The Candlewick Mill Christmas Series
Welcome to Candlewick Mill, where Christmas traditions are a hundred years old, everybody knows your business by breakfast, and falling in love doesn’t have an expiration date.
Once, the old Vermont mill spun cotton. Now its brick halls are filled with small shops, warm kitchens, artists’ studios, upstairs apartments, and people determined to keep the things that matter from disappearing.
Every Christmas brings a new problem. An unfinished sleigh that has to choose between Fifth Avenue and a lantern-lit mountain. A century-old glass star shattered weeks before Christmas Eve. A beloved carol with a harmony nobody ever wrote down. Two draft horses in need of a home. And one locked room in the Mill that hasn’t been opened since the last shift walked out on Christmas Eve, 1994.
At the center of each story is a woman in her fifties who already has a life. She’s built a career, raised a family, survived loss, made mistakes, and learned a few things the hard way. She isn’t waiting to be rescued, reinvented, or told who she ought to become. But she might still have room for something she didn’t expect.
The Candlewick Mill later in life romances are sweet, closed-door Christmas love stories filled with small-town warmth, grown-up characters, family traditions, old-fashioned craftsmanship, snowy Vermont nights, and the delicious possibility that some of the best chapters in life come later.
Coming soon! The final book in this holiday series.
For thirty-one years, Gwen Radliff has built Christmas for everyone else. This year, she may finally find one of her own.
At fifty-five, Gwen designs the Christmas Eve windows at Halliday’s on Fifth Avenue, the kind people line up around the block to see. This year’s centerpiece needs a real hand-built sleigh, so she finds herself in Candlewick Mill, Vermont. She'll look at the sleigh, write the check, and go home.
Except the hundredth Lachance sleigh is still unfinished in Mitch Lachance’s workshop, exactly where his mother left it before she died in March. And Mitch isn’t selling before Christmas.
For ninety-nine years, every Lachance sleigh has made its first run on Christmas Eve, climbing Candlewick Mountain while the town follows behind with lanterns. Mitch promised his mother the hundredth would make the trip too.
Gwen’s store window opens that same night. Five hours south. She has until December twenty-second to change his mind.
Neither of them has made a plan for what happens if, somewhere between ugly snow boots, cardamom buns, and nineteen days in the same workshop, going home becomes the harder choice.
A warm, sweet, closed-door Christmas romance about two people in their fifties, one unfinished sleigh, and a town very good at making room for one more.
For the past nineteen years, Carol Stack has run the Candlewick Hollow Christmas Stroll.
She knows which shopkeeper will forget the extension cords, which committee member will try to hang eight wreaths where six belong, and exactly how much cocoa a town can drink before somebody has to find another urn. Carol is sixty years old, practical to the bone, and very good at taking care of everyone else’s December. For six winters, someone has been taking care of one small piece of hers.
Every year before the Stroll opens, split wood appears on Carol’s back porch, stacked neat as a promise. No note. No knock. No name. Carol has never asked who left it, and whoever he is has never asked to be thanked. This year, the wood doesn’t come.
The missing stack leads Carol up the old sugar road to Hank Pelletier, a widower with a bad wrist, a blue truck, and far too much practice standing on the far side of a door. What begins as irritation over firewood becomes soup in a quiet kitchen, lanterns tested after hours, a stubborn shed door finally fixed, and the unsettling discovery that being cared for may be the one thing Carol never learned how to accept.
Set before Tinsel & Trails, Kindling & Kisses is a sweet, closed-door Christmas novelette from The Candlewick Mill Romances, full of woodsmoke, warm kitchens, old friends, second chances, and one woman who has spent years making Christmas happen for everyone else finally finding a little of it waiting for her.
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The star has watched over Candlewick every Christmas for a hundred years. This year, saving it may take two people who thought their days of beginning again were behind them.
Glass artist Paula Ostrander came to Candlewick Mill for one job: assess the damage to the beloved amber star that has crowned the mountain every Christmas Eve since 1926.
Her verdict is simple. It can’t be saved.
But Candlewick isn’t a town that gives up on Christmas traditions easily, and before Paula knows it, she’s agreed to create a new star from hand-blown glass. There’s only one problem. The panels are too large for her to make alone.
Enter Roy Beaulieu.
Candlewick’s sixty-year-old blacksmith is broad-shouldered, maddeningly capable, and far too accustomed to helping people before they’ve asked. His hands may belong at a forge instead of a glassblower’s bench, but Roy knows heat, patience, and how to learn. Soon they’re spending long December days moving between furnace and anvil, shaping amber glass and dark iron while the entire town cheerfully refuses to mind its own business.
