What's New at Cross Reference Library - Romance, Amish Fiction and Loneliness

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Despite our connected world - and partly because of it - we are lonelier than ever. Social media tricks us into thinking that we are engaged in genuine friendships. Yet instead of intimacy, we got little more than what amounts to digital small talk. But there is a solution. With plenty of good humor and practical advice, Jack Eason invites you to discover the benefits of doing life together with other brothers and sisters in Christ. Grounding his message in Scripture, Eason helps you learn the obstacles to real community, reimagine what real friendship looks like, discover a place of true belonging, and more. If you’re tired of feeling lonely, the encouragement and community building in The Loneliness Solution is just what you need.

When Elizabeth Kaufman received the news of her husband’s death at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, she felt only relief. She determined that she would never be at the mercy of any man again even if it meant not having a family of her own. Then along came Aaron Zook… Despite the severity of his injuries, Aaron has resolved to move west and leave the pain of the past behind him. He never imagined that the Amish way of life his grandfather had rejected long ago would be so enticing. That, and a certain widow he can’t get out of his mind. Yet, even in a simple community, life has a way of getting complicated. In Softly Blows the Bugle by Jan Drexler, Aaron soon finds that while he may have left the battlefield behind, there is another fight he must win - the one for the heart of the woman he loves.

AD 309. Rome teeters on the brink of war. Constantine’s army is on the move. On the Rhine frontier, pagan Germanic barbarian Brandulf Rex joins the Roman army as a spy. Down in Rome, senator’s daughter Junia Flavia finds herself embroiled in anti-Christian politics as she works on behalf of the church. As armies converge and forces beyond their control threaten to destroy everything they have worked for, these two people from different worlds will have to fight together to bring down the evil Emperor Maxentius. But his villainous plans and devious henchmen are not easily overcome. Will Rex and Flavia live to see the Empire bow the knee to Christ? Or will their part in the story of Constantine’s rise meet an untimely and brutal end? Find out in The Constantine by Bryan Litfin.

Focused on a career in medicine and not on romance, Willa Duvall is thrown slightly off course during the summer of 1865 when she discovers a never-opened love letter in a crack of her old writing desk. Compelled to find the passionate soul who penned it and the person who never received it, she takes a job as a nurse at the seaside estate of Crestwicke Manor. Everyone at Crestwicke has feelings - mostly negative ones - about the man who wrote the letter, but he seems to have disappeared. With plenty of enticing clues but few answers, Willa’s search becomes even more complicated when she misplaces the letter and it passes from person to person in the house, each finding a thrilling or disheartening message in its words. Laced with mysteries large and small, Joanna Davidson Politano’s The Love Note is a romantic Victorian era tale of love lost, love deferred, and love found, and is sure to delight.

In The Key to Love by Betsy St. Amant, the only thing Bri Duval loves more than baking petit fours is romance. So much so that she’s created her own version of the famous Parisian love-lock wall at the bakery where she works in Story, KS. She never expects a video involving the wall to go viral - or for Trek Magazine to send travel writer Gerard Fortier to feature the bakery. He’s definitely handsome, but Bri has been holding out for an epic love story like the one her parents had - and that certainly will not include the love-scorning Gerard. Just when it seems the Pastry Puff is poised for unprecedented success, a series of events threaten not just he bakery but the pedestal she’s kept her parents on all these years. Maybe Gerard is right about romance. Or maybe Bri’s recipe just needs to be tweaked.

Cross Reference Library is located at 209 East 15th Street in Scottsbluff, NE,
and is open Monday through Friday from 9:00am-5:00pm.