that she's completed college, but when she meets Dr. Christopher Clayton, Deborah realizes she has a greater interest in medicine and science than the bookkeeping she was trained in.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Far Side of the Sea
Kate Breslin
In spring 1918, Lieutenant Colin Mabry, a British soldier working with MI8 after suffering injuries on the front, receives a message by carrier pigeon. It is from Jewel Reyer, the woman he once loved and who saved his life--a woman he believed to be dead. Traveling to France to answer her urgent summons, he desperately hopes this mission will ease his guilt and restore the courage he lost on the battlefield. Colin is stunned, however, to discover the message came from Jewel's half sister, Johanna. Johanna, who works at a dovecote for French Army Intelligence, found Jewel's diary and believes her sister is alive in the custody of a German agent. With spies everywhere, Colin is skeptical of Johanna, but as they travel across France and Spain, a tentative trust begins to grow between them. When their pursuit leads them straight into the midst of a treacherous plot, danger and deception turn their search for answers into a battle for their lives.
Read More View in CatalogLarge Print Format
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. "Only Emily Brontë," V. S. Pritchett said about the author and her contemporaries, "exposes her imagination to the dark spirit." And Virginia Woolf wrote, "It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts, with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar."
Read More View in Catalog(Large Print)
The Authenticity Project
Clare Pooley
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves—and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café. The Authenticity Project's cast of characters—including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends—is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward—and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness. The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for—and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.
Read More View in Catalog(Large Print)
Far Side of the Sea
Kate Breslin
In spring 1918, Lieutenant Colin Mabry, a British soldier working with MI8 after suffering injuries on the front, receives a message by carrier pigeon. It is from Jewel Reyer, the woman he once loved and who saved his life--a woman he believed to be dead. Traveling to France to answer her urgent summons, he desperately hopes this mission will ease his guilt and restore the courage he lost on the battlefield. Colin is stunned, however, to discover the message came from Jewel's half sister, Johanna. Johanna, who works at a dovecote for French Army Intelligence, found Jewel's diary and believes her sister is alive in the custody of a German agent. With spies everywhere, Colin is skeptical of Johanna, but as they travel across France and Spain, a tentative trust begins to grow between them. When their pursuit leads them straight into the midst of a treacherous plot, danger and deception turn their search for answers into a battle for their lives.
Read More View in Catalog