Contemporary Romance: Solo Tu: Only You by Narelle Atkins — Can two high-school teachers, a girl from Tuscany and a boy from Australia, risk everything for love? (Contemporary Romance, Independently Published) The Theory of Happily Ever After by Kristin Billerbeck — According to Dr. Maggie Maguire, happiness is serious–serious science, that is. But science can’t always account for life’s anomalies, like why her fiancé dumped her for a silk-scarf acrobat and how the breakup sent Maggie spiraling into an extended ice cream-fueled chick flick binge. Concerned that she might never pull herself out of this nosedive, Maggie’s friends book her as a speaker on a “New Year, New You” cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. Maggie wonders if she’s qualified to teach others about happiness when she can’t muster up any for herself. But when a handsome stranger on board insists that smart women can’t ever be happy, Maggie sets out to prove him wrong. Along the way she may discover that happiness has far less to do with the head than with the heart. (Contemporary Romance, Revell – A Division of Baker Publishing Group) Hometown Reunion by Lisa Carter — Widowed former Green Beret Jaxon Pruitt comes home to…

  The beach is my happy place. What’s not to like about the beauty and peace of a lovely beach? For me, visiting the beach is a real memory fest. I grew up playing on one, have always lived around water. Before I was even born (and let me tell you, that was a loooong time ago), my parents invested in land on a small island across from Seattle. Before I came along, the gang would pile into an old whaling boat my dad had found somewhere, take it through the Seattle locks (terrifying the people with pretty boats, who didn’t want their babies scratched) and head across Puget Sound to the island. Back then it was all trees, strawberry farms and a few summer cabins. We added to the cabin population by one and became summer folk. We owned high bank property, which meant we eventually needed to quit borrowing my uncle’s stairs and build our own to get to the beach. My dad hired a man to bulldoze a path partway. By that time I was around, a scrawny little girl fascinated by the whole process. The final product looked like a canyon to me and I dubbed…