Anthologies – LDS Publisher

A Timeless Romance: Spring Vacation Collection

Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Spring Vacation Collection. Readers will love this collection of six sweet contemporary romance novellas, centered on a Spring Vacation, all with one thing in common: Romance.

In Moonlight Kiss, a delightful story by Josi S. Kilpack, Sarah is looking forward to the company retreat, namely because she’ll finally meet Clint—the man she’s been Instant Messaging for a few months. As a single mom, Sarah gets out . . . well, never. So adding vacation days onto the retreat so she can spend time with Clint is daring, yet exciting. She just hopes that the suave on-line Clint will live up to the man she hopes to share her heart with.

In Annette Lyon’s charming novella, Chasing Tess, Tess had been patiently waiting through three years of law school for James to pop the question. The night has finally arrived—at his graduation party. But his big announcement turns out to be completely unexpected . . . and devastating. Tess flees the party, promising herself she’ll never let herself waste time on James again. But as she makes a desperate cross-country drive, James makes his own plans on how to win her back.

Dancing at the Flea Market is a sweet romance by Heather Justesen. Mara, fresh out of the cold North Dakota tundra, spends her spring break in Texas with close friend, Anna. When the two women run into Carter, an impatient man with a painful past, it takes hearing Mara’s stunning voice at the local Karaoke club to thaw his heart. But as Mara gets to know Carter, she has to decide if the distance between their lives and homes is worth trying to bridge.

In Sarah M. Eden’s captivating novella, The Best Laid Plans, Madison gives up a vacation to Cancún with her office friends to return home and babysit her mother, who is in another sketchy relationship. The only problem with returning home is running into Derek, her ex-boyfriend who she decided to break up with before he could break up with her—Madison believes in always being one step ahead. When Derek teams up with Madison to investigate whether her mother is dating the right guy, Madison has a hard time ignoring what her heart is telling her about giving Derek another chance.

Picture Perfect, an exciting story by Heather B. Moore, follows Gemma who has never done anything out of the ordinary, until her boyfriend Randy starts to ignore her. But even cutting and dyeing her hair doesn’t get his attention. She decides to join her old high school friends for spring vacation, only to be faced with Drew, her best friend who suddenly seems interested in her as more than a friend. Gemma must determine if her heart is on the rebound or if it’s finally met its true match.

In Aubrey Mace’s enchanting romance, The Science of Sentiment, Rosie will do anything to forget Kevin, his completely perfect kisses, and the fact that he dumped her. When she arrives at her grandfather’s mountain cabin for a spring getaway, she discovers her worst nightmare—Kevin has been invited to stay the weekend too. Since there is only room for one in such a small space, Rosie is determined to kick Kevin out. But Kevin has other plans . . . which might include a reminder of why he’s the perfect kisser.

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Title: Spring Vacation (A Timeless Romance Anthology)

Author: Heather B. Moore, Aubrey Mace, Heather Justesen, Sarah M. Eden, Josi S. Kilpack, Annette Lyon

Publisher: Mirror Press

Release Date: January 31, 2013

ASIN: B00B7TN8IE

Size: 260 pages, ebook

Genre: Contemporary Romance

A Timeless Romance Series: Winter Collection

Dominant Traits by Eric Freeze

Enslaved by their own fears, the characters in this riveting collection are straining for redemption. Their choices reflect the well-worn patterns we carve for ourselves through our idiosyncrasies—our dominant traits.

A basketball coach teaches moral ambiguity; a divorce clutches at sanity; a mother struggles with her son’s paternity; a childless man regrets his youthful onanism.

Through their shared experiences these tangible characters undergo the sad, hilarious search for wholeness and security.

Set in the stark isolated landscape of Southern Alberta, Eric Freeze’s debut collection is a deftly-crafted study of desperate mortals careening through their liminal moments, grasping for certainty.

Title: Dominant Traits: Stories

Author: Eric Freeze

Publisher: Dufour Editions

Release Date: March 15, 2012

ISBN: 978-0802313508

Size: 192 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, softcover

Genre: Short story collection; literary fiction

Short story collections are not eligible for Whitney awards.

Tell Me Who I Am: Stories of Faith, Family, and Identity by DeNae Handy, et al

Tell Me Who I Am is a collection of stories and essays depicting everyday life for sixteen LDS writers. Told with humor and sensitivity, these stories offer a glimpse into a religious culture that is alternately criticized, admired, and misunderstood. While dogma may define a people, it’s individual stories that ultimately tell us who we are.

Contributing writers: Becca Wilhite; Stephanie Sorensen; Luisa Perkins; Jana Winters Parkin; Annette Lyon; Patrick Livingston; Melanie Jacobson; DeNae Handy; Debbie Frampton; Ken Craig; Christopher Clark; Karen Burton; Gideon Burton; Michelle Budge; Joshua Bingham; Cari Banning.

