2026 TBR Reading Challenge Announcments

2026 TBR Reading Challenge Announcments

It’s time to announce the 2026 reading challenge, and I’m sticking with the TBR pile. Who knows? Maybe that will be the overarching theme from now on. I don’t know about you, but I have a TBR pile that will outlive me. Without further ado (and thank you for your help):

2026 Reading Challenge: Tackle the TBR Pile

If you’re anything like me, you have a TBR pile that is bigger than you can hope to read in a lifetime. This is the year we’re going to try an tackle at least twelve of those books. Head to your shelves and find books that fit each month’s challenge.

January – Genre you don’t usually read

February – Title or Cover with: heart, love, or couple

March – Title or Author Name begins with the first letter of YOUR first or last name

April – Funny Book

May – Indie Author

June – Has a setting of somewhere you want to visit

July – Patriotic theme, time period, or character profession

August – Classic title

September – Animal on the Cover

October – Unusual Occupation

November – Favorite Season is on the Cover

December – Read what you want!

 

What are some books you’re hoping to knock off your TBR pile next year?

Meet Alexandra Romanova from Line of Fire by Taylor Newport

Meet Alexandra Romanova from Line of Fire by Taylor Newport

‘Tis the season for character interviews! LOL This week, I get to introduce you to action thriller heroine, Alexandra Romanova, from Taylor Newport’s Line of Fire, book one of the Dauntless Defenders. Taylor is generously giving away an e-book to one person (U.S. resident OR International). All the details are at the bottom of the post.

Before we dive into our interview, let me introduce you to the story that Alexandra Romanova takes part in.

Line of Fire by Taylor Newport

Genre: Action Thriller

The enemy is relentless, but they made one fatal mistake: they underestimated him.

Australian mercenary Tyler Reid, known as “The Ghost of OZ,” has a talent for evading detection, a skill that has caught the eye of multiple government agencies. When a shadowy group targets a CIA asset and her revolutionary drug ND1, the Deputy Director calls in Tyler. Eager for action, Tyler takes the job. He soon realizes that the enemy is not only after the drug, but also out for his blood. Then the mission goes south, and he is forced to seek an unlikely ally.

For covert foreign operative Alexandra Romanova, freedom is a distant dream. Escaping one prison only led her to a more dangerous one. Her deadly skills are at her boss’s disposal, but she’ll use them only to escape. Her final chance hinges on retrieving ND1, but the elusive Ghost of Oz complicates things. Tyler Reid isn’t an easy mark, and the better she gets to know him, the more she questions the mission she’s tasked with. Soon she faces a dire choice: kill a man she is convinced is good, or pay with her own life.

As Tyler and Alex venture beyond their orders, the line between enemy and ally blurs. On the edge of failure, trust becomes a dangerous gamble with every decision dragging them deeper into the line of fire. As enemies close in and alliances shift, they are ensnared in a ruthless battle where survival depends on split-second choices. In this high-stakes fight, time is running out, and the margin for error is zero.

Purchase Links:

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Taylor’s Website

 

Now it’s time to jump into our interview with Alexandra!

CC: Alexandra, would you please introduce yourself to my readers? How would you describe yourself?

Alexandra: Hello, my name is Alexandra Romanova. I am a prisoner, forced to fight for a cause I don’t believe in. My task is taking down a man for my evil boss, but my target doesn’t seem to be what I’ve been told.

CC: Intriguing. A prisoner and warrior for a cause you don’t agree with. While I think I can guess . . . 

What is it that you want? What’s standing in your way?

Alexandra: I want freedom, but I am a prisoner to a rogue CIA agent. It has never seemed in reach since I am always monitored by agents and am never given an opportunity to go out alone.

CC: That sounds incredibly tough. I can’t imagine not having the freedom to go out alone. I’m rooting for you to find that freedom.

If you had time to read a book, what would you pick up and why?

Alexandra: I’d love to read a book about the Romanov Family since everyone seems to think that I am related to them.

