New Beginnings in Welcombe Bay: Sweets By The Sea, #3

By Kate Darroch

From Kate Darroch, holder of the 2022 Incipere award for Best Christian Fiction and the Readers Favorite Gold Medal, comes another old-fashioned love story.

In this book Lily and Eric take a giant step towards Happy Ever After and Irene sets out to unravel a mystery where every thread holds a secret.

The Gee quilt has vanished! Dive into the heart of Welcombe, where Eric is buiding a new life and Irene -- ably helped by Bob -- decodes stitches, confronts the quilt thieves and mends a community that seems to be coming apart at the seams when the Gee disappears.

Can our friends find lasting love while searching for the quilt?

BONUS  this edition also contains the prequel: Cookies & Eggnog from Welcombe Bay

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kate Darroch
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781944690328

Kate Darroch

Enjoying a placid life in coastal Devon, Kate brings her love of reading Cozy Sleuths, her 30 years writing experience, and her knowledge of foreign climes, to writing her quirky Travel Cozies. Kate hopes her readers will find as much joy in Màiri Maguire Cozies as she finds in reading Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Ellery Queen Magazine, and Steve Higgs’ Patricia Fisher. The colossal sense of community in the hamlets of Devon took Kate back in spirit to the Glasgow of her childhood, and that's how Màiri was born. Màiri is a Scots Irish teacher whose hometown is Glasgow as it was in the 1970s, an era Kate fondly remembers. In Britain, the Seventies ushered in a time of huge ideological change. The world opened up and class barriers were vanishing. It was an exciting time to be a woman. Kate hopes to bring a sense of that excitement to you now, with a soupcon of women's lives during that epoch of upheaval, together with a little of the culture of Europe; all wrapped up in fun, frothy, fast paced Cozy Mysteries, with just enough clues and twists to keep you guessing until the end.  Kate believes that Reading should be a pleasure available to all, and so she is passionate about Accessibility. All her fiction is published in Large Print and Dyslexia Friendly editions, standard print, eBooks and audiobooks.

Book preview

Dedicated with love and gratitude to my darling Matt, without whose selfless love, caring, and generosity, I would not still be alive to write this book or any other

My dear readers, it is my great pleasure to give you the Gift of this simple Christmas Story

Cookies & Eggnog from Welcombe Bay

which is the story of how Lily came to return to Welcombe Bay

as a Thank You for buying the earlier books in this series.

If you don’t buy

New Beginnings in Welcombe Bay

But you did buy another book in the series

Then write to me to get your complimentary copy of

Cookies and Eggnog from Welcombe Bay

Cookies and Eggnog from Welcombe Bay

Chapter 1

Ten sleeps until Christmas . A big smile paints itself on my face as I think that. Christmas is such an exciting time. My favourite holiday is Harvest Festival, but Christmas is special. This will be my fifth Christmas with Gary.

My smile vanishes. I move briskly across to the cupboard where I’ve put all the decorations, trying to win back the fluttery anticipation and happiness of just a moment ago. But it’s no use. All my joy and excitement had vanished when I thought of Gary. Maybe it’s a sin, to get upset every time you think of your husband, but I can’t help it.

I wish he were here putting up the decorations with me, and that we could get back to the happiness of our first Christmas together, as newlyweds. Well, not quite newlyweds, but newly sharing a home together. I’d moved in when I discovered our baby was coming, because Gary, who doesn’t believe in God, said casually, ‘Move in, babe. What does a piece of paper matter?’

And he was right, of course. A piece of paper doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the piece of paper that I’d wanted, it’s all the things that come with it. Your families happy for you. Your friends all excited about the journey you’re embarking on. Father Tom standing smiling at the two of us as he blesses our union. The joy of knowing that Lord Jesus has reached down from heaven to bless the love we share. The giant party that Grandma and Granda would have wanted to throw for us in Sweets By The Sea, the café on the sands at Welcombe Bay that’s been owned by my family for over 150 years.

How my Granda loved to joke that the café was full of bakers and our home, three bedrooms over the café, too full of Bakers. Even though Bakers had only happened when he married Grandma. Her mother had been a Mrs. Higgins, famous for her mouth-watering pies. Her mother’s mother had been a Mrs. Higgins, too, the first in the line of café-owners. She’d bought the almost-derelict house on the sands late in life and devoted herself to fixing it up.

But my mother had been a Mrs. Baker, because my dad was Grandma’s son, and I’d been a Miss Baker. So it was true that when I was growing up, our home was full of Bakers.

I always loved it when Granda said that, because right after he’d said it, he would hug me and say But it can never be full enough of beautiful flowers like our Lily, right, Mother? And Grandma would pat my head if it was within reach, and if I was outside patting-distance, she would smile and blow me a kiss. One day our Lily Baker will be a super baker, she’d say.

I smile again now at the bittersweet memory of baking with Grandma all afternoon on my eighteenth birthday. I’d been so excited, because for the first time she’d shared one of her secret pie recipes with me. We’d baked a strawberry shortcake together, and we’d laughed when she said, ‘You’ll be the baker in Sweets one day, Lily, but not as a Baker, eh?’ and when she added, ‘Now that you’ve grown up, Lily, I’ll teach you all my recipes.’ I was on top of the world.

I’d been so excited then, but it was nothing compared to what I felt when I first saw Gary. One of his mates brought him to my birthday party, and when I saw