Cover art, illustrations, and design by award-winning artist Jana Winters Parkin.

Title: Tell Me Who I Am: Stories of Faith, Family, and Identity

Compiled by: DeNae Handy

Publisher: Stansbury House Publications

Release Date: February 23, 2012

ISBN: 978-0615605722

Size: 224 pages, 6×9, softcover

Genre: Anthology

Out of the Picture and Into the Picture by Ilyan Kei Lavanway

One thing leads to another as we weave our lives into the tapestry of eternity. An actual event inspires a painting, which in turn inspires a story, which in turn inspires a sequel involving another painting. Paintings have two sides. One of those sides is not the back of the canvas.

Worlds overlap. Time shifts. Space twists. Experience the adventures of an aging pilot overtaken by a strange storm. Within the storm, he is miraculously reunited with his father. Getting home is not as simple as flying back the way he came. Enter an unusual forest with this pilot after a harrowing landing. Walk with him through a vortex that provides his only escape from an environment that appears to be swallowing him. His only way out is in. Come face to face with a spooky historical figure. Learn the origins of legendary creatures. Discover the name of a class of worlds you’ve never considered. Will this pilot ever make it home? Find out. Read Out of the Picture and Into the Picture, today. Don’t wait another minute. A minute may not be what you think it is.

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Title: Out of the Picture and Into the Picture

Author: Ilyan Kei Lavanway and Victor G. La Van Way

Publisher: Self

Release Date: January 23, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9768004-6-0

Size: eBook; 64 pages (Print version available in June)

Genre: Speculative Short Stories

Totally Cliché by Mormon Mommy Writers

Title: Totally Cliché

Author: Mormon Mommy Writers (Kasey Tross, Debra Efert, Cathy Witbeck & More)

Publisher: Mormon Mommy Writers

Release Date: December 8, 2011

ISBN: 978-1468024753

Size: 160 pages, 6×9, paperback

Genre: Short Story Collection

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What do an escaped convict, a vampire, a zombie, and Prince Charming all have in common? They are only some of the characters to grace the pages of the short story collection that pays homage to cliches.

Mormon Mommy Writers presents “Totally Cliche”, a collection of short stories including:

“Alice in Clicheland” by Kasey Tross – What’s a writer to do when all she can think of is cliches? Perhaps visit Castle Cliche in Clicheland where all IS as it seems!
“Scared Stiff by Debra Erfert – Sammy is a girl that has never been scared her entire life despite her best efforts. Will that all change on a dark and stormy night?
“Mirage” by Cathy Witbeck – Leslie’s mother was killed twenty years ago, yet when her mother’s previous employer seeks Leslie as their newest employee, she may be headed for the same fate.

Be sure to read these and many more stories to get your cliche fix today!

Wasatch by Douglas Thayer

Title: Wasatch: Mormon Stories and a Novella

Author: Douglas Thayer

Publisher: Zarahemla Books

Release Date: November 19, 2011

ISBN: 978-0984360345

Size: 246 pages, 5.5×8.5, paperback

Genre: Short stories

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Douglas Thayer’s third collection presents a dozen of his career-best stories, including several that have never before appeared in print. Wasatch is the next chapter in Thayer’s recent literary success, preceded by Hooligan, his landmark memoir about growing up Mormon in Provo, Utah, and by his acclaimed novel The Tree House, about the trials and redemption of missionary and soldier Harris Thatcher.

The Year of the Boar by Anneke Majors

Title: The Year of the Boar

Author: Anneke Majors

Publisher: Self

Release Date: May 31, 2011

Size: 142 pages, eBook

Genre: Short Story/Memoir

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Stories of the twists and turns of life span decades and continents in this drama about religion, culture and family.

The story of four women and their families and friends are traced from the Southern US to Japan and China, across North Africa and back in this dramatization of true stories of the author’s family and her own service as a missionary in Asia. Historical events and cultures ranging from the Bible Belt to communist China during the Great Leap Forward set the stage for the explorations of these women, all of whom live drastically different lives but are pulled together by interest in the LDS (Mormon) faith.

Based on true stories, journal entries and autobiographical anecdotes, The Year of the Boar is a unique exploration of the experience of conversion in the modern age, and what place, culture and history do to define who we are.

Available for purchase from:
eBook: | Kindle |

A Matter of Tea and Other Stories by Charles T. Whipple

Title: A Matter of Tea and Other Stories

Author: Charles T. Whipple

Publisher: CreateSpace

Release Date: April 13, 2011

ISBN: 978-1461088721

Size: 132 pages, 5×8, paperback

Genre: Short Stories

This book is not eligible for a Whitney Award.

“Delicate as bisque china, dangerous as a snake den, Charles T. Whipple’s writing resonates across the seven seas. Tales of sacrifice and honor that flick at the heart and encircle the soul.” – Marsha Ward.

