The MacBrides

Series · 5 books · 2013-2017

By Deborah Smith

Books in series

The Biscuit Witch

2013

This time, the MacBrides are home to stay. The Biscuit Witch A Crossroads Café Novella Book One of The MacBrides Dear Dr. Firth: I know you are in your cups at this time, drinking and sleeping under trees, but I have some experience rehabilitating lost souls in that regard, and so I am enclosing a box of my biscuits and a cold-wrapped container of cream gravy for dessert. Please eat and write back. We need a veterinarian of your gumption here in the Crossroads Cove of Jefferson County. —Delta Whittlespoon, proprietress of The Crossroads Café Biscuit witches, Mama called them. She’d heard the term as a girl. She’d inherited that talent. My mother could cast spells on total strangers simply by setting a plate of her biscuits in front of them. –Tal MacBride Welcome back to the Crossroads Cove where new loves, old feuds, and poignant mysteries will challenge siblings Tal, Gabby, and Gus MacBride to fight for the home they lost and to discover just how important their family once was, and still is, to the proud people of the Appalachian highlands. Tallulah MacBride hasn’t been back to North Carolina since their parents’ tragic deaths, twenty years ago. But now, Tal heads to cousin Delta Whittlespoon’s famous Crossroads Café in the mountains above Asheville, hoping to find a safe hiding place for her young daughter, Eve. What she finds is Cousin Delta gone, the café in a biscuit crisis, and a Scotsman, who refuses to believe she’s passing through instead of “running from.” He believes she needs a knight in shining flannel. When a pair of sinister private eyes show up, Tal’s troubles are just beginning. For Tal’s brother and sister—Gabby, the Pickle Queen, and Gus, the Kitchen Charmer—the next part of the journey will lead down forgotten roads and into beautiful but haunted legacies.

The Pickle Queen

2013

Pickles are mentioned in the Bible. Cleopatra ate them as a beauty regimen. Shakespeare put them in his plays. Mason designed jars for bottling them. So did Ball. Did Mason and Ball fight over the King of the Pickle Jars title? I don't know. I did know this much: I used pickles to keep fear, pride, and my love of Jay Wakefield behind a door I would not risk opening again. Even now. Wakefields take what they want. MacBrides never surrender. For nearly a hundred years, a battle of wills between these two deeply-rooted Appalachian families has ended in defeat and heartache-most often, for MacBrides. Now the MacBride name is barely more than a legend, and it's up to Gabby MacBride to deal with the pain of her childhood memories and also the challenge of a MacBride legacy she's only beginning to understand. That will mean coming to terms with her bittersweet love for Jay Wakefield, the lonely rich boy who became her soul mate when they were kids, before the dark demands of his own legacy forced him to betray her.

#2.5

The Yarn Spinner

A Crossroads Café Short Story

2014

A Crossroads Café Short Story 27 pages long She's destined to love Gus MacBride—if she survives her first year in the Crossroads Cove. A thread of hope is all she needs. Damaged, confused, alone. Cathy Deen Mitternich recognizes her old self in the fragile survivor huddled in the sheep barn's storage room at Rainbow Goddess Farm. Former art teacher Lucy Parmenter may be beyond even the tough-love magic of the farm, a live-in counseling center for abused women. Afraid to set a foot outside, drugged on medication, and filled with despair, Lucy needs the big biscuit magic of the Crossroad Café's Delta Whittlespoon. Together, Cathy and Delta search for a lifeline that represents Lucy's best hope of holding on. Their search ends in Lucy's new home at the barn. When Lucy discovers the magic there, neither she nor Cathy will ever be the same. Deborah Smith is the author of The Crossroads Café, chosen as a Top Five Romance of 2006 by Library Journal, a Number One bestseller at Kindle, and a bestseller at the Wall Street Journal. Her bestselling Crossroad Café Novellas include The Biscuit Witch and The Pickle Queen. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of A Place To Call Home.

