Women Historic Western Fiction

Loreli Winters never imagined she'd end up a "mail-order bride" in middle-of-nowhere Kansas - until the two adorable orphan nieces of a dusky dream named Jake Reed beg her to be their new "mama". And one look at the dark, devastatingly handsome man is enough to entice her to abandon her California plans and stay put for a while in this one-horse frontier town.

The daughter of a fallen woman, Mattie Armstrong’s life should have ended in poverty and failure. But at 14, Mattie escaped her gossiping neighbors and her loneliness, and went to work for Dr. Dinsmore. There, she began to nurture a dream that would take her to the Nebraska prairies as the state’s first woman doctor. This novel breathes life into the Old West, leaving the listener feeling as if Mattie is close by sharing her insights into life in the prairie towns.

In 1946 a young couple is brutally murdered in the East Texas town of Cold Springs. Now—34 years later—rumor has it that the sole suspect in these murders has returned. While the response to this report ranges from giddy excitement to vile loathing, another dead body turns up.

Margaret "Peggy" Thomas and her husband, James, lead a simple and peaceful life; she tends to the farm while he works as sheriff in the nearby town of Bleak Knob. Their evenings are spent doing the thing they love most - being together. One afternoon, after picking up fabric at the general store, Margaret watches helplessly as James is gunned down on the sidewalk in front of her. Days of mourning turn into weeks and then years, filled with little more than grief and alcohol.

Twenty-six-year-old Katie Macauley has placed all her hope in Hope Springs, a small town in the 1870 Wyoming Territory. But if she wants to return home to Ireland to make amends with her estranged family, she’ll need to convince the influential Joseph Archer to hold true to his word and keep her on his payroll as his housekeeper - despite her Irish roots. When Joseph agrees to keep Katie on ash is housekeeper, the feud erupts anew, and Katie becomes the reluctant figurehead for the Irish townsfolk.

After Cordelia Channing endures the lethal winter alone in the Rocky Mountains, she is discovered by Thomas Nash, a solitary mountain man who wants only to hunt and be left alone to grieve the woman he could not save. Delia aches to go east, but over the days and miles, she finds her battered spirit yearning for this self-reliant trapper, who stirs her longing and wakes her heart.

Logan Huett is a former army scout who discovers magnificent Sycamore Cañon in central Arizona, where he intends to homestead. With some trepidation, he wires East to the woman he had courted back in Missouri, proposing marriage. Lucinda Baker, a schoolteacher, accepts. But pioneer life proves very hard for her. Living is crude. She helps in the building of what will be their home but finds the loneliness where they have settled oppressive. The dangers are many and constant. But despite the hardships, despite the dangers, Lucinda remains strong.

In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange one thousand horses for one thousand White women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin.

Banished by her grandfather at the age of 18, Spring Lee has survived scandal to claim her own little slice of Paradise, Wyoming. She’s proud of working her ranch alone and unwilling to share it with a stranger - especially one like Garrett McCray, who makes her second-guess her resolve to avoid men. Garrett escaped slavery years ago and is now a reporter in Washington. He’s traveled west to interview Dr. Colton Lee for an article, yet it’s Lee’s fearless sister, Spring, who captures his interest.

When Bridget McQuarry comes to settle in Primrose Creek, she has nothing to lose; her husband, Mitch, was killed in the Civil War, and she has lost her family farm to ruinous Reconstruction taxes. With her baby son and a sister to care for, Bridget vows to make a new start out West. But when Mitch's best friend reappears in her life, he sparks a forbidden passion she thought was forever buried.

Skye McQuarry's heart belongs to one man: Primrose Creek's lumber baron, Jake Vigil. After a shattering heartbreak in his past, Jake vowed to never again take a chance on love - until he came to know beautiful Skye. But their delicate bond faces the ultimate test when a business deal threatens to tear them apart, and battle lines are drawn between two passionate hearts. Skye is determined to stand her ground. Then a surprise from Jake's past unexpectedly comes to her - a discovery that may be just the key to unlocking true, deep, and trusting love.

