We're celebrating the return of GLH books in Barbour Books' "Love Endures" series. Six titles will be released, one each month, beginning with "The Beloved Stranger" in January 2012. This classic was first published in 1933 by J.B. Lippincott Company.

Grace Livingston Hill's books have been out of print for quite some time. While it's been possible to find reprints of some of the older public domain books (those from 1922 or earlier) this is the first time in years that the later titles will be made widely available to a new generation of readers

Barbour Books says the series is "lightly updated", so we're hoping that only minor changes have been made. We'll let you know as we review each book prior to its release and we'll be giving away a copy of "The Beloved Stranger", too. Watch for details!

As January approaches, we'll post more about the book and help to set the scene with a bit of 1930's history and trivia, and even period photos of Grace.

Click to pre-order RIGHT NOW:

The Beloved Stranger • The Prodigal Girl • A New Name

Re-Creations • Tomorrow About This Time • Crimson Roses

Read Chapter 1 of

The Beloved Stranger or The Prodigal Girl.

Here is Barbour's synopsis of "The Beloved Stranger"...

When Sherrill stumbles on her fiancé and his secretary, Arla, in a passionate discussion minutes before her wedding ceremony, she is shocked—but her choice is clear. Arla will marry Carter in that day’s ceremony, not her. Sherrill survives the ceremony with the help of a stranger who remains constantly and comfortingly by her side. But after the disastrous wedding passes, Sherrill’s emerald and diamond necklace goes missing, and Sherrill finds herself suspecting the very man who had come to mean so much. Can Sherrill truly trust her beloved stranger? Or will she be left at the altar once again?

The "Love Endures" series will include:

The Beloved Stranger , January 2012 The Prodigal Girl , February 2012 A New Name , March 2012 Re-Creations , April 2012 Tomorrow About This Time , May 2012 Crimson Roses , June 2012 Blue Ruin, July 2012 Coming Through the Rye, August 2012 The Christmas Bride, September 2012 Ariel Custer, October 2012 Not Under the Law, November 2012 Job's Niece, December 2012

Grace Livingston Hill wrote several Christmas-themed novels and short stories. One of the most common events in those stories are the "Bethlehems" that her characters seem to whip up out of nothing—bits of crepe paper; a noah's ark set; an electric star; and blocks for those little flat-roofed houses with the outside staircases.

There were "chalk-drawing" Bethlehems, too. Grace was skilled at illustrating sermons wth this long-forgotten art. We use all sorts of multimedia presentations today, but our generation didn't invent this stuff—chalk drawings did the same thing and required much more talent than just pasting some clip art into a power point slide!

Well, these creations were not works of fiction. This fall, I had the chance to look through some of Grace's photo albums. In one of them (it was one of those great old albums with the black paper pages), I turned the page and just stopped. There it was! It was just as she described it, right down to the wooly lambs on the hillside.

I'm not sure exactly where this was taken, but judging from the other photos in the album, it's the porch outside her home in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. A photo of the Christmas tree a few pages away is marked "about 1930".

How many "Bethlehems" are there? I know of a few. Do you know of any I've missed? Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

• "The Story of a Whim" (serial later published in book form, 1903)
• "Something Quite Forgotten" (1932 - short story in "Miss Lavinia's Call")
• "The Christmas Bride" (novel, 1934)
• "The Substitute Guest" (novel, 1936)
• "Stranger Within the Gates" (novel, 1939)
• "Astra" (novel, 1941)