Our 2012 RT Reviewers Choice Best Book Award Winners

Please join us in congratulating our Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Best Book Award winners.

For Love Inspired Contemporary, our winner is  

A Home for Hannah by Patricia Davids.

Yearning to find a meaningful life in the outside world, nurse Miriam Kaufman strayed far from her Amish community. She also needed distance from Nick Bradley, the cop who had caused her so much pain. Back in Hope Springs to care for her ailing mother, Miriam needs Nick, now sheriff, to find the mother of the baby abandoned on her porch. Nick is as wary of Miriam's intentions as she is of facing their past. Can two wounded hearts overcome their history?

Awarded 4.5 stars by RT reviewer Leslie L. McKee, (click for full review)

"Davis’ deep understanding of Amish culture is evident in the compassionate characters and beautiful descriptions that enliven her heartwarming story."

Click here to view more of Patricia Davids' books

For Love Inspired Historical, our winner is  

Handpicked Husband by Winnie Griggs 

Can she drive away not one, but three suitors?

Free-spirited photographer Regina Nash is ready to try. But unless she marries one of the gentlemen her grandfather has sent for her inspection, she'll lose custody of her nephew. So she must persuade them—and Adam Barr, her grandfather's envoy—that she'd make a thoroughly unsuitable wife.

Adam isn't convinced. Regina might be unconventional, but she has wit, spirit and warmth. His job was to make sure Regina chose from the men he escorted to Texas—not to marry her himself! Can they overcome the secrets in her past, and the shadows in his, to find a perfect future together?


Awarded 4.5 stars by RT Reviewer Susan Mobley (click link for full review)

"the novel successfully kicks off the Texas Grooms series, introducing complex, sympathetic characters with interesting pasts."

Click here to view more of Winnie Griggs' Books

 For Love Inspired Suspense our winner is 

Critical Condition by Sandra Orchard 

 

EVERYONE’S AT RISK There’s a murderer in the hospital, and nurse Tara Peterson is determined to prove it. With mysterious deaths in the cancer ward, anyone could be next. But no one wants to believe her…except for undercover agent Zach Davis. The murderer wants Tara’s suspicions silenced, permanently. To protect Tara, Zach lets her in on his secret, and unwittingly into his heart. Tara and her three-year-old daughter are like the family he lost years before. Zach will risk everything to keep them safe, no matter the cost.

Awarded 4.5 stars by RT reviewer Leslee McKee (click link for full review)

"Well-developed characters and fast-paced action will keep readers fully engaged in this wonderful tribute to spouses struggling with a loved one’s illness."

Click here to view more of Sandra Orchard's Books

When Fiction Meets Life

Sandra Orchard here, jumping in for Roxanne Rustand who is enjoying a cruise with her husband. Can you imagine? Choosing that over being here today?! ~grin~

Okay, she's not cruising Alaska, but I couldn't resist sharing a pic from the cruise I took this past summer, but I digress...

I've had a few discussions with people lately about reading fiction. Some say they don't bother because if they're going to take the time to read, they want to read something meatier, something they'll learn something from.

I personally find that I learn a lot through fiction. Sometimes I learn about a historical time period I'm unfamiliar with. Or I learn about an occupation. Or best of all, I gain a deeper understanding of the valleys some are walking through, or gain hope and inspiration to traverse my own valleys.

Of course, as a writer, I often find myself working through many of those things as the story I'm writing unfolds, but none so acutely as my current book, Critical Condition, which as you might guess from the title involves some life and death situations. Writing it helped me work through my grief over the loss of a dear friend.

But with its release, I've found myself challenged again and again by the same questions the heroine asks in the book.

Last month a young child in our church drowned. Last night a friend's teenage son died of head injuries after being hit by a car while walking. In both cases, others lived--both spiritually, in giving their hearts over to God, and physically, in being organ recipients--as a result of their deaths, but we still grieve deeply.

For me, seeing characters work through the kind of tragic situations we never want to experience often gives me insight and inspiration beyond any non-fiction book I'd pick up, save for God's word.

In Ezekial 15:8, God tells Ezekial with regard to the disasters that will come, "You will be consoled when you see their conduct and their actions, for you will know that I have done nothing in it without cause."

We can't see the big picture from our vantage point, but we trust in a God who loves us and is merciful and patient and who does not want to see anyone perish. Amen?

Your Turn: How have you learned or been inspired by a fiction book?

Critical Condition Interview

Today we're welcoming Tara Peterson, the heroine of Critical Condition, written by Sandra Orchard, an October 2012 release by Love Inspired Suspense. 

Wow, you've just had quite an adventure. 

  

1.    Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be in the midst of such suspense. 

I am a nurse at Miller’s Bay Memorial Hospital, and while answering a call bell, I found the patient seizing and her husband collapsed on the floor. Someone pushed me from behind and ran out of the room. I summoned help, and as medical personnel struggled to save my patient, I struggled to save her husband. We all failed, but the man’s last words haunted me. “You have to stop the killer.” I went to the police and they sent Zach Davis to work undercover in the hospital.

2.    Tell us a bit about him.  What was your first impression?  When did you know it was love? 

The first time I met him, he didn’t look so good, like he might faint. Some people get that way when visiting the hospital. My heart went out to him, but then after I gave him a glass of juice to help bring back his color, he really looked at me. Looked at me as if he knew me. As if… he could see right to my soul. And he was wonderful with my three-year-old, Suzie. She took to him instantly. She calls him Dak. A tiny part of me probably loved him from the moment he took an interest in Suzie, something her father had never done.

