The Great November Book Release Re-Boot: Christmas at Winterbourne

Christmas at Winterbourne by Jen Silver was perhaps a bit more topical as a holiday book when it was released back in November. But if you like contemporary lesbian romance with large complex casts, check it out! You can get a taste of the book at the Book Clips series of The Lesbian Talk Show podcast. (Disclaimer: my own Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is one of the Lesbian Talk Show segments!)

The Christmas festivities for the guests booked into Winterbourne House have all the goings-on of a traditional holiday. The only difference is that this guesthouse is run by lesbians, for lesbians.

When the guests arrive, tensions are already simmering between the house's owner Wilma (Wil) and very pregnant partner, Gabriella. Wil has a lot on her plate...ensuring the smooth running of the events, looking after all the guests, including her in-laws and business partners. What she hasn't planned for is a ghost from Christmas past.

Wil inherited Winterbourne from her adopted mother, Kim Russell, author of a series of successful lesbian novels. Most of the guests who stay, do so because they are fans of the author.

One guest, Sally Hunter, is on a mission to write Kim's official biography. She meets with resistance from the people at the house she tries to interview, stirring up memories from those who knew the reclusive writer well.

For a bit of extra spice to the festivities, add in an unexpected snowstorm, a disappearing guest, and an imminent birth. Join the guests and staff at Winterbourne for a Christmas you'll not soon forget.

And talk about large complex casts, the third Alpennia novel, Mother of Souls, braids together the points of view of five characters: Serafina Talarico, a frustrated thaumaturgist from an Italian/Ethiopian family who seeks a teacher in...Margerit Sovitre, appointed thaumaturgist to the princess of Alpennia, who is struggling to understand the seeming curse looming over the land but finds the rock of her existence in...Barbara, Baroness Saveze, tackling the challenges of adding to her estates and responsibilities while getting further enmeshed in Alpennian politics...whose cousin Antuniet Chazillen has decided to ensure her legacy with a new and different alchemical project to the dismay of her lover...Jeanne, Vicomtesse de Cherdilac, who is finding a new vocation in training Antuniet's apprentice as a salonniere and is expanding her patronage of overlooked women artists like...Luzie Valorin, a widowed music teacher who has an ambition to write an opera on the life of the medieval philosopher Tanfrit, and who finds an unexpected collaborator in her tenant...Serafina Talarico!