Belles of Christmas: Frost Fair (Mindy Burbidge Strunk) Books in Order

Belles of Christmas: Frost Fair is a shared Regency romance series set around the famous Frost Fair on the frozen Thames. The fair gives each story a lively winter opening, with crowds, temporary stalls, ice beneath the characters' feet, and plenty of opportunities for chance meetings. Mindy Burbidge Strunk's book, Thawing the Viscount's Heart, turns one awkward first encounter into a Christmas romance shaped by war memories and prejudice.

Gabriella Babineaux has left France after her father's death and is living in England under the protection of a family friend. She hopes the Frost Fair will be a welcoming beginning to her introduction to English society. Instead, she collides with a gentleman on the ice and is sharply dismissed because she is French.

It is not the beginning either of them wanted.

That gentleman is Aaron Campbell, a viscount recently returned from the Napoleonic wars. He has inherited a title he never expected to hold and carries painful memories of betrayal. Gabriella's French accent brings those memories close, even though she has done nothing to deserve his hostility.

When Gabriella later becomes a guest at Aaron's country estate for Christmastide, they cannot avoid one another. The story gives them time to move past assumptions. Gabriella has to find her footing in a society that can treat her as an enemy before it sees her as a person. Aaron has to face the way grief and anger have narrowed his world.

The Frost Fair is the shared link for the wider series, but this novel has its own complete romance. It uses the setting well, moving from the bright bustle of the ice fair to the quieter pressure of a country-house Christmas. There is romance, family tension, and danger, but the emotional center is the difficult work of seeing someone clearly.

Readers can start with Thawing the Viscount's Heart without reading the other Frost Fair books. It is a good fit for anyone who likes holiday historical romance with a wintry setting, a guarded hero, and a heroine whose generosity does not mean she is without strength.