But the day Zach folded me in his arms after we’d chased a prowler from the house, I knew. I wasn’t used to having someone in the middle of a crisis focus on my wellbeing. And I was tired of fighting. Fighting to stay out of a murderer’s sights. Fighting to protect my daughter, and my job. Fighting my attraction to Zach.

    

3.    What strengths/skills do you have?  What is your greatest weakness? 

In the words of my sister, I’m smart, creative and have more energy than anyone she knows. I can whip up a delicious five-course meal without breaking a sweat. But I can’t balance a checkbook to save my life.

         

4.    What scares you? 

My daughter getting sick or hurt. Maybe because I’m a nurse, I always fear the worse. If she gets a fever, I fear it’s meningitis. If she gets a cough, I fear she has strep. If a guy starts wanting to hang out with us, I fear Suzie’s going to get too attached and have her heart broken when he walks away.

      

5.    If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d try to see myself the way God sees me, the way Zach sees me, as loved and cherished and worthy.

6.    Where are you in your faith at the start of your story? 

I have doubts about God. I take my daughter to Sunday School, and I want to believe there is something better after we die, but being a nurse I see a lot of prayers go unanswered. I didn’t blame God. Most of the time, I blamed myself for the bad things in my life.

    

7.    Where are you in your faith at the end of the story?

Zach helps me see that just because God doesn’t give me, or my patients, the answers we want, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t care or isn’t listening. His answer may simply be no, or not now. I also learned to stop blaming myself for things that weren’t my fault.

8.    You've got a scripture at the beginning of the story.  Tell us why this scripture is significant.

Proverbs 4:18 “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” This verse is special to me, because it reminds me that I’m a work in progress, and that’s okay. I’m not perfect, nowhere near. But I’m on the path God wants me to be on, and with each step I take, the love and hope he pours into my life shines ever brighter.  

    

9.    If you could be a dessert what would you be and why?

Cake—the special chocolate cake that Gran used to invite me to make with her as a child. She fostered my love of cooking and the smell of that cake always reminds me of her. She was the sweetest person I’ve ever known, accepted me just as I am.

Critical Condition Featured Book by Sandra Orchard

EVERYONE’S AT RISK There’s a murderer in the hospital, and nurse Tara Peterson is determined to prove it. With mysterious deaths in the cancer ward, anyone could be next. But no one wants to believe her…except for undercover agent Zach Davis. The murderer wants Tara’s suspicions silenced, permanently. To protect Tara, Zach lets her in on his secret, and unwittingly into his heart. Tara and her three-year-old daughter are like the family he lost years before. Zach will risk everything to keep them safe, no matter the cost.

Why I Love Wounded Heroes

Hi Everyone, Sandra Orchard here.

And...I'm soooo excited, because Critical Condition, the third book in my Undercover Cops series, releases today!

I have been waiting forever to tell Zach's story. He was the sidekick of the hero in my first book, and quickly took over my heart.

What I figured out by the end of that first book, but only hinted at to my readers was that Zach was a widower.

Here's the exchange in the final chapter of Deep Cover where Zach tries to talk some sense into his thick-headed partner:

    “Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once. A love like Ginny’s comes around once in a lifetime, and you’d better cling to it with everything you’ve got, because one day you’re going to wake up and realize God wanted to give you so much more than you were willing to let Him. And you threw it away.”

   “It’s easy to dispense advice when it’s somebody else’s life on the line,” Rick snapped. “Have you ever even had a serious relationship?”

   Zach sucked in a breath, as if he’d been punched in the gut. As if maybe he knew what he was talking about … from experience.

I love wounded heroes, the kind who resist love, not because they've been burned by it, but because they've experienced love in all its sweetness, endured its loss, and can't imagine being twice blessed.

I love them because they recognize that love is a gift to be cherished. And because they've proven that they're in for the long haul no matter what. 

 In the opening of Critical Condition, Zach finds himself working undercover as an IT consultant in the last place he wants to be. Here:

He followed Barb into the happy hum of staff sharing cake and juice with patients—smiling patients, clothed in bathrobes and brightly colored caps. The kind of caps that masked chemo-razed hair.

  His stomach knotted into a hard, tight ball.

  He’d held his palm to spurting bullet wounds, wrestled drug-crazed addicts, immobilized the fractured bones of abused wives. But not one of those encounters had hit him like this, with this unnerving sense that if he looked one of these patients in the eyes, his grip on his emotions would completely unravel. 

 Thanks to the suspicions of a nurse on the cancer ward, Josh has been tasked with figuring out if a sudden rash of inexplicable deaths are the work of a killer. To protect Tara, Zach lets her in on his secret, and unwittingly into his heart. She and her three-year-old daughter are like the family he lost years before. And Zach will risk everything to keep them safe.

Ahh, I love him. He has flaws as every good hero must, but he cherishes the women he loves. And he doesn't back down from calling other men to task when they don't, as he did with one no-good ex-husband: 

"You vowed to honor and protect her. Cherish her. Do you even know the meaning of the word?"

And in case you were wondering, besides the romance, the story has an "edge of your seat" mystery, too... at least that's how one book club member described it on my FB page. ~grin~ 

I hope you'll agree!!

Your Turn: What's your favorite kind of hero?


P.S. If you'd like to follow a side discussion about alternative treatments, inspired by the suspense plot in Critical Condition, please "like" my Facebook Page or visit my Conversations About Characters blog, where I'm inviting readers to share favorite remedies all month.