CC: Ha! Ha! I understand getting all those type of questions. We have a common last name for our area, but we have no connection (that we know of) to anyone with the same last name.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did that happen?

Alexandra: As a child, I wanted to be a world traveler. In a way, that did happen. But not as I expected.

CC: Yeah, being told where to go and when isn’t how I’d expect to travel either.

Who is the most confounding character for you to interact with in the story?

Alexandra: My target, Tyler Reid. Everyone tells me he’s dangerous, but for whatever reason, he keeps protecting me.

CC: Oh, how intriguing. Maybe there is something more than we know.

Who is the most difficult character for you to interact with in the story?

Alexandra: My boss, Slade Nixon. He is ruthless and threatens his operatives to get what he wants. He’s not afraid to shed innocent blood either.

CC: He sounds like a very dangerous guy.

How would you describe your relationship with God?

Alexandra: I was raised as a Christian, but I’m afraid my faith wavered some during my various struggles. I know that God is the only reason I am still alive though.

CC: Praise the Lord for that. I hope that your faith will grow and you feel steadier in it as the story progresses.

If there is one thing you could tell the reader, what would it be?

Alexandra: Things are never quite as they seem. Dig for the truth, even when the lies are more popular.

CC: Digging for the truth in today’s world is SOOOOO hard, but so necessary.

Unfortunately, it’s time to wrap up, so here’s our last question, and it’s always a fun one. What are your phobias?

Alexandria: Heights. I can’t stand tall balconies, and I hate flying.

CC: The older I get, the more queasy heights make me.

That’s it for now. If you liked getting to know Alexandra, I highly recommend you go check out Taylor Newport’s Line of Fire. 

Taylor S Newport is an up-and-coming Christian author. Four years of research have brought her to release her first high-octane novel to the world. In 2024, she placed as a Finalist in the ACFW Genesis Contest. Currently, she resides in the beautiful state of Texas with her family and Dire Wolf, Timber, probably writing her next novel.

You can connect with them at:  Website & Newsletter  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  GoodReads  |  BookBub

Giveaway Details

Here’s your chance to win an e-copy of Line of Fire. Comment on the blog and enter using the Google Form for your chance to win! Entries close at 11:59 p.m. EST on 12/23. Open to legal U.S. residents. See Giveaway Policies for more details.

Meet Luna Rosati from Girl Lost

Meet Luna Rosati from Girl Lost

Today, I have the privledge of introducing you to a character from one of the books I’m hoping to read during my writing sabbatical, Girl Lost by Kate Angelo. If you like romantic suspense, you’re in for a treat. Kate Angelo and I “met” through a Discord group where we sprint (write as many words as we can in a timed period). It’s been wonderful to get to know her and see how her writing brain works. And boy, can that girl write! Kate is generously giving an audiobook or ebook to one lucky commenter (international included!). You can find all the details at the end of this post. 

Before we dive into our interview, let me introduce you to the story that Luna Rosati takes part in.

Girl Lost by Kate Angelo

Genre: Romantic Suspense Thriller

A LOST BABY

Luna Rosati found acceptance and comfort with her childhood foster family, but when she became pregnant at sixteen, she gave the baby up for adoption and left without a word. Now a CIA counterintelligence officer, Luna wants to reconcile her fractured sense of self by finding the only blood family she has–the teenage daughter she’s never met. As Luna closes in on learning the girl’s identity with the help of her mentor, Stryker, she prepares to meet him in her old neighborhood–the last place she wants to be. Then Stryker is captured.   

AN INESCAPABLE PAST

Special Agent Corbin King changed his last name to escape the shadow of his convicted father serving a life sentence. When he runs into Luna, the object of his failed teenage romance, the two must put their pasts aside and work together to expose a secret that someone’s willing to kill for.

A DEADLY THREAT

But when they encounter a kidnapping, missing bodies, and murder, the secrets Corbin and Luna are keeping from one another are only the beginning of the threat they face with more than their own lives at stake.

