I don’t have time to read right now. Classes just kicked off again last weekend, and studying is filling my time. However, reading is like breathing…so I have to read…but only books that capture me will get finished in any kind of speed time. I am delighted that the last two books were exactly that type. You’ll notice I’m on a bit of a historical kick. I just need to convince my favorite suspense authors to write a wee bit faster! Come on, Lynette Eason and Randy Singer. Let’s crank out those books 🙂

Yesterday I finished Elizabeth Camden’s latest novel With Every Breath. Remember how I just mentioned that I have zero time and a book has to capture me? After reading a couple of Elizabeth’s earlier books, I knew this one would be good, but I fully expected it to be one I could walk away from and return to as I had time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

With Every Breath is a gripping story set in the fight to cure tuberculosis in the late 1800s. I loved learning about the ways this terrible disease was treated over a hundred years ago and the passion to conquer it. But the book was so much more. Mystery, Romance, Faith. Each strand is woven together into a story that captured my imagination. It is a stirring story that is more than an-of-course-they-get-together romance. I’ve read a couple of her others, and this was the one I could not put down even though I didn’t have time to read. I had to make time. I highly recommend it for lovers of historical fiction.

The day before I finished Full Steam Ahead by the crazy creative and funny Karen Witemeyer. Karen is an author who’s books I know won’t disappoint. They are usually set in Texas in the 1800s and are so creative and fun I savor them as a treat. Full Steam Ahead did not disappoint.

This story is a frolic through the race to improve steam engines and end the explosions that led to terrible disasters in the mid-1800s. Funny that two of the last books I’ve read dealt with scientific advancements. I loved learning a bit about steam engines…but I adored the hero and heroine. The hero has an edge of the beast to him — a self-imposed recluse who is misunderstood because of his all-consuming drive to fix a horrible problem. And the heroine is a woman who can match mind and wits with him. (Very much like the arrangement in With Every Breath now that I think about it.) There is also a thin thread of suspense that doesn’t overshadow the story but adds a layer to it.

I highly recommend both of these novels for those who love historical fiction and a hero and heroine you can root for equally.

What have you read lately that you would recommend?