An elegant jewel from an English finishing school, Christy McQuarry was bound to turn heads when she and her younger sister, Megan, came to settle in Primrose Creek. Town marshall Zachary Shaw knows that Christy sees what few men in the rugged pioneer town can provide: a secure future and a comfortable home. But he is not immune to Christy's charms.

When Faith married her husband Roger Nolan he seemed to be an upstanding businessman, owner of a remote mercantile outside the town of Bountiful, Oregon. But Faith quickly learned the truth - that her husband is dishonest in his business practices and likes his liquor, turning mean when he indulges. When Faith discovers that Roger has yet again failed to deliver critical winter supplies to Nathan Bartlett, owner of the nearby logging camp, she takes the order up the mountain herself. Furious, Roger confronts Faith when she returns, and she is knocked unconscious.

It's February, 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter, she has nothing to lose. She joins 43 other women and two pious reverends on the dangerous 2,000-mile journey west. None are prepared for the hardships they face on the trek or for the strengths they didn't know they possessed. Maggie discovers she’s not the only one looking to leave dark secrets behind.

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming, but within a year’s time she’s fallen in love—both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy in the flat, brown corner of the state where winter blizzards are unforgiving and the summer heat relentless. But Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success, and each deeply felt tragedy.

Colorado, 1918. World War I is raging overseas, but it’s the home front battling for survival. With the Spanish Flu rampant, Denver’s schools are converted into hospitals, churches and funeral homes are closed, and nightly horse-drawn wagons collect corpses left in the street. Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Ohio after their parents’ death. Helen, a nurse, and Lutie, a carefree advertising designer at Neusteter’s department store, share a small, neat house and each finds a local beau—for Helen a doctor, for Lutie a young student who soon enlists.

A woman of courage makes an epic journey.

Take a 3,000-mile journey with Amanda Pearson as she leaves the disgrace of a broken engagement and joins the work at a Quaker mission in the western wilds. The trip is fraught with danger, and Amanda is near death before reaching her destination. Among those she meets are an Indian woman who becomes her first convert and a half-Indian trapper who seems to be her biggest critic. But love follows her into the wilderness and will determine the course of her future. You are sure to enjoy this historical romance adventure from New York Times best-selling author Wanda E. Brunstetter.

Included is the newly-written sequel, Woman of Hope, with Little Fawn’s story.

Raised as an orphan by a loving white couple, Little Fawn always felt something was missing from her life. She longs to take the news of Jesus to the Nez Perce Indians, but despite being a missionary herself, Little Fawn’s mother forbids it. Will White Wolf, her intended, support Little Fawn’s decision when she abruptly follows the tribe’s migration onto the Plains?

Since their father’s death summoned Lavinia Brinkman and her four sisters to Eden, Colorado, Lavinia has been content with her new life. Well, almost. Lavinia’s heart’s desire - creating the elaborate hats she loves - doesn’t belong in this small town. How can she choose between the life she has and the life she wants? Especially when she’s so utterly vexed by the handsome scoundrel who’s just arrived in Eden.

Emma Brinkman is the most eligible bachelorette in town and staying that way. After learning twice that romance is a lie, she’s focused only on making the mine she and her sisters inherited a booming success. To do that, she’ll need to put her trust in a notorious scoundrel. But no matter how flirtatious, handsome, or persistent he may be, Emma is interested only in his expertise in coaxing gold from the earth. The illegitimate son of a duke, Beranger North is a reputed playboy and a self-made man who found his fortune excavating the rich and profitable American West.

When Sibyl accepted Adam's proposal to join him in the Wyoming Territory, she hadn't expected it would be so quiet and so remote. When the coyotes and the wolves howl at night, and especially when the catamounts scream, Sibyl wants nothing more than to return home to her cantankerous father in New York City. And then there's Adam. He only has a single bedroom, with a big bed for them to share. But they aren't even married yet! Sibyl makes him sleep out in the barn, and almost a week after her arrival, it doesn't seem they're making any progress.