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Romance Fiction Chatelaine AwardThe Chatelaine Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Romantic Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Gail Avery Halverson’s book, A Sea of Glass will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Chatelaine contest page year ’round!

The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!

The 2023 Chatelaine Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Chatelaine Winners!

A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

T.K. Conklin – Guarded Hearts

Guarded Hearts Cover

When a simple touch can hurt or heal, do they dare take a chance on love?

LaRisa spent her life as the town outcast. Whispered to be a witch, she grew and sold healing herbs to the very people that shunned her. Because of the special ability she was cursed with at birth, she fears touching others. She knew she was destined to be a spinster, until she meets a man that isn’t afraid of her.

The beautiful auburn haired witch instantly enchanted Strykes, but he knew he shouldn’t fall in love with her. Haunted by his past and of what he could become, makes him leery of love. Though his hands ache to caress her, he is afraid he will hurt her. Or worse.

When his outlaw past catches up to him and sends them running for their lives, the love between them grows. As well as their fears.

From Chanticleer:

Guarded Hearts by T K Conklin is a sensual romance in the Wild West, with all the passion and excitement natural to the setting.

Sparks fly between a man with an outlaw past and a woman with a terrifying gift to heal or harm. Strykes is a man haunted both by a violent childhood and his time in an outlaw gang. But he has found a place in Rimrock, where he met LaRisa, an auburn-haired woman whom the townspeople have labeled a “witch” due to her healing herbs and rumors of her “powers”.

Read More Here

Find it Locally or on Amazon

Bonnie Rose Ward – Loving Beth

Loving Beth Cover

 

Beth McCullough struggles to keep her West Virginia farm and care for two abandoned children, but the bank is threatening foreclosure, someone is threatening her life, and the man she’s falling for has closed his heart to love. But God works in mysterious ways.

Times were hard after Beth McCullough’s father died in the Civil War, but she and her mother are getting by on their little farm outside Rosewood, West Virginia. The kindly banker holding the loan lets them pay what they can. Then Beth’s mother dies suddenly, and the banker’s arrogant son gives her only thirty days to pay her full debt. Beth is left alone and lonely and fears losing the only home she’s ever known. It would be nice to have someone in her life like Jacob, the handsome man who found her mother. Then to her horror, Beth discovers two small children who’ve been abandoned. It’s one more thing for her to worry about, but Beth has to keep faith in God’s ability to work miracles.

From Chanticleer:

In Loving Beth, a Christian historical romance by Bonnie Rose Ward, a young woman finds herself in dire straits when her widowed mother dies unexpectedly.

Beth’s father had taken out loans to improve their property, but he was killed in the Civil War, leaving his wife and daughter to struggle to keep up with the payments. Now, Beth is alone without any means to keep her home—finding and taking in two young, abandoned children certainly doesn’t help. But even amidst her troubles, Beth’s thoughts keep going back to the mysterious and handsome stranger who found and brought home the body of her mother.

Life is not easy in her tiny settlement in West Virginia, and young, pretty Beth finds that it is not about to get any easier. The new banker holds a grudge toward her for having rejected his advances, and the man’s snobbish wife is determined to make Beth’s life even more miserable. The loans that Beth and her mother worked to pay each month are suddenly due in full— but the banker’s unwanted and ugly advances are foiled with the appearance of the mysterious stranger.

Read More Here

Find it on Amazon

S.G. Blaise – Proud Pada

Lilla is on her next mission as a Sybil, when she must travel to the Pada world following the trail of a ruthless murderer.

Navigating deadly politics turns increasingly difficult, when the Teryn emperor goes missing.

Now the Teryn empire is heading towards civil war, and Lilla must uncover who is behind the conspiracy before it’s too late.

Unfortunately her success depends on the Proud Pada.

Find it Locally and on Amazon

Jo Morgan Sloan- Stableshoes

This LGBT+ Retelling of Cinderella isn’t out yet, but has a release date of July 2025, and we are very excited to see this book come out!

Prince Darian has met all the requirements necessary to claim his father’s throne; at least, he thinks he has, until his sinister cousin Bertram reveals a law that states Darian must marry by his twenty-fifth birthday, or lose the crown.

With only four weeks to find a bride, Darian turns to his beautiful, irreverent, clever friend Ashley for help before a grand ball is to be thrown in his honor. But there is another who catches the prince’s eye: living in perpetual silence is Eric, the stronghold stableman, whose kindness disrupts Darian’s plans to hide his nature.

Each day that passes is another day closer to Bertram’s takeover, and he’s counting on Darian to fail. While Eric has the prince’s heart, the stableman also carries a secret mark that could jeopardize Darian’s claim to the throne. To protect the nation he loves from a tyrant, Prince Darian must choose between true love and living a lie.

For more Information, check out the authors website

Rose Prendeville – Mistress Mackintosh and the Shaw Wretch

In 1725, a secret convent has been established on the Aberdeenshire coast.Jory Mackintosh is more excited by healing herbs than husbands or holy prayers. She craves freedom—and a chance to sneak into medical school. Instead, on the eve of her escape, she becomes an unwilling pawn in her family’s schemes with a rival clan.

Finlay Shaw, the disgraced younger brother of the laird, has spent ten long years atoning for his past failures, but nothing can wash away the stain of fratricide. When the clans order him to escort Jory to her new life as a nun, thus securing an alliance with the freshly formed Black Watch, it’s his last chance for redemption. Too bad for Finn, Jory has no intention of following orders.

Trapped on the road together, often with only one bed between them, the two butt heads and match wits, forced to acknowledge the dark shadows that have haunted them both for years. Can they learn to trust each other, and themselves, to fly in the face of their families’ wishes, or will they choose the solitary futures they always believed they deserve in this unorthodox runaway bride story?

Find it Locally or on Amazon


Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Chatelaine First Place Winners!

Romance Fiction Chatelaine Award

You can see our Spotlight on the Chatelaine Grand Prize Winners, including Gail Avery Halverson’s incredible book A Sea of Glass here.

Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!

The tiers of achievement for the CIBAs

Got a great Fiction Book? The 2024 Chatelaine Book Awards are open through the end of August!