“Kate Angelo skillfully unveils the savagery of greed under the pretense of good.”–DIANN MILLS, bestselling writer

“An exciting story that will capture readers’ emotions while also taking them on a pulse-pounding, suspenseful roller coaster ride they won’t soon forget.”–NANCY MEHL, author of the Erin Delaney Mysteries

A gripping Christian romantic suspense thriller with CIA intrigue, second chances, and found family. Perfect for fans of clean thrillers, faith-based fiction, and emotional page-turners by Lynette Eason, Colleen Coble, Jessica R. Patch, and Charles Martin.

Purchase Links:

Amazon  |  Baker Book House  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Christianbook

 

Now it’s time to jump into our interview with Luna Rosati!

CC: Luna, would you please introduce yourself to my readers? How would you describe yourself?

Luna: I’m Luna Rosati, though for most of my adult life, I lived behind other names. Marine Intelligence. CIA Counterintelligence. Those worlds demanded reinvention. New faces, new identities, new versions of myself designed to survive whatever the mission required. After enough years of deception, the truth felt foreign. Easier to bury. Easier to avoid.

Now I’m back in Millie Beach, trying to remember what it feels like to live as one person instead of a collection of aliases.

If you’re asking how I’d describe myself… well, I’ve got dark hair, darker eyes, and hands marked by calluses that never quite fade. I grew up learning how to fight for myself, and later, how to fight for others. I can drop a man twice my size with a wrist lock and disappear into a crowded street without breaking stride. But the real battles—those are internal ones. The kind God keeps guiding me through, piece by piece. After everything I’ve survived, He’s teaching me that strength isn’t just grit and instinct. Sometimes it’s surrender. Sometimes it’s trusting Him with a past I’ve avoided for far too long.

My role in the story began with one purpose: find the daughter I put up for adoption eighteen years ago.

I didn’t come home for nostalgia. I came for answers. Specifically one from the only man who had it. Stryker King, my mentor, the one person I trusted to tell me the truth. But moments before we were supposed to meet, he was violently kidnapped. His disappearance ripped the ground out from under me.

That’s when everything got… complicated.

Because to find Stryker, I had to work with the last person I wanted to see: Corbin King. FDLE agent. Stubborn. Sharp. And the father of the daughter I’m searching for.

The same man who broke my heart years ago when he said he wasn’t ready to be a father.

I shoved all of that aside—my resentment, my fear, the truth he still doesn’t know—because finding Stryker mattered more than reopening old wounds. Corbin thinks I’m helping him because I’m a former intelligence officer with useful skills, and that’s true. What he doesn’t know is that this investigation is tied to the biggest unanswered piece of my life.

So here we are, working together, chasing down leads, infiltrating dangerous places, uncovering things neither of us saw coming. And every step we take, God keeps nudging me to face the truth I’ve spent eighteen years running from.

CC: Wow, Luna! When you answer a question, you’re very thorough. But I suspect that comes with the territory of your job. You need to know everything inside and out. You’ve got a lot of things to wade through, and I’m here to see it.

What is it that you want? What’s standing in your way?

Luna: What I want is simple—and impossibly complicated.

I want to find the daughter I gave up eighteen years ago. I’ve lived with that ache my entire adult life, and I’m finally ready to face it.

What’s standing in my way?

A kidnapping, a criminal network that keeps growing darker by the day, and the one man I least want to confront—Corbin King. He has the skills to find the answers I need and no idea how personal this is for me. And until I find Stryker, I can’t tell him the truth.

CC: Everything is so much more complicated than we imagine it will be. At least that is my experience, and it seems to be yours as well.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did it happen?

Luna: When I was a child, I wanted to be a wife and a mother. That simple. I wanted the kind of home I never grew up in—stable, safe, filled with people who stayed.

Did it happen?

No. Life unraveled fast. Survival became the priority, then training, then missions. Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I was meant for a family.

And now… I don’t know if that dream is still possible. Not with everything standing between Corbin and me. Not with the truth I’m still carrying.

CC: The secret truths we carry can be so hard to bear. 

How would you describe your relationship with God?

