Greetings Readers…..

Happy New Year! And isn’t spring just around the corner? I’m so ready. Winter means skiing, ice-skating, sled-riding and building snowmen. Although I occasionally partake in those activities, I greatly prefer sipping a cup of tea or cocoa by the fire with a good book. However, I do enjoy walking in the woods after it snows. I’m amazed by the various footprints of those sharing our planet who attempt to go unseen.

This fall I was able to spend time on the Georgia coast, putting the finishing touches on my New Beginnings series…and cooking up some tasty plot twists for stories to come. With this three-book series, I follow three sisters who leave Lancaster County behind and start new lives in smaller, more remote settlements. I’ve been studying the exodus of Amish from PA and OH to areas where they can afford to buy land. My first in the series, Living in Harmony, was set in upstate Maine in an ultra-conservative district. Living in Harmony won the 2012 Lime Award for Excellence in Amish Fiction.

The second of the series, Love Comes to Paradise, is set in central Missouri. During autumn of 2011, I travelled to Randolph, Audrain, and Boone Counties, MO to research the Old Order Amish living in this area. Although the residents were friendly, these communities were the most reclusive of any I’ve ever travelled to. Love Comes to Paradise will surprise you in more ways than one. Please check out the photos I took during my trip. But at the heart of my story, is Nora King, who searches for romance halfway across the country and discovers much more than she bargained for.

I hope you’ll look for Love Comes to Paradise, arriving in stores within days.  If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for my newsletter which I send out twice a year. To celebrate my new book, I will be giving away 10 free copies of Love Comes to Paradise on March 15^th to newsletter subscribers. I wish all my cherished readers a cozy winter and a joyous spring.  Can’t you tell already that the days are growing longer?

Mary