Lives West

Los Angeles, 1920s: Socialite Mirielle West's days are crowded with shopping, luncheons, and prepping for the myriad glittering parties she attends with her actor husband, Charlie. She's been too busy to even notice the small patch of pale skin on the back of her hand. Other than an occasional overindulgence in gin and champagne, which helps to numb the pain of recent tragedy, Mirielle is the picture of health. But her doctor insists on more tests, and Mirielle reluctantly agrees. The diagnosis - leprosy - is devastating and unthinkable.

Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals.

If you want to not only make a change in your life, but discover how to maintain that change and become the best version of yourself, then you’ve come to the right place. The principles and stories in this book are the blueprint for how Damon rewrote his story and, if applied, how you can rewrite yours.

In 1851, Olive Oatman was a 13-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own.

National best-selling author and New Mexico native Michael McGarrity takes listeners to the wild territory of the late 19th-century American Southwest for this epic tale. After the deaths of his wife and brother, John Kerney gives up his West Texas ranch and heads south in search of a new home. Soon Kerney is offered work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory - a job that will forever change his life.

Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens.

He's a seasoned cowboy on a delivery mission. She's a resilient hobby farm owner braving the winter storm. Can Keith and Lindsay forge a bond in the heart of a tempest and find love in the calm that follows? Keith Whettstein is no stranger to life's challenges - a seasoned cowboy from the renowned Hammond Family Farm, he's weathered his fair share of trials. Yet, as he finds himself caught in the thick of a snowstorm, delivering a horse to the remote Lewis farm just days before Christmas, life takes an unexpected turn. When an unfortunate slip leads to Keith's injury and the horse falls ...

Mail order bride books about women venturing out West to make new lives for themselves. What happens when they decide to take a chance on love along the way? The Complete Mail Order Mix-Up Series Mail Order Misfit Mail Order Misstep Mail Order Miscast Mail Order Misaim Mail Order Misplay Mail Order Mister Mail Order Mishap *This book was previously published by my Jenna Brandt pen name under the Border Brides series and has since been republished under my Jennifer Branson pen name under the Second Chance Brides of the Old West.

Sara King has nothing, save for her secrets and the baby in her belly, as she boards the bus to Memphis, hoping to outrun her past in Chicago. She is welcomed with open arms by Mama Sugar, a kindly matriarch and owner of the popular boardinghouse The Scarlet Poplar. Like many cities in early 1960s America, Memphis is still segregated, but change is in the air. News spreads of the Freedom Riders. Across the country, people like Martin Luther King Jr. are leading the fight for equal rights.

When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.

Acclaimed author of biographical and historical fiction Irving Stone turns his magnificent talent to telling America's most colorful and exciting story - the opening of the Far West. Men to Match My Mountains is a true historical masterpiece, an unforgettable pageant of giants - men like John Sutter, whose dream of paradise was shattered by the California Gold Rush; Brigham Young and the Mormons, who tamed the desert with Bible texts; and the silver kings and the miners, who developed Nevada's Comstock Lode and settled the Rockies.

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west.

Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.

Two women meet and fall in love in a bike shop. The bike shop owner and the bike buyer are take on the ride of their lives in this story of love.

When reclusive Ethan’s solitary winter in a mountain cabin is upended by the arrival of a wounded, mysterious elf, his world flips like a snowflake in a storm. Suddenly, he's patching up Lyra’s strange, non-human wounds while a bizarre HUD system reveals unexpected magical talents—his own and hers. Before long, his cozy refuge transforms into a chaotic sanctuary, where a protective werewolf and a healing water nymph join forces with him.

Deadwood, late 1876. A rowdy and reckless undertaker’s delight. What better place for a killer to blend in? Enter undertaker Clementine Johanssen, tall and deadly with a hot temper and short fuse, hired to clean up Deadwood’s dead...and the “other” problem. She’s hell-bent on poking, sticking, or stabbing anyone who steps out of line. But when a couple Santa Fe sidewinders ride into town searching for their missing uncle, they land neck deep in lethal gunplay, nasty cutthroats, and endless stinkin’ snow.

Through the dramatic events of 2020 and the ensuing uncertainty and anxiety ever since, people’s lives and illusions of security have been turned upside down. Whenever our plans, hopes, and dreams are put on hold—or worse, lost forever—we feel discouraged, lost, and isolated, and desperately praying, “God, where are You?” Matthew West’s newest book, The God Who Stays, is an engaging and thoughtful exploration, balanced with his trademark wit and humor, that helps us reconnect to the biblical truth of a personal Savior who never leaves our side.

Lauren Francis-Sharma's 'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in a seaside village in the north of Trinidad where young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman, the risks and rewards in Marcia's life amplify forever.

Sentenced to 65 years in a Texas prison, Damon West once had it all. He came from a great family, in a home full of God, love, support, and opportunities to reach any goal. A natural born leader, an athlete with good looks and charm, he appeared to be the all-American kid pursuing his dreams. Underneath this facade, however, was an addict in the early stages of disease. After suffering childhood sexual abuse by a babysitter at the age of nine, Damon began putting chemicals into his body to alter the way he felt.

Join these mail order brides and their secret babies as they journey to find love. Get away from your life with these romances by award winning and best selling author, Jenna Brandt. The men are the kind of heroes the world craves and the kind of men that need a good woman to come home to. The mail order brides are feisty and fun and have hearts of gold! Mail Order Miranda: An orphan who's charged with taking care of her infant niece, a man seeking a mother for his toddler twins, and a mail order marriage that could be what they both need. Mail Order Miriam: A runaway Russian princess, a ...