It is the 1930s, and hard times have hit Harveyville, Kansas, where the crops are burning up, and there's not a job to be found. For Queenie Bean, a young farm wife, a highlight of each week is the gathering of the Persian Pickle Club, a group of local ladies dedicated to improving their minds, exchanging gossip, and putting their quilting skills to good use. When a new member of the club stirs up a dark secret, the women must band together to support and protect one another. In her magical, memorable novel, Sandra Dallas explores the ties that unite women through good times and bad.

The history of California in the mid-19th century comes alive in this captivating historical novel. Garnet Cameron, a fashionable young lady of New York, is leading a neat, proper life, full of elegant parties and polite young men, yet the prospect of actually marrying any of them appalls her. Yearning for adventure, she instead marries Oliver Hale, a wild trader who is about to cross the mountains and deserts to an unheard-of land called California. During Garnet and Oliver's honeymoon in New Orleans, she meets a dance-hall performer on the lam who calls herself Florinda Grove and is also traveling to California. Along the Jubilee Trail, Garnet and Florinda meet kinds of men never known to them before, and together they make their painstaking way over the harsh trail to Los Angeles, learning how to live without compromise and discover both true friendship and true love.

Nobody was more surprised than Mattie herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asked her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are wed and setting off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company, aside from a taciturn and slightly mysterious new husband, is her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As Mattie and Luke make a life together on the harsh and beautiful prairie, battling the fierce odds imposed by weather, illness, and lawlessness, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the woman he left behind, and finds love where she least expects it.

It's 1863 and 10-year-old Emmy Blue Hatchett has been told by her father that soon their family will leave their farm, family, and friends in Illinois, and travel west to a new home in Colorado. It's difficult leaving family and friends behind. They might not see one another ever again. When Emmy's grandmother comes to say goodbye, she gives Emmy a special gift to keep her occupied on the trip. The journey by wagon train is long and full of hardships. But the Hatchetts persevere and reach their destination in Colorado, ready to start their new life.

In a novel based on true events, "New York Times" bestselling author Sandra Dallas delivers the story of four women---seeking the promise of salvation and prosperity in a new land---who come together on a harrowing journey.

In 1856, Mormon converts, encouraged by Brigham Young himself, and outfitted with two-wheeled handcarts, set out on foot from Iowa City to Salt Lake City, the "promised land." The Martin Handcart Company, a zealous group of emigrants headed for Zion, is the last to leave on this 1,300-mile journey. Earlier companies arrive successfully in Salt Lake City, but for the Martin Company the trip proves disastrous. "True Sisters" tells the story of four women whose lives will become inextricably linked as they endure unimaginable hardships, each one testing the boundaries of her faith and learning the true meaning of survival and friendship along the way: Nannie, who is traveling with her sister and brother-in-law after being abandoned on her wedding day; Louisa, who's married to an overbearing church leader who she believes speaks for God; Jessie, who's traveling with her brothers, each one of them dreaming of the farm they will have in Zion; and Anne, who hasn't converted to Mormonism but who has no choice but to follow her husband since he has sold everything to make the trek to Utah.

Sandra Dallas has once again written a moving portrait of women surviving the unimaginable through the ties of female friendship.

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The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Whiter Than Snow" delivers a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who live in a Victorian Colorado house.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Prayers for Sale" comes a powerful novel about the intersection of redemption, forgiveness, and love. . . .

On a spring afternoon in 1920, Swandyke--a small town near Colorado's Tenmile Range--is changed forever. Just moments after four o'clock, a large split of snow separates from Jubilee Mountain high above the tiny hamlet and hurtles down the rocky slope, enveloping everything in its path.

Meet the residents whose lives this tragedy touches: Lucy and Dolly Patch, two sisters long estranged by a shocking betrayal. Joe Cobb, Swandyke's only black resident, whose love for his daughter forces him to flee Alabama. Then there's Grace Foote, who hides secrets and scandal that belie her genteel facade. And Minder Evans, a Civil War veteran who considers cowardice his greatest sin. Finally, there's Essie Snowball, born Esther Schnable to conservative Jewish parents, who now works as a prostitute and hides her child's parentage from the world.

