Grace Maroon is a widow, grieving the loss of her sailor husband. He has been lost at sea for nearly a year, and she feels it is best for her and her young son if they move on. The only problem is, her son, Sam Maroon, doesn’t want to move on. He bears his father’s name, and he feels the loss deeply. He wants his father to come home, and resents his mother when she moves them both to Montana because a rancher answers her mail order bride ad.But life is not as Grace hopes it will be. She struggles in her relationship with her son and her new husband, and when her son runs away, she wonders if anything will ever be ok again.Will Grace be able to make it through this struggle? Will they find her son before something terrible happens? Will they ever be able to be a family again?*This is a MOB short story and includes 20 western, historical, Christian, clean, MOB short stories by Christian Michael.*

This is the story of Bianca... Bianca was only twenty-one when her family was killed in a tragic accident. When her aunt and uncle move in and make it very clear that they want nothing to do with her, she takes the only option of escape given to her. She becomes a mail order bride. But any hope of love is dashed on her first day when Jonah makes it clear to her that he does not want her to be his anything- except a permanent maid. Jonah Cassidy is sure that he does not want anything to do with love. The only reason he married Bianca was to ensure that she didn’t leave as his other housekeepers had done. But Jonah finds himself at war with his own emotions when Bianca proves to be everything that he believed he did not want but has always yearned for. Will he chance his heart on her?   

Pregnant and alone... Life is lonely for Jessie Stokes. She has recently lost her husband. He was the love of her life, her best friend, and the father of the child she recently learned she is carrying. Jessie doesn’t know what to do. There aren’t many young men in the small Missouri town where she lives that would ask for her hand in marriage, but she doesn’t want to raise this child alone. She knows she needs to find a husband, and soon. In response to an ad in the paper, Jessie moves clear across the country to California State, looking for love. What she finds is a different story, as the man she marries is looking for a maid, not a bride. Will something change in him that shows him how incredible she is? Will she find the love she yearns to have and the father she wants for her child?   

Lloyd Dutton wasn’t ready to be a father and he certainly wasn’t ready to become a single parent. When his wife died suddenly, he was left with one option: find a new bride. When Millie Hoff’s sister Morgan accidentally became pregnant Millie knew what she had to do. Giving up the promise of marriage as a mail order bride to her sister is the only way to ensure that Morgan and her child will be cared for. For Millie that means letting go of a man she was falling in love with, but she would do anything for her sister. When tragedy strikes on their trip out West, Millie is left alone to take the place of her sister as Lloyd’s bride once again. How will she find the words to tell him of their plans to trick him? Can he learn to forgive Millie? Will their attraction, begun long before Morgan’s tragic death, survive the unknown and fear in Lloyd’s heart?   

Sometimes love can be unexpected... A young widow, Jillian is trapped in a life she hates. Her mother-in-law seems determined to crush whatever beauty life holds. Jillian is determined to escape for the sake of her unborn child. Late one night, she flees to the wide-open spaces of Montana to find a sanctuary. In desperation, David places an ad, looking only for someone to keep his house. When a young woman dressed in black disembarks from the train, he is intrigued by her pale sadness. She agrees to marry David in exchange for a safe place to raise her child. Jillian is alone in the world and has never known love. David has no time or need for romance but sometimes true love can be unexpected. Can a marriage of convenience become something more than they could have ever imagined?   

Life goes from bad to worse for Hope Cromwell when she finds out she is pregnant. She is struggling to make her marriage last, but there’s only so much she can do. Her husband leaves her, and she can only wonder what she will do with the house payments, no job, and a baby on the way. In desperation she turns to an ad for a mail order bride and heads out into the great unknown. What she finds isn’t a husband, but a man who wants a maid to take care of the house. No matter how hard she tries to make it work, Hope feels like she is drowning slowly and makes up her mind to leave it all behind. Will she really go back home to hardship and trial? Will her new husband risk losing her? Or is she trapped in another unhappy marriage?   

Sometimes falling in love isn't with the one you expect... Newly widowed and already blossoming with child, Laura had few options for her future. The kindness of a waitress launched her into an adventure as she accepted an offer as a mail order bride and started off to Colorado. Ben, handsome and conveniently attentive, stayed by her side throughout the long, and sometimes dangerous journey. Laura knew she was in trouble…she was falling in love…and it wasn’t with her intended. Could she part from the man she loved to be with one she’d never met?   

Constance Lowell is a brilliant and rather outspoken young woman. Given free reign of her thoughts from a young age and schooled at only the best women’s institutions, she doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind. On a visit to a factory out west, she is struck by the ages of the workers, some as young at seven. When she tells the foreman about the deplorable conditions, especially for children and proceeds to remove the child from the environment; she gains the attention of the factory owner. Jameson Smitz has owned the Bethel Clothing Company since it was given to him as an incentive to earn his Master’s in Business Administration from Stanford. He does so five years later in 1890. He runs a tight but fair ship and when confronted by Constance about his practices of using child labor he is truly taken aback. Promising change and more transparency, Jameson begins a correspondence with the young woman when she heads back east to attend school. Will these two trust that God knows their stories and the endings to them, or will self-doubt triumph?   

