From a fog-shrouded New England fishing village to the heat of a Louisiana bayou, these eight stories draw the reader into rich worlds where men and women of all ages suddenly experience that one transformative moment in which they discover, or rediscover, being in love. Whether it is a fifteen year old girl in the Texas hill country or an aging poet selling clams on a North Atlantic island, each character is fully realized and lovingly rendered in this exquisite collection of stories that will appeal to romantics of any age or gender.

In My Last Romance and other passions Kathleen Valentine spins eight beautifully told little tales of lovers from a broad variety of lifestyles and ages. Her powers of description and sensitive portraits are captivating. Each story is sensuous, and romantic in the most traditional sense of the word. This is a literary feast for those with a taste for both the romantic and literature of high quality.

In the 19th century the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel was built on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Maine. From early on there were rumors of strange activity there - tunnels through the cliff used by smugglers, a nun who worked miracles, and drunken lumberjacks stormed the convent to kidnap wives were vanquished ay a giant angel with a flaming spear. A century later, when the last nuns were gone, the convent was closed. That's when it was discovered that the convent's treasure, a marble statue of the Archangel Gabriel by Italian sculptor Giovanni Dupr, was missing.

In Ripley Mills, MA the "wild bunch", a former high school football team, gather weekly for dinner and beer. Thirty years have changed them. Charlie's boss is young, pretty, and intimidating. Whitey's wife has cancer, Bull's wife just found out about his affair with an exotic dancer, and Vinnie can't get a date. Gabe's daughters have grown up and his wife is making life miserable. Peter doesn't have those problems, he's a Jesuit priest. But they still get together every week to drink, eat, and listen to one anothers' problems.

Then Father Peter makes a startling revelation, he had once been in love with a girl he met in Paris. He planned to leave the seminary to marry her but she rejected him to marry an older, wealthy man. Pete is happy as a priest teaching at Boston College but now Maggie has returned. She is leaving her husband and has purchased an old, abandoned convent in Maine that she plans to convert to a sculpture studio.

On Pete's recommendation Gabe takes the job of helping Maggie to restore the convent. But, as winter closes in, the mysteries begin again. Stories are circulating about bodies of young women washing up on the shore. Maggie's husband refuses to answer her calls. Gabe's cantankerous father, Mick, tells him the truth about his mother who had once longed to be a nun in that convent. Ethan Darling, the local sheriff, is snooping around. Zeke, Gabe's dog, discovers a secret passage in the crypt under the chapel. And Father Peter realizes that Maggie is falling in love with his oldest friend.

Each Angel Burns is the story of three people at crossroads in their lives. It is a story of enduring friendship, of faith, of great evil and greater love --- and of how they culminate in a miracle.

Four love stories, four stories about murder including: "Sailor's Valentine", "The Mermaid Shawl", "Mardi Gras Was Over", "Arthur's Story: A Love Story", "Home-made Pie & Sausage", "Killing Julie Morris", "Just An Old Fashioned Murder", and "A View From the Lighthouse".

"Kathleen Valentine's stories are like scrimshaw pieces, encompassing a wealth of detail within a small space. We learn everything about her characters in tales whose compact composition never diminishes their vividness, depth and sensitivity.

From the first few lines of "Sailor's Valentine," the reader is drawn into an intriguing and moving story of two loners, one with a dark secret, and into the world of the fishermen of Port St. Magnus, with all its strong smells, sights and sounds. "The Mermaid Shawl" weaves romance with the realities and hopes of Great Lakes island life, reminding us that knitting is not just a hobby or a job, but an act of love.

"Arthur's Story" surprises us with a change of scene, to turn of the century New York, in a quietly wonderful story of a lost boy that brought tears to my eyes. "Mardi Gras Was Over" shows how our own maturity can take us by surprise. Darker surprises are in store in the "Murder" section, where the intimacy of first-person narrative reveals the dangerous tensions brewing in seemingly placid places, a small town diner, a needlework club, a lighthouse.