Luna: My relationship with God has been… strained. Not because He left, but because I did. For years, I relied on instincts, training, and aliases—anything but Him. Trust felt dangerous.

But lately, I’ve started to see Him working in ways I can’t chalk up to coincidence. Bringing me home. Forcing me to face the truth. Putting people back in my life I never expected to see again.

It scares me, honestly. But it also feels like a lifeline I didn’t know I still needed.

CC: I love God with all my heart, but sometimes when He is at work, it is some of the scariest stuff I’ve every dealt with. Yeah, it makes me lean ever more into Him and cling to that trust I say I have, but scary is an apt description of the experience.

How do you feel about the journey you are going on?

Luna: How do I feel? Torn. This journey is forcing me to confront things I’ve run from for eighteen years. I’m scared of the truth—about the kidnapping, about the criminals we’re facing, about the daughter I’m desperate to find.

I’m enjoying the momentum, though. The work. The clarity that comes in the middle of danger. And I hate admitting this, but… I’m enjoying seeing a different side of Corbin. One I didn’t expect.

I’m worried the past will repeat itself. That I’ll lose the people I’m trying to protect. And that when I finally get answers, they won’t be the ones I hoped for.

CC: Torn seems like the perfect description and my heart goes out to you.

If there is one thing you could tell the reader, what would it be? 

Luna: One thing I want readers to know? This isn’t just about danger, lies, or chasing criminals. It’s about finding what you’ve lost—whether it’s a person, a truth, or even a piece of yourself—and having the courage to face it, even when the path is terrifying.

CC: I once heard that courage isn’t about being unafraid but about doing what needs done even when afraid. It sounds like you display a lot of courage in this story. 

Unfortunately, it’s time to wrap up, so here’s our last question, and it’s always a fun one. What is the weirdest thing on your bucket list?

Luna: I want to take a month and learn something totally useless—like sculpting or ballroom dancing—just to prove I can do it without it saving a life or cracking a case. A skill that doesn’t serve a purpose… for once.

CC: A useless skill sounds absolutely delightful. 

That’s it for now. If you liked getting to know Luna, I highly recommend you go check out Kate Angelo’s Girl Lost.

Bestselling and award-winning author Kate Angelo once sold a lion to a circus in Shreveport after her mom realized lions weren’t great house pets. Growing up, she was a bookworm, dog groomer, exotic pet wrangler, horse trainer, cowgirl, and teenage pool shark. After aging out of foster care, she cultivated her inner computer nerd and worked as a web programmer, but during a visit to Australia, she encountered Jesus and left the corporate world to pursue a life in ministry.

She is an author, minister, and public speaker from Southwest Missouri who works alongside her husband championing stronger marriages and families. She serves as Vice President and cofounder of their nonprofit Vanguard Marriage and Family Advocates. As Mom to 5 adult children, she’s fluent in both sarcasm and eye rolls. Kate is a coffee addict, tech enthusiast, productivity guru, expert knitter, summer fanatic, prayer warrior, dog lover, avid reader, and a bigtime klutz—just ask her doctor.

Having aged out of foster care and into her own found family, Kate brings a unique perspective to her writing, breathing life into flawed characters who find hope and healing amidst danger.

You can connect with them at:  Website & Newsletter  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Amazon  |  GoodReads  |  BookBub

Giveaway Details

Here’s your chance to win an e-copy or audiocopy copy of Girl Lost. Comment on the blog and enter using the Google Form for your chance to win! Entries close at 11:59 p.m. EST on 12/16. Open to legal U.S. residents. See Giveaway Policies for more details.

OOPS . . . Sorry for all the extra posts

For those who subscribe to my blog, you may have noticed a ridiculous number of posts coming to your inbox . . . Posts that are either too early or not complete. This is what happens when you try to use your sabbatical to get ahead and make next year easier for you. So my apologies. Sigh. You may see a few more come out over the next few weeks as I continue to try and get ahead, but hopefully I’ll get a grip so this will stop. Thanks so much for your patience and mercy.