She's pregnant and alone but will she find love? Life is lonely for Jessie Stokes. She has recently lost her husband. He was the love of her life, her best friend, and the father of the child she recently learned she is carrying. Jessie doesn’t know what to do. There aren’t many young men in the small Missouri town where she lives that would ask for her hand in marriage, but she doesn’t want to raise this child alone. She knows she needs to find a husband, and soon. In response to an ad in the paper, Jessie moves clear across the country to California State, looking for love. What she finds is a different story, as the man she marries is looking for a maid, not a bride. Will something change in him that shows him how incredible she is? Will she find the love she yearns to have and the father she wants for her child? Will the sun ever shine on her shoulders again?   

I’m torn when I think about what I must do to give myself and my unborn child a sense of dignity. Marrying a man hundreds of miles away without ever having met him is something I would never imagined myself doing bet these desperate times are calling for desperate measures. I can no longer sit by and bear the scrutiny of my hometown, and if two lonely people can come together and create happiness, why should I not try? I long for another chance at life, where I can be with a man who loves and lives for God, a man who I can rebuild my life with once and for all.   

Esme Higgins had grown up an orphan and had spent the past three years as a widow and single mother. Unwanted – and unceasing - attention from other men drove Esme to desperately answer an ad for a mail order bride. Now she has travelled cross-country with a little daughter in tow to try to start life again. She hoped to find friendship, but can love be on the horizon? Kade Scott wanted a God-fearing woman to be his wife and companion. What he pictured when he placed his ad was not what he got. Esme and Sophie have turned his life upside down. The happiness they built is shattered to pieces when a face from the past haunts them again. When Sophie and Esme’s life is threatened, Kade takes matters into his own hands. Will he be able to save the two people who matter more to him than life itself?   

Harvey Jenkins is in need of a wife with social skills and decorum. He’s found himself invited to an important meeting that could make or break the fate of his ranch and, in order to appear settled and secure, he thinks a wife will be the linchpin for the deal. May Gibson has little choice but to agree to move out west with her mistress, Genevieve Stanton when she agrees to become a mail order bride. Adjusting to the trials of the West isn’t something Genevieve is used to but May seems perfectly suited to. When Harvey begins to fancy May over Genevieve the fight for his affections begins. Can May overcome her position as a maid and realize her equal footing with Genevieve? Will Harvey admit to his feelings for May before it’s too late?   

Stood up on her wedding day, will she find love again? Lillian is a beautiful southern girl who has been dreaming of her wedding day her entire life. She is the golden girl of her family, beautiful, talented and graceful but beneath that is an intelligent and defiant young woman who wants more from life than to be the decorative plaything of a man. She thinks she’s found this in Benson, but on her wedding day he is nowhere to be found. Heartbroken and secretly pregnant, she knows that she has little time to arrange another life for her and her child. She becomes a mail order bride for a handsome, wealthy rancher in the west. After embarking on the biggest journey of her life, she arrives in California to find a man who seems to have no interest in her. Still reeling from her earlier abandonment, can she make space in her heart for a cowboy with his own hidden tragedy? This is a MOB short story and includes 20 western, historical, Christian, clean, MOB short stories by Christian Michael.

Elena Elroy looks nothing like her beautiful sisters. Where they are fair of hair and skin, she is as dark as night, her hair jet black and her eyes dark brown. She doesn’t remember being adopted by the Elroy’s and they almost never speak to her of the events of her life before she came to live with them. When no one wishes to wed her, however, she fears spinsterhood and accepts the correspondence of a gentleman in Oklahoma. Paul Broche has been a witness to some terrible things in life, but it’s the memories of the Trail of Tears that sit most heavily in his mind. So much so that he’s severely focused on helping the Choctaw Nation reclaim what was wrongfully taken from them. His mission proves futile, but through correspondence with a beautiful woman back east he may find out bits of his own history. Can these two come together and truly accept their differences, or will their difficult histories be their downfall?

Love was not what they wanted... but fate had other plans. Sarah Dickerson is a beautiful and talented young woman. When her husband is killed in a terrible snowstorm, Sarah is left alone; except for the miracle she carries. Still, she knows that a child without a father is an unwelcomed gift in the grips of society and so, with a heavy heart, Sarah answers a mail order bride advertisement and heads west to San Antonio, Texas. Bernd Blindow is a handsome German native who recently moved to Texas, only to find himself overwhelmed by the land and underwhelmed with the selection of available women. In desperate need of a woman to keep his home, he puts out an ad for a wife; never expecting such a gorgeous woman to accept his offer. Not interested in falling in love, Bernd makes his intentions clear and life picks up a nice routine. Neither Bernd nor Sarah are looking for love when it comes calling. Full of grief and joy, Sarah finds it hard to let anyone step into her late husband’s shoes and Bernd just isn’t interested but sometimes fate has plans of her own. Will these two find the love God wants for them, or will they settle for a life of quiet anonymity?