Yuma Public Library

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men--men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess. Yet bandits were only part of McKaskel's worries. For a mysterious stranger, Con Vallian, had appeared...

Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.

Galloway and Flagan Sackett decide to settle down and take up ranching, but the territory they are interested in has already been claimed by the tough and ruthless Dunn family. Many dead Dunns later, the Sacketts are able to put up their guns and concentrate on their new ranch.

Pa's homestead thrives, Laura gets her first job in town, blackbirds eat the corn and oats crops, Mary goes to college, and Laura gets into trouble at school, but becomes a certified school teacher.

Rafe Caradec - gambler, wanderer, soldier of fortune - was as hard a man as the battlefields and waterfronts of Latin America could fashion, but he was as good as his word. As Charles Rodney lay dying in a dank ship's fo'c'sle. Rafe swore to make sure that Rodney's Wyoming ranch went to his daughter, Ann. In Painted Rock, Wyoming, Caradec found land for a man to love, miles of rolling grasslands and towering mountains. He also found that one of the...

When Travis and Rebecca marry, rumors quickly spread that he has done so only for her dying father's ranch. Convinced that Travis can never truly love her, Rebecca disappears to make a new life for herself in a town far away, but her friends there are few, and life is hard. When desperate circumstances drive Rebecca home to Travis, she can see the change in the man she left behind. In her absence, he has grown from a rough-hewn cowboy to a confident...

The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant

Out of a job and at loose ends in the Mexican town of San Rafael, Owen Burke overhears a conversation between two Mexican vaqueros seated at a nearby table in the local cantina. After introducing himself, he learns they work for Don Enrique Hernandez de Allende at a horse ranch some distance south. The don is planning a horse drive to California where his brother-in-law has a ranch. Owen knows those trails and hopes the don might be in need of a guide....

Grace Martindale has known more than her share of hardship. After her parents died, raising her two younger sisters became her responsibility. A hasty marriage to a minister who is heading to the untamed West seemed like an opportunity for a fresh start, but a cholera outbreak along the wagon trail has left Grace a widow in a very precarious position. Having learned natural remedies and midwifery from her mother, Grace seeks an opportunity to use...

"Ben Cowan and Bijah Catlow had been friends since they were boys. By the time they grew to manhood, Catlow had become an outlaw and Cowan a U.S. marshal. So when his old friend rode to Mexico to pull the biggest robbery of his career, it became Ben Cowan's job to hunt him down. While trailing Catlow south of the border, Ben meets Rosita Calderon. Intelligent and beautiful, her presence further complicates what is already a dangerous situation. While...