To introduce her brand-new series, Jodi tells the story behind the unforgiving Texas landscape and how one man claims Ransom Canyon—and a timid beauty—for his legacy…A wanderer’s life was all James Randall Kirkland had known since he was an orphaned boy in San Antonio. And while years of adventure had satisfied his younger self, now he’s longing to put down roots of his own and is prepared to go it alone. But when he sees the Apache slave woman with the startling blue eyes, the course of his journey is changed forever.Ever since the Comanche raided her village and took her for their own, Millie hasn’t known any kind of freedom. After years of being outcast, beaten and traded from tribe to tribe, she’s unprepared for James’s patient tone and gentle ways. Still, as her handsome savior slowly earns her trust, Millie struggles between desire and fear, sure it’s just a matter of time before James tires of her and her burgeoning feelings are nothing but another wasted memory.

    Julia strikes out on her own to gain independence, traveling to the Midwest to marry an aging shopkeeper and care for his mother. Julia finds her new home rough and uncivilized after the sophistication of a big city, while closely held secrets threaten to ruin Julia’s one chance at love. Jake Shelling was sixteen and grew up quick when his parents died from influenza on the South Dakota prairie. Left with a half-cleared farm and two young sisters, he spent little time on his own needs . .till now. At thirty-five, he figured it was high time to have some sons and a mail order bride would suit him just fine. No expectations of love, just a helpmate from sturdy stock, ready for farm life. Will fate and chance play a trick on Julia and Jake?

    That is until a single slap to a man’s face starts a barroom brawl that lands her in the last place she expected to be.Town Marshal Morgan Avery wants nothing more than to wash away the trail-dust and sleep for a week, preferably with a soft, willing woman by his side. Instead, he gets Abigail Thornton – all one hundred pounds of her thrust at him seconds before a fist connects with his face. Breaking up the fight takes more effort than he wants to admit and when the last man falls he finds Abigail still standing and not looking the least bit contrite.Throwing her into the town jail for the night would salve his wounded pride and then he will let her go. Or that was the plan. When morning comes he finds himself oddly reluctant to do so. Miss Thornton is hiding something and he aims to find out what, even if he has to bed her to do so. But will one night in her bed be enough?

    With her sister and hard-drinking father in tow, she needed all her strength for the long trek westward. But Abby could hold her own with any man, until she met a rugged gunman named Rourke...a man who roused the unspoken yearnings of her passionate soul.Rourke was a battle-scarred Union veteran, hired to guard the wagon train. A loner by choice and by fate, his heart was moved by Abby's plight--though the young beauty proudly refused his aid. Yet with the wagons rolling on through dusty plains and treacherous deserts, a tenderness bloomed between them as he taught her how to survive in a brutal land. Mile by mile, she grew to adore this magnificent man, and when he touched her she longed to be his alone. But as she tasted rapture's first, wild depths, she faced a bitter secret from the gunman's violent past. With Rourke in mortal danger, they would challenge destiny itself--to save the love and happiness they discovered on a perilous...Passage West...

    How could John Winterhawke, a fiercely independent and unsettlingly handsome half-Indian, possibly make room in his heart and in his life for her?As far as Hawke was concerned, the last thing he needed was a high-spirited, overeager Irish wife who knew nothing about surviving on the harsh prairie. But once the determined Lacey sensed the rough kindness and simmering hunger under Hawke's forbidding demeanor, she set out to match his dark passion with her own – and claim his wild heart on her terms.

    Ten years later the white man returns. Their soldiers storm her tribe’s village and bring reminders of a world she’d almost forgotten. Suddenly, she is confronted by the question: To which world does she now belong? Her only hope in discovering who she really is lies with the enigmatic army scout, Beech Richoux. Son of a French trapper and Lakota mother, Beech Richoux was raised in a white man’s world after his mother’s death. Acting as an army scout to raise money for his horse ranch, he’s unaware of the Army’s true intent to annihilate his mother’s people until it’s too late. And the white woman he finds living among the Lakota only adds to his desperation to save his people. Now the narrow path he has created to balance himself between these two worlds is tipped by the mysterious white woman known to the Lakota as Little Brave. Can two people robbed of their own childhood learn to live together in such differing worlds? Can Little Brave and Beech forge a new path into a life where they both are finally set free?

    Tattooed and emotionally scarred, Cassandra faces a life she hardly remembers. Two men attempt to understand her pain: the half-Indian scout Lone Hunter Jalbert, and her childhood sweetheart cavalry Captain Drew Reynolds who was left for dead in the attack that killed both their families and who has sworn retribution. Torn between two worlds and two men, Cassie must learn anew the true meaning of love, courage and forgiveness. AWARDS: Winner, Romance Communication Reviewers Award First Place, Wisconsin Romance Writers "Right Touch" Readers' Award. REVIEWS: "Ms. Grayson creates an emotional powerhouse... Superb!" ~Rendezvous. "...a compelling novel chock-full of western detail." ~Margot Mifflin, author of the non-fiction book The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, on whom the main character of So Wide the Sky is based. THE WOMEN'S WEST SERIES, in series order So Wide the Sky Color of the Wind A Place Called Home Painted by the Sun Moon in the Water Bride of the Wilderness ABOUT ELIZABETH GRAYSON: Award-winning author, Elizabeth Grayson was a bookish child who loved stories of adventure and romance. She began writing in grade school and has never stopped. After teaching in elementary schools and at the St. Louis Art Museum, she began writing full time and has garnered many writing awards. Elizabeth lives in the mid-west with her husband and cat. www.elizabethgrayson.com

