Anatomy of a Meet Cute, by Addie Woolridge

Montlake, ISBN 9781662504570, March 2023

Samantha Holbrook is a young doctor, starting a research fellowship at a hospital in San Franciso. Flying back to SF from her family home in Ohio, she responds to a call for a doctor to respond to an onboard emergency. Her specialty is obstetrics, not emergency medicine, but no one else is responding, so she does.

Turns out there's another doctor on board, who had headphones on and didn't hear the call. He also matches the totally inadequate description the flight attendant gave her, and it takes a few moments to figure out the patient is another guy just a couple of seats away.

The other doctor, Grant Gao, is a little older, and definitely more experienced, and their joint effort to respond becomes very embarrassing for Sam, even though she's ultimately the one who works out exactly which "magic mushroom" the patient is high on.

Later, much to her distress, she discovers that he's the senior research fellow at the hospital she'll be doing her research fellowship. Not her boss, but embarrassingly close to it.

A Home in Your Heart (Love in the West #2), by Bess McBride (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

Bess McBride, May 2020

In 2014, Harriet (Harry) Ferguson is engaged, but seriously doubting that she's made the right choice. It's becoming clear that, in any conflict at all between herself and Tom's mother, his mother is going to win. This isn't a loving son; this is a mama's boy. When they pay a visit to his mother in southeastern Arizona, she becomes more convinced than ever that this engagement is a mistake. Partly to have a few hours to herself, she visits the museum at Fort Huachuca, an army post dating to the 1880s. There she sees, in a diorama, a wax figure of a cavalry officer, handsome and strangely compelling to her.

She touches his face, and falls. Falls through time. She loses consciousness, and when she wakes, she's being shaken awake by the handsome cavalry officer from the diorama.

Caving into You (Love in the West #1), by Bess McBride (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

Bess McBride, March 2020

Hilly Creighton is a romance writer, on her way to visit her brother in Phoenix after attending a writer's convention. She stops near Tombstone to enjoy the stark landscape, and finds a cave. She calls into it, just being silly for a minute, and then goes on her way.

Clint Woodrow is a miner in 1881 Tombstone, until he hears a woman's voice calling to him from the entrance to his mine, and emerges to find no woman in sight, but but a very different world than the Tombstone he knew.

The Disgraceful Lord Gray (The King's Elite #3), by Virginia Heath

Mills & Boon, April 2019

Lord Graham Chadwick, a.k.a. Lord Gray, was the younger son of a noble and titled family, in love with the daughter of their equally titled and noble neighbors. Then she broke his heart, choosing his elder brother. This happened as Gray was turning 21 and gaining control of his fortune. He didn't handle it well, managing to gamble away his entire fortune in a matter of months. He's now a member of a spy ring, the King's Elite, looking for the leader of a dangerous smuggling ring in quiet, rural Suffolk.

The evidence has led Gray and his comrades to Viscount Gislingham, whom they believe to be that leader, a.k.a. "The Boss."

Theodora Cranford is Gislingham's niece. She's an intelligent, strong-willed, often impulsive young woman, who is herself somewhat emotionally scarred. She and her father had shared a fiery temper, and one of her many arguments with him as a child had happened right before her father left on a carriage trip, in which the carriage overturned and her father died of a broken neck. Years later, after another argument, her uncle, Lord Gislingham, had a stroke. She now keeps Impulsive Thea locked up, and thinks every man is only after her considerable fortune.

A Rebel at Pennington's (Pennington's #2), by Rachel Brimble

Aria Fiction, February 2019

Esther Stanbury is Elizabeth Pennington's friend, and the head window dresser at Bath's premier retail store, Pennington's, founded by Elizabeth's now-retired father. Elizabeth and her husband, Joseph Carter, have revived the store's image and future, and Esther's skills have been important to that.

Her other passion, though, is the suffragist movement. Raised as a suffragist by her mother, despite the objections of her father, the movement has split her from her father after her mother's death and her father's remarriage. She invests much of her off-work time and talents to promoting the cause, and, growing a little discouraged, is watching the growth of a more violent movement with concern.

At this point, she meets Lawrence Culford, standing outside Pennington's with his daughter, Rose, and his son, Nathaniel. Rose wants a cricket set; Lawrence is suggesting a doll. Esther plunges into the discussion.

No Time for Love (Marrying a Marshal #5), by Natalie Dean

Kenzo Publishing, January 2019

Ida East is a young widow with a young daughter, running the boarding house her late husband had started--and then advertised for a mail-order bride to help him run it. Their business was a success, and their marriage was becoming a success, and then he died. It was one more loss for Ida, who has lived through too many, and now she wants no more risks and no more losses. She only wants to run her business, and keep her daughter, Adaline, safe.

Jake Cranston, until now a US Marshal in Dry Gulch, Texas, has just been transferred from Dry Gulch to Cypress Springs. He gets recommendations to go to the East Boarding House for lodging, and then nearly talks himself out of getting a room in the town's only decent boarding house, with his teasing and pushback against a woman who has learned to be strong-willed and firm.