Fate, chance, and perhaps divine providence all collide in the everyday lives of these people. And ultimately, no one is without sin, no one's soul is whiter than snow, and no one is without the need for forgiveness.

A quintessential American voice and a writer of exquisite historical detail, Sandra Dallas illuminates the resilience of the human spirit in her newest novel.

Natchez, Mississippi, in 1933 is a place suspended in time. The silver and china is still dented and cracked from Yankee invaders. And the houses have names...and memories. Nora Bondurant is running away--from her husband's death, from his secrets, and from the ghosts that dog her every step. When she receives a telegram informing her that she has an inheritance, Nora suddenly has somewhere to run to: a house named Avoca in Natchez, Mississippi. Now, she's learning that the lure of Natchez runs deep, and that, along with Avoca, she's inherited a mystery. Nora's aunt Amalia Bondurant was killed in a murder/suicide, and the locals are saying nothing more--except in hushed, honeyed tones. As Nora becomes more and more enmeshed in the community and in her family's history, she learns surprising things about the life and death of her aunt: kinship isn't always what it seems, loyalty can be as fierce as blood relations, and every day we are given new mercies to heal the pain of loss and love.

Prospectors lured to the West in hopes of striking rich settled a thousand towns in the Colorado mountains. The cry of ""Gold!"" or ""Silver!"" or a few flecks of color in a tin cup sent them to remote, often inhospitable locations to search for the precious metals.Close on the heels of the miners were the merchant, the gamblers, the prostitutes, the washerwomen, the capitalists, and the con men. Together they turned the mining camps into bustling towns where saloons never closed and the safest place for a man to walk after dark was down the middle of the street with a gun in each hand. Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps is the first new book in more than twenty-five years to document these mountain communities. Most of the early settlers are gone, leaving few persons with any oral tradition to pass on to future generations. For many of the 147 towns and camps listed in this book, not much remains to be preserved beyond what Dallas and photographer Kendal Atchison have recorded. The book is lavishly illustrated with 290 photographs. In addition to those by Atchison and early historical photographs, rare photographs from the 1920s and 1930s are included, many never published before. Some of Atchison's superb photographs evoke nostalgia with views of abandoned buildings deteriorating amid meadow wildflowers. Soon nothing will remain but the Colorado landscape, with the eternal mountains towering close by. The town histories are traced from their beginning in strike-it-rich excitement and glittering boom years, through the declines, to the present day. Some of these hopeful towns, such as Lulu, were deserted as quickly as they were settled, lasting barely more than a season, while a few, including Aspen and Breckenridge, are as lively today as they were a century ago. But most of them, like Animas Forks, flourished until the gold or silver played out and were abandoned, leaving a few lonely cabins or picturesque ruins. Towns such as Aspen, Crested Butte, Cripple Creek, and Breckenridge have lived on to become popular ski resorts, and these places warrant additional vignettes that add color and to the text. Written to inform and entertain the general reader, this book will be a delight for armchair adventurers as well as invaluable for vacationers interested in visiting the sites of these Colorado boomtowns. Most of the places are no longer shown on modern road maps, and special maps of the region have been prepared for this book.

"Almost every citizen is laudably ambitious to build a house unlike that of his neighbor," wrote an observer in early Denver, "and is more desirous that it shall have some novel feature than that it shall be surpassingly beautiful." This history of early Denver has over two hundred illustrations of buildings designed by nouveaux riches miners and frontier businessmen who had more money and fanciful imagination than taste. There is also a picture map of the business district in 1892 that shows where many of these extraordinary structures stood. Victoriana was in bloom, and architectural purity was scorned. Greek revivals had mansard roofs, Gothic castles had Italian tops, turrets and minarets sprouted in unlikely places, and everything was trimmed or fenced with castiron lace. Gingerbread store fronts, crenelated church towers, plushy lavish hotels, pompous homes, and glittering gambling houses and brothels gave the "Queen City of the Plains" an outlandish, distinct style that came to be known as Cherry Creek Gothic, from the creek that bisects the area. Denver residents were as gaudy and unpredictable as the buildings they erected. The unsinkable Mrs. J. J. (Molly) Brown built the fantastic House of Lions, an architect's nightmare guarded by two Sphinx-headed lions, in order to break into Denver society. Madam Jennie Rogers and Madam Mattie Silks, rivals for the title of queen of the demimonde, each had her turn reigning over the famous House of Mirrors. H. A. W. Tabor, the bonanza king whose scandalous love affair with Baby Doe cost him a political career, gave Denver a business block and an opera house that attracted such performers as Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt. This companion volume to the author's earlier work on Colorado hotels, No More Than Five in a Bed, is written with humor and understanding for the famous and the infamous who saw their dreams of wealth and splendor fulfilled in their city. It will appeal not only to students of architecture but to every one interested in the flamboyant personalities of the times. Sandra Dallas, a reporter for Business Week for twenty-five years, is the author of Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, No More Than Five in a Bed (also published by the University of Oklahoma Press), Gaslights and Gingerbread, many other books and articles on Colorado and the West, and several best-selling novels.

