Showing results by narrator "Laurie Klein" in All Categories

Martina Swan's business and marriage is falling apart. She grabs up her child and seeks to find her husband as armed outlaws chase her looking for their stolen treasure. She's determined to bring her man home as she faces one shock after another. Can she forgive and love again? A full and satisfying read from a woman's point of view in the old west.

Christina Swan, the local schoolteacher, is fired when two overzealous suitors brawl at her school. Angry at the unfair treatment, she seizes the opportunity to manage a fledgling ranch for her uncle and runs into the obstinate Kern Yager, a neighboring landholder. As tempers flare between them, the two discover a common enemy in a land development plan that will swallow their ranches. They also discover the faith to meet their problems with God's support.

Notorious outlaw Manitoba Joe Clark seems to have been caught red-handed this time, but he's begging Judge Kingston to find out who framed him. At home, life seems to be unraveling for the judge and his wife Judith. Will their widowed missionary son marry a most unlikely woman and return to India? Can evidence implicating Roberta's fiance as an embezzler and the father of an illegitimate child be true?

In an age when robber barons and get-rich-quick schemes abound, a charismatic land developer arrives in Carson City. It doesn't take Major Lansford Fallon long to win the affections of widowed Marthellen Farnsworth - Judith Kingston's housekeeper and dearest friend. And it takes Fallon even less time to win the financial backing of the town's leading citizens when he presents a plan to build a health sanitarium on a mineral spring outside of town.

Wyoming Territory in 1869 is no place for a woman, but when Kate Murphy's husband dies of Cholera, she is stranded there with no money and no way to leave. At the end of her rope, she accepts a job as a saloon girl in the tiny town of Horse Creek. There she is discovered by the mysterious Jonathan Cantrell who hires her to keep house for him and his two unruly sons. Jonathan has the face of an angel and the devil's own temper. But sweet Kate has a temper of her own and is more than a match for him.

Hattie Clark is an aging advocate of peace in an Idaho town torn by World War I. Crippled by a stroke, she hires Kirsta Strom, a German refugee, to help in her bookstore. But Kirsta has her own problems. A shyster lawyer and powerful man, Carl Foreman has some hold over her, and has her watched constantly. And she must deal with new neighbors, who hate her for her German birth and treat her cruelly.

Pinocchio is a naughty, disobedient wooden puppet that longs to grow up and become a real boy, but as long as he misbehaves and disappoints his father, old Gepetto, he is doomed and his dream will never be realized.

All Abigail had to still her fears of the unknown were love, and trust in Ross Gallagher, the handsome, reckless Irishman who had snatched her from her New England family to make her his wife. But Abigail was soon to learn how frail even this man's strength and spirit were in the face of the dangers and terrors of the West. As a captive of a Sioux chieftain, Abigail was fated to experience a living hell.

For 16-year-old Hattie Rood, Mr. Lincoln's War has brought nothing but death and hardship. She has lost one brother to a Yankee sharpshooter, another is away fighting with the Confederate army, and her aging father is barely able to keep the family tobacco farm going. One hot August night in 1864, Hattie's life takes another dramatic turn when rebel bushwhackers bring a wounded Jesse James to the Rood farmhouse, to recover or die.

She had the face of an angel, the will of a spitfire, and a mind of her own. Behind her was the slavelike existence in a Welsh mining town. Ahead, the promise of freedom in America, but to her horror, Eden Richards was soon to discover that slavery wears many disguises. The strict Mormon laws that could bend her to her will. The terrifying rites of the Sioux who had captured Eden and made her one of them. The lustful advances of the arrogant mine owner who would make her his prisoner.

Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account of the war in Europe and is appalled. Others in her sheltered Pennsylvania home are interested only in her coming marriage to solid, self-centered, Harvey. Struggling with compassion, Sara Lee feels compelled to help the suffering Belgian Army whose country is overrun by Germans. She defies her parents and travels alone to the front lines to help anyway she can. It is there she meets Henri, a Belgian officer.

“I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself.” So said Edna Pontellier to her friend one summer as they sat beside the sea. It was the summer she learned to swim, fell in love, and awoke to the reality of her empty role in a loveless marriage. But she was a good wife. Edna dutifully returned home to the prison of her well-ordered life in New Orleans. Although close friends offered advice, the search for herself was a journey she must make alone. And in the end, Edna found herself returning to the sea where it all began.

As teens, Teague Blackwell and Wendie Keith starred in a popular television show, The Lost Romance Ranch. It was on the set that they first met, on the set that they first fell in love, and on the set that the two exchanged marriage vows. Fifteen years later, the show's title has taken on even greater meaning. For now Teague and Wendie are separated, with every intention of splitting up for good. Their plans, however, are not unfolding as they'd expected.

A legend on the frontier, only Ross could guide the wagon train that was taking them across the vast, unmapped continent. Born white, but raised as a mighty Sioux warrior, his desire for the golden-haired Marlette had taken him from his Indian people and left his soul divided. Now together, Ross and Marlette faced the unknown terrors of this great trek west...and a stirring destiny that would test the love and courage of both...

Four short stories are included in this volume of Kipling works. They are: "Mowgli's Brothers" - Mowgli, a small boy, is found orphaned in the jungle by wolves and raised by them; "Kaa's Hunting" - Mowgli is kidnapped by the Bandar-log (monkeys) and rescued by Kaa, a python; "The White Seal" - The community of seals believe a great white seal will come, and deliver them from the wrath of the seal hunters; and "Rikki Tikki Tavi" - A young mongoose defends his human family against a pair of marauding cobras.

Kansas is deeply split by the national conflict. Jonathan Ware and his wife are deeply troubled that their sons have enlisted on opposing sides of the conflict. The Wares and the other homestead families are subject to raids by renegades from both sides. When Jonathan Ware and Bishop Jardine are killed, the women are left without protection. Earlier Christy Ware and her father had discovered a hidden valley, opening out from an underground river.

This is another beautifully crafted and nurturing Burnett tale about a young girl growing up, learning humility and compassion...the hard way. Sara Crewe’s young life is filled with wealth and pampering. But when her father dies in India and his wealth is lost, like a hot-house plant cast into the snow her life is reduced to shear survival. Turned into a beggar, her courage and strong-will are all she inherited from her father.

When spunky Swedish spinster Lili Tornquist, age 29, learns that her widowed father will soon remarry a woman she detests, she leaves her Minnesota home to become the mail-order bride of a distant cousin, Gunnar Jorgeson, a Montana sheep rancher. But her new husband falls far short of his promise, and putting aside all she has previously believed about steadfastness and endurance, Lili abandons her marriage to make her own way in the notorious wide-open mining town of Butte.

Four months have passed since Fred Nighthawk, a ranger for the Bureau of Land Management, vanished in Paiute Valley. Now, vandals have destroyed Indian petroglyphs in the remote area. Marcie Gibbs, an archeologist turned Special Agent for the BLM, is given her first assignment as an officer - look for a possible connection between the vandalism and Fred's disappearance.

Cordelia Lu Hankins is the half Caucasian, half Chinese - and all albino. She has grown up in a remote lumber town with her distant father and a giant stepmother nicknamed Babe (after Paul Bunyan's blue ox), convinced she is ugly. Then, in the summer of 1918, when she is fourteen, she falls in love with the dashing Squirl. One day they meet on the mountain and Cordy receives her first kiss, as well as a wild ride down a log flume that gets Squirl fired.