Showing results for "Sandra Dallas" in Literature & Fiction

Colorado, 1880. Gracy Brookens has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands of babies in her lifetime. The only midwife in a small mining town tucked in the Tenmile Range, Gracy is a gifted and important resource for the women of her hardscrabble community. For years she has advised expectant mothers through their pregnancies, guided them through the tortures of labor, and then helped them heal.

The best-selling author of Alice’s Tulips and other popular novels, Sandra Dallas exhibits a well-honed talent for evoking the past. In The Persian Pickle Club, Dallas transports listeners to 1930s Kansas, where a club of quilters welcomes a new member—and then must turn to each other for support when a startling secret comes to light.

It is the spring of 1885, and wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen has been estranged from her younger sister, Lillie, for a year. Then she gets word from her aunt and uncle that Lillie has died suddenly in Denver. What they do not tell her is that Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered in the brothel where she had been living. Detective Mick McCauley may not want her involved in the case, but Beret is determined.

The New York Times best-selling author of Whiter Than Snow, Sandra Dallas delivers a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who live in a Victorian Colorado house. While the house is under construction in 1880, a 17-year-old servant imagines living in the “Bride’s House” with one of her several suitors. Decades later, the legacy and secrets of earlier Bride’s House women cause the current occupant to question what she really wants and who she truly loves.

Ellen is putting the finishing touches on her granddaughter June's wedding quilt - made from scraps of old dresses, both remembered and forgotten - when June breaks off her engagement and seeks sanctuary at her grandparents' ranch. June's fiance is set to go off to fight in Korea as soon as they're married, but the young bride doesn't think she can go through with it.

Sandra Dallas, best-selling author of The Persian Pickle Club, weaves an intricate and sophisticated tale in New Mercies. Nora Bondurant is divorced— unfathomable for a woman in 1933—and has inherited a house from a dead aunt she never even knew existed. But when she travels to Mississippi to claim her inheritance, she finds her eccentric neighbors would rather help her acquire a new husband than reveal the secrets surrounding her aunt’s death.

> New York Times best-selling author Sandra Dallas spins a moving, memorable yarn that transports listeners from rural Montana to 1940s Hollywood. Buster Midnight’s Cafe is a compelling story of longtime friends, a shared past, and an act of violence that shatters innocence forever.

No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome, but distant stranger.

Hennie Comfort is 86 and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just 17 and newly married. She and her husband have just moved to the high country in search of work. It's 1936 and the depression has ravaged the country and Nit and her husband have suffered greatly. Hennie notices the young woman loitering near the old sign outside of her house that promises "Prayers For Sale".

Life may have been hard on Addie French, but when she meets friendless Emma Roby on a train, all her protective instincts emerge. Emma's brother is seeing her off to Nalgitas to marry a man she has never met. And Emma seems like a lost soul to Addie-someone who needs Addie's savvy and wary eye. It isn't often that Addie is drawn to anyone as a friend, but Emma seems different somehow.

After their mother dies, Haidie Richards and her younger brother, Boots, are put to work in an orphanage. Their father left four years earlier to find a gold mine in Colorado Territory, and since then he’s sent only three letters. Still, Haidie is certain that he is alive, has struck gold, and will soon send for them. But patience is not one of Haidie’s virtues and soon she and her brother make a break for it. Boots and Haidie, disguised as a boy, embark on a dangerous journey deep into Western territory.

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.

New York Times best-selling author Sandra Dallas sets this 1920s tale in a small mining town near Colorado’s majestic Tenmile Range. As nine children walk home from school, a spring avalanche thunders down from Jubilee Mountain—burying everything in its path. This compelling novel of survival, redemption, and faith skillfully reveals the backstory of each family affected by this tragedy.

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.

During World War II, a family finds life turned upside-down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes turn on the newcomers. Rennie has just turned thirteen and until this time, life has pretty much been predictable and fair. But the winds of change are coming, and with them, a shift in her perspective and a discovery of secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas is a riveting exploration of the darkest—and best—parts of the human heart.

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.

It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband Will has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Confederates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter months in the army.

Best-selling author Sandra Dallas has won rave reviews for this tale set during the Civil War. When Alice Bullock's husband joins the Union Army, the young quilting enthusiast is left to deal with an Iowa farm and an imposing mother-in-law. And then her life turns upside down when she's accused of murder.

Based on 19th-century history, True Sisters follows four women who pin their hopes for the future on a plan devised by Brigham Young to bring emigrants to Salt Lake City. Pushing two-wheeled handcarts loaded with all their life’s belongings, the women set off on the 1,300-mile journey from Iowa City - and soon become fast friends even as perils mount around them.