Barri Bryan is the pen name for the husband and wife writing team of Billie and Herb Houston. Billie is a former high school English teacher. She has a B.A. in history and an M.A. in psychology. Herb has a B.A. in theology. He has worked as a computer programmer, a teacher, and a technical writer. Since 1990, the couple has worked full time as a writing/editing team. They live in a rural community south of San Antonio, Texas.

Present...
Linden Bay Romance


Charade

When gorgeous stranger Trace Randolph bursts into Lynn Evan’s Upper Crust Specialty Bake Shoppe, accuses her mother of seducing his father, then demands that Lynn put a stop to their dangerous affair, Lynn can’t help but burst out laughing. Lynn’s mother is a straight-laced, mousy little woman who wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to go about seducing a man. And she certainly couldn’t be endangering the life of Trace’s father by placing unreasonable sexual demands on him…or could she?

Lynn already has more problems than she can handle, she surely doesn’t need this, too! The building that houses her bakery is in danger of being condemned for building code violations she can’t afford to have fixed. But even more disturbing, is her tenth high school reunion that is just around the corner; her ex-husband is going to be there, and Lynn has yet to find a date!

As the arguments heat up and the sparks fly, Lynn learns that Trace is a carpenter, and she gets talked into a zany plan to help break up their parents’ affair in exchange for bringing her building up to code before her citation date. Does Lynn stop there? No way! The shrewd businesswoman also talks the hunky Trace into posing as her reunion date.

But who is fooling whom? As Trace discovers the voluptuous, passionate woman lurking under the starched white bakery apron, he and Lynn become more embroiled in their scheme of deceit. Feelings get out of hand and the pretense of seduction becomes all too real in this fun, fabulous, and fiery new read by Barri Bryan!

Whiskey Creek Press



Love Will Find A Way

In the charged silence of the room, her husband’s words erupt like an explosion. “I want a divorce.” Emily Franklin’s twenty-five year marriage is over. With renewed strength and courage she didn’t know she possessed, Emily sets out to rebuild her life.

Enter The Reverend Dennis Morrison, a compassionate man who awakens in Emily quiet but compelling emotions. Then abruptly and unexpectedly, her chastened and repenting ex-husband reappears, asking her forgiveness and pleading for her to take him back.

Whiskey Creek Press - Torrid



East of the Sun

East of the sun and west of the moon – who could ever hope to travel to such a far away place? Pearl the Woodcutter’s Daughter must find her way to that distant kingdom if she hopes to rescue her handsome Prince Charming from the spell the evil Troll Queen has put on him. She embarks on an erotic journey that will take her to mystical and mysterious places. Can she find her way to her prince in time to rescue him from a fate worse than death?

Vintage Romance Publishing


Always in my Heart

For three years Cara’s husband, Rand, has been missing in action and presumed dead. She has moved on with her life to form new relationships and make new commitments. As World War II draws to a close, she is shocked to learn that Rand very much alive and coming home.

Past...
Linden Bay Romance


Starting Over

From the first moment he saw Diane, dancing in another man’s arms, Burt Carlisle knew she was the woman for him. The handsome and charismatic attorney swept the young and innocent Diane off her feet. After a fiery romance led to an unplanned pregnancy they married, settling into what seemed like the perfect life.

Now it’s twenty years later. Their only child is in college, Burt’s career is at an all time high, and he’s still as deeply in love with his wife as ever. But he’s far from the model husband and after years of feeling second to Burt’s career, Diane has become restless. With the passage of time she not only lost her confidence, she lost her sense of self, her independence, and the ardent feelings that she once had for her husband.

When Diane announces that she has to return to their hometown to take care of her elderly aunt, Burt is supportive. But when he hears that she’s taken a job there and that her old flame is in town, he suddenly realizes that he could very well lose the woman he adores unless he is willing to fight for her.

Starting Over is a compelling story about a couple lucky enough to have found one another in their youth and smart enough to go in search of themselves as adults. As always, Barri Bryan does a fabulous job of capturing the love and the desire: the desire to rekindle faith in one’s self and the passion in one’s marriage, the desire to admit what’s gone wrong and to make changes, and the desire to simply commit to Starting Over.

New Concepts Publishing


To Seduce A Demon

A reluctant hero... A desperate woman….

Guy Bridwell’s psychic abilities have proven to be more of a curse than a gift and he is less than enthusiastic about summoning his powers for any reason. He discovers, however, that Clara Stonebridge’s pleas for help are as impossible to resist as she is....

Hostage - CAPTURED

No good deed ever goes unpunished. . .

Four tales of dark, dangerous men who conquer--defying the world to take what they need--and the women who tame them.

No good deed ever goes unpunished... Abigail Warren risks her own safety to come to the aid of Raul Mendoza. He rewards her kind gesture by taking her as his hostage.

Speak My Love

Ian wants nothing to do with Priscilla Murray, but on his friend's behalf, he sets out to woo her. He never imagined he'd risk making a friend an enemy by falling in love with her....

Kiss Me I'm Irish

Eighteen years ago, Connal Cassidy and Margaret Donovan shared an idyllic summer filled with wonder and romance. Then Connal went away and Margaret never saw him again. Now he's back and giving every indication that he'd like to rekindle the dying embers of their old affair. But Margaret is older now and wiser, or is she?

