Heart of Stone

January 4, 2010
Landis, inspirational fiction author of more than 20 novels, offers readers who value gentle love stories this first title in the Irish Angels series. Laura Foster (aka Lovie Lane), wealthy widowed owner of a refined boardinghouse in Glory, Tex., is running from her tainted past and ruined childhood in a tale set in the 1870s. Laura does everything in her power to overcome the odds and create a life free of shame and abuse. Partly succeeding, she is thrown off-kilter when handsome Rev. Brand McCormick, a widower, takes a romantic interest in her. Laura knows with dead certainty that Brand would never come calling if he knew the truth of her past, so she rebuffs his attention at every turn. But the good reverend just won’t be put off. Both characters have much to reveal that will test their love, faith, and loyalty to one another. Landis’s writing is crisp and neatly presented; however, much of the story is too formulaic for discerning genre readers.

March 1, 2010
Laura Foster, supposedly a respectable widow running an upscale boarding house for women and families in Glory, Texas, has a hidden, shady past. As a 10-year-old orphan, she was sold to a New Orleans brothel. So when Brand McCormick, a widowed preacher with two young children, starts courting her, she shuns his advances, feeling unworthy and afraid of the implications for him if her past was discovered. But Brand has his own checkered history, which is revealed when a young man who is part Indian shows up in the middle of a church service and accuses Brand of abandoning his pregnant mother 18 years earlier. When someone from her disreputable past turns up, Laura flees and finds solace in the Bible. This is the first installment in Landis Irish Angels series, but it is set in the same town as The Accidental Lawman (2009) and shares some characters. A heartwarming western tale of love and redemption, it will delight readers who enjoy moral, feel-good romances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)