#2.6

The Apple Pie Knights

A Crossroads Café Short Story

2014

Military men have a special place in Lucy Parmenter's tortured heart. For the past few months, Army Captain Gus MacBride, stationed in Afghanistan, has transformed her lonely life at a North Carolina refuge for abused women and their children. The texts, emails, and phone calls between him and Lucy bubble with restrained heat; his sisters (Pickle Queen Gabby and Biscuit Witch Tal) have let on that Lucy has a painful history, and he romances her gently. When several of her sheep show up on a freezing January morning with full-body mohawks, Lucy's psychic "wooly clairvoyance" says the wool thieves are hiding in nearby woods owned by the MacBrides, and that Tal knows all about them. She confesses: they're veterans—men, women, and one service dog—suffering from PTSD, suspicious and jumpy. She's taken them to heart and won their trust with apple pies. Lucy struggles with her fear of strangers while her heart is drawn to people so much like herself. When word of other minor thefts start to cause talk around the Crossroads Cove, Lucy has to get involved. When Gus tells her he's coming home on leave soon, she realizes her challenges are just beginning.

The Kitchen Charmer

2017

The battle is on their doorstep and in their souls. These old mountains are smart, Lucy. They’re alive. They can be gentle like mamas; oh, sure, they’ll croon and they’ll kiss you and they’ll whisper while you sleep, and you’ll learn what all the old rocks are saying, all these ancient ghosts, all their starshine wisdom. But these old mountains, sometimes they know you can’t hear them any other way but to get smacked up along the head. You watch out, Lucy P, for you got the Charm, like us Netties do. You’re a guardian of these mountains, and they’re a guardian of you. They will warn you any how they have to. They will slap the near life out of a Charmer. They’re doing it to make you and Gus listen. To make you ready. Delta Whittlespoon, the legendary biscuit maker and owner of The Crossroads Café, tried to warn Lucy Parmenter and Gus MacBride. Even their mystical North Carolina mountains can’t block the turmoil of the outside world. As fear and ignorance threaten their community and everyone they love, the star-crossed couple must overcome brutal challenges and personal demons to forge an alliance that may be the only hope of Good triumphing over Evil. Deborah Smith is the New York Times and No. 1 Kindle bestselling author of The Crossroads Café series. Library Journal named The Crossroads Café a top five romance novel of the year.

Author

Deborah Smith

Author · 41 books

aka Jackie Leigh aka Della Stone aka Leigh Bridger Bestselling Author Co-founder, co-publisher Vice-president, Editor in Chief BelleBooks, Memphis, TN Deborah Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of A Place to Call Home, and the No. 1 Kindle Bestseller The Crossroads Cafe, A Gentle Rain and other acclaimed romantic novels portraying life and love in the modern Appalachian South. A native Georgian, Deborah is a former newspaper editor who turned to novel-writing with great success. With more than 35 romance, women's fiction and fantasy novels to her credit, Deborah's books have sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Among her honors is a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times Magazine and a nomination for the prestigious Townsend Literary Award. In 2003 Disney optioned Sweet Hush for film. In 2008 A Gentle Rain was a finalist in Romance Writers of America's RITA awards. For the past fifteen years Deborah has partnered with Debra Dixon to run BelleBooks, a small press originally known for southern fiction, including the Mossy Creek Hometown Series and the Sweet Tea story collections. As editor, she has worked on projects as diverse as the nonfiction Bra Talk book by three-time Oprah Winfrey guest Susan Nethero, and the In My Dreams novella by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen. In 2008 BelleBooks launched Bell Bridge Books, an imprint with a focus on fantasy novels and now expanded to include multi-genre fiction—mystery, suspense, thrillers, women's fiction, nonfiction and other. In 2013 BelleBooks acquired the late Linda Kichline's paranormal romance press, ImaJinn Books, and hired legendary editor Brenda Chin, formerly of Harlequin Books, as editorial director. Chin will expand the imprint to cover a diverse mix of all romance types. Deborah's newest books are the Crossroads Cafe novellas: THE BISCUIT WITCH, THE PICKLE QUEEN, THE YARN SPINNER, and THE KITCHEN CHARMER (2014). She released a mini-short story, SAVING JONQUILS, in March 2014. A sexy romantic novella, A HARD MAN TO FIND, is scheduled for later in the month.