Overall, this is a superbly written collection of stories and very much worth having." - Review by Clare Higgins

Before the Edmund Fitzgerald there was the Carl D. Bradley, the Willaim B. Davok, the Betty Hedger, the American Sailor and many more...
In 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to international commerce creating a problem for seaport towns bordering the Great Lakes. Within the first year over a thousand barges and tankers from all over the world arrived at these seaports to unload, re-outfit and reload. While waiting, the crew, that had been at sea for weeks, went ashore looking for fun and companionship. Restaurants, bars, pool halls, rooming houses, tattoo parlors, and rumors of other - less savory - forms of entertainment sprang up in the blocks surrounding the commercial docks. Those parts of town acquired a deservedly terrible reputation.

When Clair Wagner begins college in Port Presque Isle she dreams of meeting a "handsome sailor with the constellations of the Northern Seas in his eyes". Into her life comes Pio, a beautiful Italian fisherman, who dreams of life on the big lakes under the aurora borealis. She meets Gary, the dashing son of a wealthy shipping magnate, who introduces her to Canal Street where she encounters The Old Mermaid Inn, a tavern that, as Gary tells her, "deserves its reputation".

But The Old Mermaid Inn, with its giant painting of a seductive mermaid, is home to some fascinating people including Tessie, the owner and original mermaid, and the intriguing Baptiste, a Breton mariner injured in a shipwreck, who earns his living as a musician.

With Pio, Clair discovers passion, with Gary she gains entry into the world of the commercial waterfront, and with Baptiste she discovers all-consuming love. But as her relationship with Baptiste grows she discovers he is far more complex and mysterious than she could imagine. He has secrets and his secrets will alter her life forever.

Set against this background - and that of the maritime and sea legends of the Great Lakes - The Old Mermaid's Tale weaves a romance that pays homage to the importance of stories in our lives.

In this combination memoir and family cookbook blogger and novelist Kathleen Valentine combines 30 posts from her blog with nearly 400 recipes collected from family and friends. Growing up in a "mostly Pennsylvania Dutch" family she collected and recorded recipes from grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, cousins, friends, etc. which were combined in the first Valentine Family & Friends Cookbook published in 1981. This was expanded in the 1992 edition and now, in this third edition, nearly 400 recipes combine with essays recording memories of growing up in rural Pennsylvania and photographs from six generations.

Essays topics include making sauerkraut and soltz (sultz) (a German pickled meat loaf), toasting marshmallows and catching fireflies, the old-country Christmas traditions of making stollen and visits from Belsnickle, old world ghost stories, their grandmother's quilts, and more.

Traditional family recipes include schmarn, panhaas, moultasha, a variety of sausage recipes, hassenpfeffer, and liver dumplings, a wide variety of pickles and relishes, as well as keuchels (a type of fried dough), apple dumplings, and rhubarb crisps and pies. Contemporary recipes from the younger generations of the Valentine family expand the collection with everything from dips and cocktails to chowders, cakes and cookies. Among the more popular recipes first featured on Valentine's blog are:
- three maple syrup pies
- apricot-apple crisp with maple cream
- caramel peachy-pear pandowdy
- honey & white peach pie
- Pennsylvania Dutch hot and sour soup
Though this collection is a memoir in food of the Valentine family it could be the story of any first, second and third generation immigrant family.

Why do what has already been done? More than a book of patterns, The Mermaid Shawl & other Beauties, is designed to help knitters create their own works of knitted lace art. The signature shawl was introduced in 2005 on Kathleen Valentine's blog and subsequently described in a knit-along but throughout the knit-along Valentine encouraged knitters to make different choices that made their shawl unique to them. Now, using the same principles, she offers techniques, diagrams, charts and tips that allow knitters to customize each shawl for their own original work of art. The book contains instruction for three versatile shawl styles, how to turn a rectangular shawl into a cocoon, a chapter on knitting on the bias, tips and tricks, and an original short-story, The Mermaid Shawl, inspired by the signature shawl.

Why do what has already been done? More than a book of patterns, The Mermaid Shawl & other Beauties, is designed to help knitters create their own works of knitted lace art. The signature shawl was introduced in 2005 on Kathleen Valentine's blog and subsequently described in a knit-along but throughout the knit-along Valentine encouraged knitters to make different choices that made their shawl unique to them. Now, using the same principles, she offers techniques, diagrams, charts and tips that allow knitters to customize each shawl for their own original work of art. The book contains instruction for three versatile shawl styles, how to turn a rectangular shawl into a cocoon, a chapter on knitting on the bias, tips and tricks, and an original short-story, The Mermaid Shawl, inspired by the signature shawl.