Stories include: A Matter of Tea, The Dragon of Torigoe, The Floating World, Kamo Ike, From Chojagasaki Bay, Masakado’s Revenge, and Bonus Sections.

Water and Other Stories by Daron D. Fraley

Title: Water and Other Stories

Author: Daron D. Fraley

Publisher: Self

ISBN: 978-1452394633

Release Date: September 2010

Size: ebook

Genre: Short story collection, Contemporary, Speculative, Historical

Short story collections are not eligible for Whitney Awards.

This anthology was put together specifically for Smashwords as a free ebook offering. It contains the following stories:

PETITIONS: A short story about a homeless man (contemporary fiction).

ANGEL’S SONG: A companion short story to the novel “The Thorn”, book one of “The Chronicles of Gan” (speculative fiction).

WATER: Based on the account found in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 1-16, and the painting by Carl Bloch, “Healing at the Pool of Bethesda” (historical fiction).

Available for purchase from:
eBook: | Kindle | Nook | Smashwords

A Sense of Order and Other Stories by Jack Harrell

Title: A Sense of Order and Other Stories

Author: Jack Harrell

Publisher: Signature Books

Release Date: August 7, 2010

ISBN: 978-1560852094

Size: 300 pages; hardback

Genre: Short Story Collection

This book is not eligible for a Whitney Award.

Read an excerpt here.

The author asks a big question: Who is responsible? One person in need of this information is Lon, who wonders why his marriage is falling apart. Lon thought his wife would re-initiate intimacy at some point. She doesn’t, and he sets out to find the man he thinks stands between them but only finds an apparition—and he still can’t fix his marriage.

In another story, the LDS prophet is drawn to s simpler time when he could wander out unnoticed and buy a candy bar. Church Security won’t let him outside on his own and Public Relations won’t let him wear anything but a suit and tie. Still, the impulse to be a regular guy for an afternoon is compelling. Can’t he make his own decisions? He can, but what are the consequences?

And then there’s Jerry, who passes three men in suits who are talking and laughing at the loading dock behind an LDS temple. One of them looks up, drops a cigarette and crushes it, then slips into a nearby car. Another man—someone who has made Jerry’s life miserable—taunts him, saying: “Jerry, your goodness is your enemy … and tell all your friends.” Who is responsible? Maybe it’s the author’s reverie that’s to blame, but his stories have a way of getting deep inside the psyche and haunting us.

Sixteen short stories written by Jack Harrell. The collection includes the award-winning short stories “Calling and Election” and “A Prophet’s Story.”

Light of the New Day by Darin Cozzens

Title: Light of the New Day and Other Stories

Author: Darin Cozzens

Publisher: Zarahemla Books

Release Date: June 30, 2010

ISBN: 978-0984360321

Size: 220 pages; 5.5×8.5, softcover

Genre: Short Story Collection

This book is not eligible for a Whitney Award.

In the shared setting of fictional Balford, Wyoming, the characters in Darin Cozzens’s stories demonstrate both the follies and the virtues of rural Mormons in the late twentieth century. Hewell Penroy is a forty-two-year-old bachelor who, unbeknownst to his mother, falls in love with Benita, the meter reader he has never met. Flynn Darlington plays matchmaker with the youngest of his four unmarried daughters and an itinerant roofer. For all their married life, Rowe Sloan has struggled to supply his wife Vida with enough water for her household, but his crowning effort ends in tragedy. And with high school long past and no taste for college or missionary service, Siler Godwin faces the doom of digging postholes until, as he says, “something better comes up.” Yet whatever their quirks and limitations, these characters are, in the end, as thoroughly human as heartache and love.

Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction by Angela Hallstrom

Title: Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction

Editor: Angela Hallstrom

Publisher: Zarahemla Books

Release Date: January 3, 2010

ISBN: 978-0984360307

Size: 482 pages, 5.5×8.5, softcover

Genre: Short Story Anthology

This book is not eligible for a Whitney Award.

Read the Introduction here.

Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction anthologizes the best Mormon short stories written near the turn of the twenty-first century. Each of the extraordinary twenty-eight stories in this volume represents a potent individual voice, from popular and nationally acclaimed authors Brady Udall and Orson Scott Card, to well-respected Mormon literature veterans Douglas Thayer and Margaret Blair Young, to talented up-and-coming writers Lisa Madsen Rubilar and Todd Robert Petersen, and many more.

Taken individually, each story is an example of the surprise and power and even joy readers can find in a finely wrought piece of short fiction. Considered collectively, these stories herald a new era of excellence in Mormon literature. As Margaret Blair Young writes in her introduction, “In Dispensation, Angela Hallstrom has assembled twenty-eight gems—each a star in a brilliant constellation. This particular collection is a pinnacle.”