Happy August! I’m back from my summer blogging break earlier than usual because I have a new book out next week.

A Christmas Proposal, next in my Rose Warner, Second World War British home front series, is out August 25 in North America and 27 August in the UK.

While second in my Teacher Evacuees series, A Christmas Proposal also stands alone.

And since the story takes place between September 1940 and March 1941, while filled with wartime festive cheer, it’s not solely a Christmas book.

Instead, it follows my fictional evacuated teachers and their pupils through several seasons, including the Blitz, the intense aerial bombing campaign Nazi Germany launched against Britain which also began in September 1940.

Senior teacher Beatrice Wentworth lost everything in the Great War – her brothers, her fiancé, her way of life. Will this new war bring back long-buried feelings? Or will it give her unexpected hope?

Advance readers say A Christmas Proposal has ‘gripping intensity’ with ‘tension, romance and a sense of togetherness.’ It also has ‘heart-stopping moments …’lots of great storylines’ and is ‘beautifully written.’

If you don’t usually read historical women’s/saga fiction or wartime stories, I promise that, like my Jen Gilroy U.S. small-town contemporaries, my Rose Warner English village stories are still heartwarming and uplifting with sweet romance, nosy neighbours and relationships with family and friends.

Some of the things in A Christmas Proposal I think you’ll enjoy:

In her early forties, Beatrice is a more mature heroine. Having loved and lost years before, she fears risking her heart again.

Gentle, kind, upstanding and brave, David Stanley, the new doctor at the local military convalescent hospital, is one of the loveliest heroes I’ve ever written. Like Beatrice, he’s also loved and lost so tries to heal others since he can’t heal himself.

The friendship between my three teachers, Victoria, Beatrice and Nell, grows as they face everyday school life and wartime hardship together. From a school inspector’s visit which doesn’t go as planned, to a Christmas nativity play drawing on a funny incident from my own life, in true ‘Blitz spirit’ the teachers ‘keep calm and carry on.’

Ruby, a recently evacuated young Londoner, joins Beatrice’s class and might just steal her heart. She certainly stole mine and became a much more important character than I first imagined.

Morale-boosting dances, W.I. meetings, bomb scares and more…Life in my fictional village of Hazelbury is never dull.

How many dishes could you make with carrots? And what would you do if, on an ordinary afternoon, you came face-to-face with someone who’s supposedly your mortal enemy?

Available in paperback, e-book and audio, find out more and pre-order A Christmas Proposal here. 

In the UK, you can also order paperbacks from Waterstone’s and many independent bookshops or make a library request.

If you haven’t yet started the series, get The Teacher Evacuees (currently only £1.99 on UK Kindle) here.

And for wartime recipes (other treats and monthly updates about my life and writing), sign up for my reader newsletter here.