Paula hasn’t worked beside anyone since losing her husband, and she certainly isn’t looking for someone to take his place. Roy has spent years taking care of everyone around him without asking what he might want for himself.
Yet somewhere between broken glass, coal smoke, cardamom buns, snow-covered sleigh rides, and a Christmas Eve deadline racing toward them, the space between their two workbenches begins to feel surprisingly small.
Because sometimes the most beautiful things aren’t repaired. They’re made new.
Frost & Forge is a warm, later-in-life Christmas romance filled with small-town friendship, found family, holiday traditions, quiet humor, and the unexpected joy of discovering there may still be room in your life for something new.
She came to Candlewick Mill for a quiet Christmas. Then a charming chocolatier, a forgotten piano, and a little holiday music changed everything.
At fifty-three, professional cellist Denise Mullins has spent most of her adult life traveling from one concert hall to another. When the orchestra she's played with for twenty-six years closes, she suddenly finds herself facing a December without rehearsals, performances, or anyone expecting her to be somewhere at a particular time.
So she rents a cozy loft at Candlewick Mill, determined to enjoy a proper Christmas for once. A little music, a few snowy walks, and plenty of time to herself. That's the plan, anyway.
Then she meets Vince Cormier.
Candlewick's resident chocolatier has a warm smile, a wicked sense of humor, and a habit of giving away perfectly good peppermint bark because the edges aren't quite straight. He's also hiding something in the back room of his chocolate shop: his mother's beloved piano, untouched for years after a humiliating Christmas Eve performance convinced him to stop playing in public.
When Denise hears him playing one evening, she can't resist asking him to join her for a carol. One song becomes two, private rehearsals turn into cozy suppers and stolen kisses, and before long, the woman who came to Candlewick for a little peace is helping organize the town's Christmas orchestra.
But Vince isn't ready to share his music with the world again, and Denise has spent too many years building her career to give it up for a holiday romance. As Christmas Eve approaches, they'll have to find a way to make room for each other's dreams without losing sight of their own.
Between chocolate-dusted afternoons, snowy sleigh rides, a small-town orchestra with more enthusiasm than polish, and a Christmas carol that carries memories across generations, two people who thought they knew exactly what their lives would look like discover there's still room for a beautiful surprise.
And sometimes the sweetest music is the kind you never expected to play together.
Peppermint & Preludes is a heartwarming, later-in-life Christmas romance filled with small-town friendship, found family, holiday music, delicious chocolate, gentle humor, snowy Vermont traditions, and the joy of discovering that love can make life's next chapter even sweeter.
She came to Candlewick Mill to finish a Christmas cookbook. She wasn't expecting to find a man who'd rather take her snowshoeing than ask her to cook dinner.
At fifty-two, cookbook author Kelly Prentice has made a successful career out of creating beautiful meals and picture-perfect holiday gatherings. The trouble is, somewhere along the way, Christmas has started to feel more like work than a celebration.
So she rents a cozy loft at Candlewick Mill, determined to finish her latest manuscript, enjoy a little Vermont snow, and spend December doing whatever she pleases. Preferably without anyone asking her to bring a casserole.
Enter Doug Hennessy.
Handsome, kindhearted, and blessed with a quiet sense of humor, Doug runs a wildlife rescue on the mountain above Candlewick. His days are filled with animals who need looking after, including an opinionated barn cat and two elderly draft horses searching for a permanent home. He's perfectly content with his life, although lately he's begun to wonder whether there's room in it for someone special.
When Doug invites Kelly on a snowshoeing adventure, she discovers that falling for a man in her fifties can be every bit as wonderful as it was when she was young. Especially when that man remembers how she takes her tea, makes her laugh, and never expects her to do all the cooking.
Soon they're sharing snowy woodland walks, cozy suppers, sleigh rides beneath the stars, and kisses that make the Vermont winter feel considerably warmer.
But falling in love is the easy part. Kelly has a career and a life she's worked hard to build, while Doug's devotion to the animals in his care doesn't always leave room for romance. As Christmas approaches, they'll have to discover whether two happily independent people can make room for each other without giving up the lives they love.
And in a little Vermont town where nobody stays a stranger for long, they might just find that the best Christmas traditions are the ones you get to share.
Snowshoes & Strays is a heartwarming, later-in-life Christmas romance filled with small-town friendship, found family, snowy adventures, lovable rescue animals, cozy holiday traditions, gentle humor, and the unexpected joy of finding love when you least expect it.