For readers who enjoy clean women's fiction about small towns, new chapters, and later-in-life romance.
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A small-town librarian, a new neighbor from Colorado, and the brightest Christmas display in the Poconos.
Penny McLauchlin runs the library from a former bank building where the vault is now a reading room. She knows which cart squeaks, which patron wants company rather than a book, and which of the atrium plants needs turning toward the light. What she has stopped knowing is what she wants.
Then a colleague slides a listing for Regional Library Director across her desk — the kind Penny has scrolled past for years — and the thought arrives fully formed: I could.
She applies. And then the quiet season she thought lay ahead turns out to be anything but.
Her sister Jackie moves in. Her daughter is coming home for Christmas with a guest. And Nigel Blake, her new neighbor, has just plugged in a holiday display visible from Mars.
By December, Penny's street is the brightest one — and the woman who never wanted anything to change has a job interview and is embroiled in a Christmas lights battle that has drawn spectators from across town.
This book is for every woman who has looked around a good life and still wondered whether this was all of it. Winter Light is about wanting things at 55, reaching without wrecking anything, and discovering that contentment isn't the same as closing the door. Come to Blue Spruce Hills for warm friendships, a Pennsylvania mountain town under snow, a sister who arrives like weather, and a neighbor whose Christmas lights are an argument for joy.
Trope List
***
A small-town librarian, a new neighbor from Colorado, and the brightest Christmas display in the Poconos.
Penny McLauchlin runs the library from a former bank building where the vault is now a reading room. She knows which cart squeaks, which patron wants company rather than a book, and which of the atrium plants needs turning toward the light. What she has stopped knowing is what she wants.
Then a colleague slides a listing for Regional Library Director across her desk — the kind Penny has scrolled past for years — and the thought arrives fully formed: I could.
She applies. And then the quiet season she thought lay ahead turns out to be anything but.
Her sister Jackie moves in. Her daughter is coming home for Christmas with a guest. And Nigel Blake, her new neighbor, has just plugged in a holiday display visible from Mars.
By December, Penny's street is the brightest one — and the woman who never wanted anything to change has a job interview and is embroiled in a Christmas lights battle that has drawn spectators from across town.
This book is for every woman who has looked around a good life and still wondered whether this was all of it. Winter Light is about wanting things at 55, reaching without wrecking anything, and discovering that contentment isn't the same as closing the door. Come to Blue Spruce Hills for warm friendships, a Pennsylvania mountain town under snow, a sister who arrives like weather, and a neighbor whose Christmas lights are an argument for joy.
Trope List
- Finding yourself at 55
Midlife women's fiction
Small-town Christmas
Widow opens heart to love again
Neighbors to something more
Sister returns home
Female friendship group
Clean
Low angst
What you can expect:
Heat: clean and wholesome
Tone: cozy women's fiction, warm and lightly funny
Series: A Blue Spruce Hills Novella, interconnected standalone
POV: third person, past tense, single POV
Content Notes: reference to past spousal loss (off page, years earlier); no violence; no swearing
Comps: Debbie Macomber, Nancy Thayer, Sheila Roberts
Welcome to Blue Spruce Hills: A mountain town that reinvented itself once already and knows something about new chapters. Come for snow, tea, good friends, poetry night at the Tea House, and a holiday season worth remembering.
Genre: General Fiction