What can I say? I hate technology. I hope y’all have a blessed weekend.

RCR: We Three Kings

RCR: We Three Kings

It’s another month of our challenge: Tackle Your TBR Pile. So go dig through that stack taller than you of books you’ve been meaning to read and start reading away. Since this year is based on your TBR pile, I will not have a recommendations page, but I’m leaving the link here so it’s easier for me to set up NEXT year’s blog posts.

Find recommendations at Reading Challenge Recommendations, Crystal Caudill’s Reading Friends Facebook group, Avid Readers of Christian Fiction, or Inspirational Historical Fiction Index.

Don’t forget to comment at the bottom of the post for your chance to win a book off my prize shelf. *The list of prizes from my shelf can be found here.*

Reading Challenge 2025: Tackle the TBR Pile

If you’re anything like me, you have a TBR pile that is bigger than you can hope to read in a lifetime. This is the year we’re going to try an tackle at least twelve of those books. Head to your shelves and find books that fit each month’s challenge.

This Month: November – Award-winning book

Next Month: December – Oldest book on your TBR pile

We Three Kings: A Romance Christmas Collection

by Crystal Caudill, Cara Putman, Angela Ruth Strong

Yep, totally cheating this month because I JUST finished my draft mid-week and the first book I picked up to read during my sabbatical was a new release that I’ve been waiting for since I read the first book in the series. So I’m cheating and featuring the Christmas collection I was in with the amazing Cara Putman and Angela Ruth Strong. It really was a blessing to work with and learn from these spectacular women, and their stories were unique, and I enjoyed reading them. (Especially since they were the descendants of my characters. LOL) If you’ve read my Hidden Hearts of the Gilded Age series (the one with the Secret Service operatives), you’ll see Josiah Isaacs as a side character in my award-winning story “Star of Wonder.” (Y’all, winning that award still makes me cry as that award is physical representation of God’s goodess, restoration, and redeeming of a horrible horrible horrible lots of horrible years in the midst of a horrible seven years of family medical trauma. I’m not tooting my own horn, because it still blows my mind that this story would win. It doesn’t makes sense to me. But God. And I am so thankful for His working and lavishing great love on me.) Okay enough with the asides.

If you like WWII-related stories, you will ADORE Cara’s as the hero and heroine work to identify and restore art stolen by the Germans to their rightful owners, set in a bomb-stricken town where loving and serving the community brings about a new love and understanding of Christmas.

If you like rom-com with depth, Angela Ruth Strong’s story is perfect. This soon-to-be single mom is an event planner who is in need of kindness and a restoration of the Christmas spirit. Funny with depth, I love how Angela takes a hard thing and makes it beautiful.


Genre: Christmas collection spanning 1880s, Post WWII, and contemporary timelines

Plot Overview:

In this Christmas collection, Weise men still seek Jesus—and love

“Star of Wonder” by Crystal Caudill

The Christmas-themed maiden voyage of his family’s grand steamer ship was supposed to be Aldrich Weise’s chance both to instill investor confidence and to romance Celestia Isaacs. Instead, he must foil a criminal and leave his lady love behind forever.

“Beauty Bright” by Cara Putman

Lieutenant Charles Weise served as a Monuments Man after World War II and now works to restore stolen art to rightful owners. Captain Lillian Thorsen pairs up with him not only to return treasures but also to fix the war-torn lives around them.

“Perfect Light” by Angela Ruth Strong

Essential oils mogul Brendon Weise is drawn to Lacey Foster, the event planner for his huge Christmas lights festival. But when he inadvertently makes a spectacle of her on television, Lacey wants nothing to do with him. Will a chance to give gifts to those in need at Christmas be the key to discovering common ground—and maybe love?

 

Purchase Links:

Amazon


Giveaway

For your chance to win an e-book copy of We Three Kings or a book off my prize shelf, comment with what book YOU read for this month. Entries end on the 7th of each month at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. *Giveaway Policies can be found here.

 


What did you read for the challenge? What were your thoughts on it? Would you recommend it?

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