Falling for the Marshal (Marrying a Marshal #4), by Natalie Dean

Kenzo Publishing, January 2019

Samantha VanHellen is living a privileged but very boring life in Boston. She wants marriage and children, but Charles, the man she once thought she'd be marrying, keeps behaving like he's courting her, and never quite proposing. She's closing in on old maid territory, Charles is also paying court to a much younger woman, and Samantha is tired of being treated as a brainless appendage by both Charles and her father. When she sees an ad for a mail order bride from Beau Tibbets, a man in Cypress Springs, Texas, she decides to respond.

Tom Wilson is a deputy federal marshal in Dry Gulch, Texas, but he's been sent to Cypress Springs to fill in for a marshal who is off visiting his wife's family. Tom is happy to get away from Dry Gulch for a month, because he's feeling increasingly harassed by a widow in town who is a very nice lady, but who is determined that he is going to be her second husband.

The Outlaw's Daughter (Marrying a Marshall #3), by Natalie Dean

Kenzo Publishing, November 2018

Ella Jenkins left her outlaw family because she couldn't accept being part of a criminal gang. She wanted a quiet, and law-abiding, life. She settled in Cypress Creek, with Meg, a woman she met who had set out to be a mail-order bride and been unceremoniously stood up by her intended groom. She's working as a seamstress for the local tailor, who is kind, but with Meg's income, together they can just about pay the rent on their cabin and buy food.

Then Meg connects with another mail-order groom.

And Hank Fulton, senior of the three US Marshals in Cypress Creek, knocks on their door and tells her he knows her name is Jenkins, not Jones, and that he wants her to help infiltrate the gang now run by her brother, Ezra.

It's a hard choice for Ella to make. She'd rather forget she was ever a Jenkins, she doesn't want to actively betray her brother, and she does want the Marshals to keep making the region safer.

The Dangers of Love (Marrying a Marshall #2), by Natalie Dean

Kenzo Publishing, October 2018

Greta Fischer is a young German woman, who had few prospects at home, and so agreed to become a mail-order bride in far-away America.

Unfortunately, Daniel Evans turns out to be a domineering bully, who derives great entertainment value from mocking her pronunciation of English words, even though her English is good and her accent perfectly understandable. His mother is also completely under his thumb, though she seems to also share his attitude toward Greta.

And they will be married as soon as their train arrives in Dry Gulch, Texas.

Deputy Marshall Simon Brown, feeling isolated now that his best friend and colleague in Cypress Creek, Texas, has married and is spending all his free time with his wife, is happy to take on the special assignment of accompanying another marshall taking a criminal to Dry Gulch.

It's the same train Greta Fischer and the Evanses are on.

Romance at the Royal Menagerie, by Ruth J. Hartman (author), Julie Hinton (narrator)

Clean Reads, October 2018

Francesca Hartwell loves cats of all kinds, including the big cats, all of them, and luckily for her, her father is the caretaker of big cats in the Tower of London's Royal Menagerie. Ever since her mother ran off to become the mistress of an earl, Francesca has pent most of her time with her father at the menagerie,. More to his distress than his pleasure, she has proved to have a real talent for handling the big cats.

They are absolutely dependent on his income from this job, and the Head Keeper would be very displeased to know that she was entering the cages, so she can only do so after hours.

And then one day she meets John Fairgate, an obviously well-born and wealthy man, visiting the menagerie, and he shares her love of big cats.

He apparently is not titled, and that's a good thing because her father is never going to forgive losing his wife to a titled nobleman. But John Fairgate could be the new donor the menagerie needs to care for the animals and keep her father employed, and he doesn't have a title...

A Cold Winter's Love (Love on the Trails #5), by Natalie Dean

Kenzo Publishing, August 2018

The wagon train is coming closer to the end of the trail, and this includes a stop in Boise, where they hope to leave killers and thieves they've been unhappily carrying with them since events in earlier books. Deputy Marshall Scott Mercer and Lilian Thomas, daughter of the printers, and scouts Bryon Clearwater and Rachel MacIntosh, are engaged in armslength courtships, deeply attracted but painfully aware that they have different expectations of life.

Or do they?

Yes, the MacIntosch clan wants to breed horses, but does Rachel want such a settled life?

This is in many ways the hardest part of the trail, with the Snake River to be crossed, and the mountains, with winter setting in and storms pursuing them.

Lady Josephina's Secrect, by Agnes Forest

Sundance House Publishing, August 2018

Lady Josephina Crawford is well-born, lovely, and intelligent. The last isn't necessarily an advantage at Almack's in the hunt for a husband, but it doesn't need to be a disadvantage, either.

However, she's also a talented, and very popular, author of novels. Not that anyone knows! Her books are published under the name of her brother, Francis, future heir to the father's title of Viscount Whitemore. Francis is very happy to take all the credit, and Josephina has agreed to this because it would certainly be the death of her respectability to be known as an authoress.

