Western Life

Who am I? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? Heads Up Philosophy, part of an exciting new series for young adults, explains and explores all these big ideas and more. What is philosophy? It's the issues and theories that are most intriguing and relevant to curious teen minds--questions...

Evangeline Keating came West because she had to: after her husband's passing, she needed to build a new life for her young daughter, and marrying a stranger from Montana Territory was her best chance. After a difficult winter journey, she arrives at an isolated outpost called Springwater Station. But the handsome man who's come for her is not her husband-to-be, and Evangeline soon finds herself thrust into a most inconvenient - and highly improper - arrangement.

Columbine, newly returned from school in Denver to her beloved Colorado range land, must face four men in her life who signify for her either happiness and love or sorrow and pain. Among them is a mysterious rider - a man of middle age, gentle and kind, but so terrible a gun fighter that they called him "Hell Bent" Wade. Wade will come to play a fateful part in all their lives.

I feared for their lives and their ears. Our local weekly newspaper showed pictures of them dangling from ropes hanging in woven baskets off the embankment of a mountain in order to tap sticks of dynamite into the holes they drilled in the granite cliff faces they blasted away. One could hear that awful, loud dynamite blasting all the way in town. But the booming had been even worse for the ears of the railroad workers who detonated the charges for the grading and tunneling, especially the Chinese who were given these most dangerous jobs.

While listening to the novel Just Away, you will be totally captivated while following the 95-year life of a successful industrialist as he experiences all that life has to offer. Sharing in his exuberant highs, down to his life altering lows, you will become fascinated with how he embraces each situation as he continues to assemble his empire.

Having been drawn to the wild for a number of years, young Luke McKinney is forced to leave 1839 St. Louis for the North Country even sooner than he expected to go. At 17, along with a female companion and an elderly father figure, he is literally running for his life. With the law pursuing him and the wilderness unforgiving, he finds himself caught up in a survival system that has nothing to do with civilization or laws. Then the unthinkable happens, the only love of his life is taken from him.

Placerita Town has always been a place of opportunity, but today, it’s a death trap. Ruthless outlaws led by Jumpin’ John are ripping the town apart, and the sheriff’s nowhere to be found. You came here to trade your father’s ironworks—not to fight for your life. Now, every choice could mean the difference between making it out alive or ending up in a shallow grave. Will you outsmart the gang, brave the desert’s dangers, and find a way to survive?

Set on the high prairies of Montana, in small towns scattered across vast landscapes, the distances in Broken Field are both insurmountable and deeply internalized. Life is dusty and hard, and men are judged by their labor. Women have to be tougher yet. That’s what sixteen-year-old Josie Frehse learns as she struggles to meet the expectations of her community while fumbling with her own desires.

Thomas Savage, a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN/Faulkner Award nominee, has long been a critically acclaimed author. The New Yorker calls him "a writer of the first order". This starkly elegant story details the lives of Emma Russell Sweringen and her family in the early 1900s. Emma’s daughter Beth secretly gave up a baby girl for adoption many years ago. Now, Beth’s secret life is being unraveled as her daughter comes looking for her long-lost family.

Calvin Sidey - steely, hardened, with his own personal code - is one of the last cowboys. It's the 1960s, and he's living off the grid in a trailer on the prairie when his adult son, Bill, seeks his help. A mostly absentee father and grandfather, Calvin nevertheless agrees to stay with his grandchildren for a week. He decamps for his son's house in the small town where he once was a mythic figure, and soon enough problems arise: A boy's attentions to 17-year-old Ann are increasingly aggressive, and a group of reckless kids portend danger for 11-year-old Will.

Mitchell Tucker has come back to the small Texas town of Gila Rock looking for something Julianne Boyce has no intention of giving him: forgiveness. It's been eight years since Mitch went to jail for starting a fire that claimed her husband's life...and longer still since Juli and Mitch fell into a forbidden first love that their feuding families brought to an end. She's lost too much because of his thoughtlessness to let herself fall under that familiar spell again.

Clayton Cooper is a bona fide daredevil. Always has been. Always will be. At first, he uses his talents for thrills and payouts on the rodeo circuit. Success seems to greet him at every turn. So when he marries his high school sweetheart, he assumes she’ll follow him anywhere. But after a year and a half, she calls off the marriage and turns Clay’s heart to rubble. He sees only one way to survive: lose himself in the rigors of Alaskan smoke-jumping.

At the very location where Berlin set off into the modern age and tested what was culturally and politically possible...

When the past haunts Mary, will she live long enough to make it right? Mary escaped the horrific clutches of Victor Del Avilasto, a man hell-bent on leaving no loose ends. Before Victor’s dead body is buried in the Denver cemetery, her past comes alive. What she thought well behind her in Kansas City, is now in front of her with revolvers and a hangman’s noose. Ross Montgomery was with Mary when they escaped Victor’s clutches. Mary saved his life. This rough around the edges woman captured his heart, but before he could strum up the courage to call on her, she’s taken.

Romantisch und raubeinig, provokant und sinnlich. Glamour, roter Teppich und Blitzlichtgewitter. Tessa Prescotts Leben ist perfekt. Sie würde es mit nichts und niemandem eintauschen. Nie hätte sie damit gerechnet, dass ein sehr attraktiver, aber äußerst wortkarger Cowboy ihr die unfreiwillige Reise nach Kansas zur Hölle machen würde. Derek Hawkins ist ebenso abweisend wie heiß. Obwohl sie sich plötzlich inmitten eines Blizzards befindet, brennt ihr Herz.

Against the wishes of his widowed mother, 17-year-old Josh Timmons leaves her and his sisters behind to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a cowboy. A remarkable roping talent earns him a job on a cattle drive from New Mexico to the Texas Panhandle under the leadership of famous cattle baron Charles Goodnight. The dark side of Josh's ambition is a hidden desire to one day avenge his father's murder, but the realities of the trail make all his desires much more difficult than he had ever imagined.

Colt Ballard is a professional team roper with the talent to go all the way, but the loss of his parents from a car accident during his childhood has him fighting an emotional obstacle that keeps him from reaching the pinnacle of success. After being pushed out by the PRCA, Colt realizes his dilemma and accepts the advice of his late father's friend to take a summer job helping out at a rodeo camp in New Mexico.

More than anything Summer Patterson wants a baby. What she doesn't want is a husband. Thankfully her best friend, Ryder McClain, makes the perfect sperm donor. Ryder is loyal, undeniably sexy, and the one man she trusts - the only reason she agrees to conceive their baby naturally.

Welcome to the Lazy Windmill, where guests find that life is what you make it, love is priceless, and family is determined by far more than DNA. Casie Carmichael's accidental dude ranch is well on its way, but the residents of her Hope Springs haven are running wild. With an unwed mother-to-be, a turbulent teen romance, and a bronc-riding grandmother to contend with, the last thing Casie has time for is a romantic relationship. But convincing the recently returned Colt Dickenson that she's not interested in him - or the confusion he causes her - is easier said than done.

After a grizzly bear kills Antonia Valleau's trapper husband, she packs her few worldly possessions, leaves her home in the mountains of Montana, and treks to nearby Sweetwater Springs, seeking work to provide for her two young sons.