Once big-city pastry chef Rosaleen Plath saw the corner lot for sale in Granville, Ohio, she knew she’d found the site of her future bakery. Desperate for a change of pace, she took the plunge and relocated to the small, New England style town. With the locals slow to warm up to newcomers, For Cake’s Sake is dead in the water. However, when she finds out about the annual Pumpkin Queen baking competition, she sees a golden opportunity to break the ice. Master carpenter and only child Alaric Bulley is pulled into his mother’s world of pies and baked goods when she breaks her foot a few weeks before the Pumpkin Queen competition. As reigning champion, she’s determined to keep the trophy in the family. Barking orders like a drill sergeant, she whips him into shape as she directs him in the kitchen. When he realizes his top competition is the woman he’s falling in love with, things get complicated. Can they get over this hurdle, or is it a recipe for disaster?

The last thing Clio Monell expected herself to be doing fresh out of college was slinging giant turkey legs at the Gourd County Ren Faire. But when her father is forced into early retirement as her baby brother starts his college career, and her museum internship ends without a job, the life she’s known comes to an end. Bunking down with her parents and struggling with disillusions, she finds solace and hope in a new world full of cosplay, magic, and Vikings. One particular golden-haired Viking to be exact. Norway transplant and Medieval Studies expert Thordis Olsen left Norway to take a job as a professor and lead chair in their historical department of the local college. Missing the culture of his people and the Viking lifestyle he indulged in heavily, he found kindred souls at the GCRF. Trying to adapt and carve out a new life, he longs to find the love that eluded him in his own country. Can two people from different places be each other’s missing pieces?