Gerard Sheridan, Marquess of Richmond, heir to his father, Duke of Bedfordshire, is in a position he never expected. He was the younger son, planning a career in the church, until his brother died a year ago. Newly out of mourning, he is also newly in need of a wife. Planning to be a clergyman, he had never expected to need a wife.

Cowboy Pride (Wild Wyoming Hearts #3), by Lacy Williams

Lacy Williams, July 2017

This is a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, set in the American West during the pioneer days.

Williams doesn't make the mistake of trying to make it too exact a match. The American West isn't Regency England. There are wealthy ranchers and social-climbing mamas, but there isn't nobility, and a female marshal is certainly an outlier, but not an impossibility.

And Mr. Bennett as a leather goods shop owner is respectably middle class, not beneath notice as merely being "in trade."

The Last Sister's Love (Brides & Twins #5)

Natalie Dean, July 2018

There's just one unmarried sister left in the Yankovich family, Anushka. She's eighteen now, and ready to marry and have her own home--but while her mother wants her to marry Pavel, the baker's son, she wants to join her sisters in Mesquite, Texas.

Meanwhile, in Mesquite, the oldest Turner son, William, is also eighteen, and thinking that next spring, when he turns nineteen, it a good time to get married. He's looking around, and seeing how happy the men are who've married Yandovich sisters.

This story doesn't just bring together two people ready for marriage and willing to take a chance. It also brings together to strong-willed, opinionated older women who had to raise their families alone after the tragic loss of their husbands--Eldora Kennesaw and Wanda Yankovich. It's an interesting conflict for everyone to deal with, especially as all the very independent Yankovich women find themselves fighting the impulse to revert to being daughters again.

A Surprise Love:Mail Order Bride (Brides & Twins #4), by Natalie Dean

Natalie Dean, March 2018

Elzbieta Yankovich, the oldest unmarried Yankovich sister, was cheated of her chance at a marriage away from the Pennsylvania mines, when her sister Kasia got pregnant and their mother sent her to Texas, instead, to spare the family scandal and shame. Very much wanting a family of her own, Elzbieta is discouraged and unhappy, and considering becoming a nun, instead.

Then her sister Bonnie writes to her from Mesquite. Lincoln Duffy, something of a thorn in her side when she first arrived, has turned himself around. He's now the foreman on the Turner ranch, and has fixed up the foreman's cottage to be a comfortable home, even making a good garden for it. He's ready for a wife, and he's impressed by the two Yankovich sisters who have married into the Kennesaw household. He remembers that they have another unmarried sister, the one who was supposed to marry Will Henry, before Kasia was sent in her place.

Elzbieta decides that this is her chance.

The Wrong Bride:A Christmas Mail Order Bride Romance (Brides & Twins #3), by Natalie Dean & Eveline Hart

Natalie Dean, Eveline Hart, December 2017 decide

Encouraged by his brother Zachary's experience in marrying mail-order bride Bonnie Yankovich, Will Henry Kennesaw asks if her sister, Elzbieta, would be willing to come west and marry him. She agrees, and when the great day arrives, he, his brother Zachary, and sister-in-law Bonnie, are in town to meet the stagecoach bringing in...
.
.
.
Bonnieand  Elzbieta's younger sister, Kasia.

Who is pregnant.

Kasia was working as a maid in a wealthy family's home, and was seduced by the son of the house. He promised he'd marry her, but of course his parents fired her and sent their son off the Europe.

Taming the Rancher:Mail Order Bride (Brides & Twins #2), by Natalie Dean

Natalie Dean, September 2017

Bonnie Yankovich, determined not to marry a many who made his living in the dangerous and filthy coal mines, takes the risk of agreeing to be a mail-order bride. She travels from Pittsburgh to Mesquite, Texas to marry Zachary Taylor Kennesaw, a rancher.

When she gets off the stagecoach, she discovers her husband to be, in front of the general store, waiting for her. He has no hat and no shirt, and for the moment no horse, having lost them all in a poker game. But he's handsome and charming, happy to meet her, and not concerned about the losses.

A Soldier's Love (Brides & Twins #1), by Natalie Dean

Natalie Dean, July 2017

Mary O'Hara has grown up on a plantation in what will soon be West Virginia, when the Civil War breaks out. The Turner plantation employs hired workers, not slaves--and the relative lack of slavery in the western part of the state was a big part of why West Virginia split off from Virginia, rather than fight to preserve slavery. John Turner has two sons, and like many families, the Turners divided. Will joined the Confederate Army; James joined the Union Army.

And James tells Mary's father, Liam, about the $500 bonus some rich northerners are paying men to take their places in the Union Army. Liam wants his daughter to be more than just a hired worker, and $500 is a fortune for them, so he goes.

Will and Liam both die in combat. James is captured at Cold Harbor, and sent to the infamous Adersonville POW camp. When the war ends, nothing is heard from him,and he does not return. John Turner redoes his will; all his staff assume he has left the plantation to one or both of his second cousins, the only remaining Turners.