Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just seventeen 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... (more)

The Colour of Lightning

by Paulette Jiles

In 1863, the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion—and eastern thoughts are already turning to different wars and enemies. Searching for a life and future, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson is venturing west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children—wary but undeterred by sobering tales of atrocities inflicted upon those who trespass... (more)

The Chili Queen

by Sandra Dallas

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. When Emma's prospective... (more)

The Diary of Mattie Spenser

by Sandra Dallas

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 Colerado 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... (more)

The German Bride: A Novel

by Joanna Hershon

Berlin, 1865. Eva Frank, the daughter of a benevolent Jewish banker, and her sister, Henriette, are having their portrait painted–which leads to a secret affair between young Eva and the mercurial artist. This indiscretion has far-reaching consequences, more devastating than Eva or her family could have imagined. Distraught and desperate to escape her painful situation, Eva hastily marries Abraham Shein, an... (more)

Missy: A Novel

by Chris Hannan

Missy is laudanum, or liquid opium. Missy is Dol McQueen, a nineteen-year-old “flash-girl” traveling the arduous wagon trail from San Francisco to the boomtowns of the Sierra Nevada. Her purpose: to fleece the silver miners and to have a marvelous time. Permanently gonged on missy, Dol and her entrepreneurial instincts wake up only when she comes into possession of a rum crate full of pure opium. But the crate... (more)

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

by Daniel Brown

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves was twenty-one and in love with a young man who played the violin. But she was torn. Her mother, father, and eight siblings were about to disappear over the western horizon forever, bound for California. Sarah could not bear to see them go out of her life, and so days before the planned departure she married the young man with the violin, and the two of them threw their lot in with... (more)

The Sharpest Sight: A Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Vol. 1)

The Sharpest Sight: A Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Vol. 1)

by Louis Owens

When Attis McCurtain, a half-Choctaw Native American and Vietnam veteran, is killed, deputy sheriff Mundo Morales investigates while the victim's younger brother begins a spiritual journey that also leads him to the truth. Reprint.

Breaking Clean (Vintage)

by Judy Blunt

In this extraordinary literary debut third-generation homesteader Judy Blunt describes her hardscrabble life on the prairies of eastern Montana in prose as big and bold as the landscape. On a ranch miles from nowhere, Judy Blunt grew up with cattle and snakes, outhouse and isolation, epic blizzards and devastating prairie fires. She also grew up with a set of rules and roles prescribed to her sex long before she... (more)

The Whistling Season

by Ivan Doig

"Can’t cook but doesn’t bite." So begins the ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper" that draws the attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so also begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee, Montana. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher,... (more)

Rain or Shine : A Family Memoir

by Cyra McFadden

The daughter of a rodeo announcer, Cyra McFadden grew up on the circuit, traveling all over the West with her free-spirit, hell-raising parents. "Rain or Shine" is the story of Cyra's complex relationship with her eccentric relatives as she looks back with pride, regret, and humor on family life spent and misspent in the gaudy, gritty world of rodeo. 33 photos.

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Tags: living in the wild wild west

Prayers for Sale

by Sandra Dallas

The Colour of Lightning

by Paulette Jiles

The Chili Queen

by Sandra Dallas

The Diary of Mattie Spenser

by Sandra Dallas

The German Bride: A Novel

by Joanna Hershon

Missy: A Novel

by Chris Hannan

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

by Daniel Brown

The Sharpest Sight: A Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Vol. 1)

by Louis Owens

Breaking Clean (Vintage)

by Judy Blunt

The Whistling Season

by Ivan Doig

Rain or Shine : A Family Memoir

by Cyra McFadden