    At nineteen, she has no prospects of finding a husband, so she takes matters into her own hands and becomes a mail-order bride. When she arrives to Omaha, Nebraska to meet the man she's due to marry, he takes one look at her homely appearance and rejects her. But fate has other plans for Mary. Dave Larson happens to be nearby and thinks she will make a good wife. Though she is stunned that someone as handsome and as kind as Dave would ask her to marry him, she accepts. She knows that this marriage will not bear the fruits of love. Love, after all, is for beautiful women. Isn't it? Books in the Nebraska Historical Romance Series Book 1: Her Heart's Desire Book 2: A Bride for Tom (novella) Book 3: A Husband for Margaret (novella) Book 4: Eye of the Beholder Book 5: The Wrong Husband Book 6: The Shotgun Groom Book 7: To Have and To Hold Book 8: His Redeeming Bride Book 9: Isaac's Decision

    A large cast of vivid characters surrounds the young lovers as they work out their fates.'Previously published as THE SECOND KISS, 1972, by Gayle Rogers Brown'

     Edwina Ladoux hoped becoming a mail-order bride would be her way to a better life, but as soon as she arrives in Breakheart, Colorado, and meets Declan Brodie and his four rambunctious children, she realizes she's made a mistake. Luckily, Edwina and Declan agreed on a three- month courtship period, which should give them time to get the proxy marriage annulled. Except that as the weeks pass, thoughts of annulment turn into hopes for a real marriage-until Declan's first wife suddenly returns.

     Victoria Waverly, noble daughter of the war-ruined South, is sold in marriage to a ruthless rancher. Honor and pride help her endure life as a wife in name only but nothing can quench her forbidden desire for hired gunman Jake Roper. His gaze is hard, but tenderness he can't hide promises to unveil to Victoria the mysteries of love. Only true love can destroy.... Jake curses his burning need for Victoria, for he wants nothing to stand in the way of his drive to reclaim Sarratt's Kingdom -- the ranch that is his legacy and obsession. But ancient wrongs and blazing passions will bind together the aristocratic beauty and the powerful cowboy. In a bloody land war, they will fight for Jake's birthright...and seize at all costs the love that is their destiny.

    There she meets Fire Dancer. A red man. A savage. The most glorious man she has ever laid eyes on. She dares to paint Fire Dancer’s portrait against his wishes and scandalously meets him at a cool brook nearby...HIS PROUD BEARINGFire Dancer, Prince of the Shawnee Nation, is at Fort Belvadere to negotiate peace with the King’s Army during the French and Indian War. He has never met a portrait artist, let alone a white woman like Mackenzie, and now a war rages within him. He forbade her to paint his portrait, lest she steal his soul. But he cannot stop her from stealing his heart.When a King’s soldier is murdered outside the Fort, Fire Dancer is imprisoned and beaten. After Mackenzie reveals she was with Fire Dancer at the time of the murder, she is locked in her room.THEIR FIERY PASSIONFire Dancer escapes and goes to say goodbye to Mackenzie. “Let this man in,” he whispers. “There is not much time, woman of my heart.”Mackenzie watches as Fire Dancer comes in through the window. “What have they done to you?”“Shhh, it is nothing,” he murmurs. “We must speak softly.”“Fire Dancer,” Mackenzie whispers. She kisses him softly on the mouth.“This man will never forget you.” He kisses her back, harder, and pulls her closer.

    She was certainly spirited and delightfully sweet natured, and she'd managed to run her family farm almost single-handedly. But wasn't a twenty-nine-year-old lady farmer too old to catch a husband?An Irresistible Suitor.All his life handsome, black-haired Reed Tyler had worked Miss Hattie's farm--and dreamed of one day settling down on his own piece of land with the pretty young woman he'd sworn to marry. Hattie was someone he could tell his hopes and troubles to--someone he looked on as a sister. So he thought, until the idea of Ancil Drayton calling on her made him seethe. Until the night a brotherly peck became a scorching kiss... and Reed knew nothing would bank the blaze--and that his best friend was the only woman he would ever love.From the Paperback edition.

    The tall cowboy at the station wasn't Dallas. He was Houston, Dallas's brother, sent to escort her on the rugged three-week trek to the ranch where Dallas waited. Brought up in war-ravaged Georgia, Amelia thought Dallas's letters made Texas sound like heaven, a place for her dreams to grow with the right man beside her.And his only love...By all appearances, Houston Leigh would hardly be considered the "right man." The war he survived had scarred him inside and out, and he was little competition for his handsome brother. But from the moment Houston met Amelia, he knew she possessed the courage this wild land needed. She had eyes that could see past his wounded face to his soul. And he would fight any man—except his brother—for her heart. Now he and Amelia were riding down dangerous trails, sleeping under the stars, and God help them, they were falling in love.

    Determined to bring his friend's estranged daughter, Raven Ralston, back into her family fold, Steve Maddox is surprised by the half-Tonkawa girl he meets, a woman cast out of her dead mother's family who quickly falls in love with him.