Connal Cassidy is determined to once more win the heart of the only woman he's ever loved. He soon realizes this will be no easy task. Margaret seems determined to fight the sexual magnetism that still exists between them.

Canaan

Coral Morgan is running from an immoral man who would sell her to the highest bidder. Her only hope of escape is to assume another woman's identity and take her place on a wagon train heading west. She has scarcely begun her journey when she discovers that she has escaped one wicked circumstance only to be faced with another, even more insidious fate.

Wagon master Luke McDade is, by his own admission, a drifter and a hell-raiser. He likes being footloose and having the freedom to keep discovering what's over the next hill. Then he meets the mysterious and beautiful Lilly Malone who sets his heart spinning even though he suspects from the beginning that Lilly is not who she claims to be. The surprise comes when he discovers not who she is, but what she is.

You Belong To Me

Julie Anderson is not happy that her ex-husband is coming home to attend their daughter's wedding. Max has broken her heart in the past--not once, but twice. Thank goodness she's too wise to fall under his spell again, or is she?

Max Anderson has some reservations about his daughter's coming marriage to the son of his ex wife's business partner. He shows up early and walks into a situation that begs him to intervene. When he does all hell breaks loose.

A Long Shadow

For most of her life Tyler Carson has been a square peg that does not fit into the round hole of a small town's 1955 society. She's thirty and still unmarried, she's had more than one love affair, she has a job that is traditionally man's work, but the crowning insult is she couldn't care less what people think. At least that's how the majority of Summerville’s citizens perceive her.

Grant Madison, military man and son of the town's most revered citizen is home again after many years of serving in the army in Europe and Korea. So many challenges await him: The care and rearing of his ten-year-old niece, learning a new trade; adjusting once more to a way of life that seems, after all this time, alien and outmoded. But his biggest challenge is facing and working with the unorthodox and fiery tempered Tyler Carson, the woman he had loved and then left six years before.

Another Time, Another Place

When city-bred, college educated Grace Collins comes to the isolated community of Fairview to teach school she finds herself in a world alien to anything she has ever known. The clever, determined Grace sets about to educate its backwoods residents and instigate change.

Then she meets Cody Slayton and immediately feels a connection to this strange and mysterious man who is wise beyond education and schooled in matters that Grace cannot begin to comprehend. Is Cody the answer to Grace's elusive dreams or is he the reincarnation of her worst nightmare?

The Prince with a Hole in His Heart

Melancholy Prince Evander sets out on a quest to find his heart’s desire, the fair maiden who can lift his spirits, and mend the hole in his heart. He travels incognito and in the company of one Willie Wraskel, a defrocked wizard with a quick wit and a questionable past. Together Evander and Willie encounter adventure and adversity as they romp through bedrooms, harems and brothels in search of Evander’s true love.

Lucky

Recipe For Trouble.... Take one devil-may-care cowboy bent on revenge. Add a frightened young woman desperate for a place to hide. Stir in a dangerous outlaw, a marauding band of Ku Klux Clansmen, and three inept matchmakers. Add to this mixture a bank’s missing loot and one dishonest deputy sheriff. Stir well then settle back and wait for the kettle to boil.

A Love Like Mine/A Tender Lie

She had run away from love. . . .

Rachel had loved Jake Reardon with all the fervor and passion first love brings, but after a bitter argument, she ran away from him and all she knew.

Returning home, she finds everything has changed. . . .

After years of self-imposed exile, Rachel MacCall returns to her hometown to discover that the home she always thought she could come back to has changed. Her grandmother has died and left her a sizable inheritance. For a recently widowed, near-destitute woman with an injured teenage son, this would seem a godsend.

She never expected to see him again. . . .

It would be, except Jake Reardon is the administrator of Rachel's estate. . .and he has no intention of letting her escape him again.

Return to Paradise

She must make a decision. . . .

When a divorce from her husband of twenty-five years leaves Kate McClure financially destitute, and alienated from her two adult children, she returns to Paradise Ranch, the homestead she left when she was a child.

Her next door neighbor is handsome, charismatic, Hank Sinclair. Despite his admission that he wants no lasting relationship, Kate enters into an affair with Hank, and finds herself falling in love with him.

But pain and rejection have taught Kate some valuable lessons. She is no longer willing to compromise her own integrity or settle for second best. She sets about to put her house and her life in order, with some unexpected and startling results.

Honky Tonk Cowboy

Ex-convict Sarah Scott returns home after serving four years in prison with only one thought in mind, to create for herself a secure and stable life. Then she meets Blake Hamilton, ex-rodeo cowboy turned night club owner. The chemistry between them is explosive and instantaneous. A passionate encounter blossoms into a tempestuous affair. But there are problems, Blake's family disapproves of Sarah. Her friends dislike Blake. Sarah wants forever. Blake refuses to make a commitment. This star-crossed pair seems headed for heartbreak, then fate intervenes in a most unexpected way.

Whiskey Creek Press


Love An Anthology

Where the Heart Is:

When Angela Murray left Paul’s Valley ten years ago in the wake of heartbreak and rejection, she vowed that no matter how uncertain her life became, she would never again return to this place. After all these years of self-imposed exile, the finality of death has done what the uncertainties of life could not—it has brought her home once more, to her sister’s funeral and to face her brother-in-law, Dan, who is the only man Angela has ever loved. Can she hope to mend a broken past and heal old wounds or has fate conspired with circumstance to once more snatch happiness from her grasp?