Here is the story of Colorado's old hotels-some lavish, some lascivious, a few just long forgotten. Before the turn of the century, when travel was arduous, not to mention downright dangerous, voyagers to the Rocky Mountains wanted to lower their travel-weary limbs into plush chairs, nibble oysters, and sip champagne. No luxury was denied them when they arrived at most Colorado hotels. At the Hotel de Paris in Georgetown, for example, an unexpected guest might dine on wild game, tiny French peas, crusty French bread, and properly chilled wine after only a few minutes' wait. At the Sheridan in Telluride a heartier traveler could sit down to a plank steak, named after the piece of wood whose size it resembled. At the Teller House in Central City one could order buffalo tongue in aspic. At Gold Hill, where the miners knew good food if not good French, one could select from Casey's "Tabble Dote" a cup of coffee "demy tass" and "floatin' Ireland." To the eastern visitors' happy surprise, the hotels for the most part were opulently Victorian, as proper as they were in Boston or Saratoga, with ladies' entrances, ordinaries, and endless private parlors. Yet there was still enough of the raw frontier in hotels where a miner might sleep an eight-hour shift on someone else's sheets for a mere fifty cents. He would sleep in the cold, clawed by a bedmate's spurs and chewed by bedbugs, but he did have one guarantee of relative comfort-the landlord's posted promise of "No More Than Five in a Bed." "Both entertaining reading and a most useful guide."-Denver Post "Every page makes entertaining reading."-Dallas News "Amusing and informative and a fine way to fill an evening."-Chicago Tribune "The book is light, frothy and pleasant to read."-St. Louis Post Dispatch Sandra Dallas, a reporter for Business Week for twenty-five years, is the author of Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, Cherry Creek Gothic: Victorian Architecture in Denver (also published by the University of Oklahoma Press), Gaslights and Gingerbread, many other books and articles on Colorado and the West, and several best-selling novels. Marshall Sprague was a well-known Colorado historian and the author of many books.

From the critically acclaimed author of "Tallgrass" comes a powerful novel about an unlikely friendship between two women and the secrets they've kept in order to survive life in a rugged Colorado mining town.

It's 1936 and the Great Depression has taken its toll. Up in the high country of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort has lived in Middle Swan, Colorado, since before it was Colorado. When she first meets seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, Hennie is drawn to the grieving young girl. Nit and her husband have come to this small mining town in search of work, but the loneliness and loss Nit feels are almost too much to bear. One day she notices an old sign that reads prayers for sale in front of Hennie's house. Hennie doesn't actually take money for her prayers, never has, but she invites the skinny girl in anyway. The harsh conditions of life that each has endured create an instant bond, and a friendship is born, one in which the deepest of hardships are shared and the darkest of secrets are confessed.

Sandra Dallas has created an unforgettable tale of a friendship between two women, one with surprising twists and turns, and one that is ultimately a revelation of the finest parts of the human spirit.

May Anna Kovacks was discovered on the dustry streets of Butte, Montana and went on to become a Hollywood star. War, fame, marriage, love, and heartbreak came and went. What never changed was the bond she shared with her two best friends, Effa Commander and Whippy Bird. When scandal, murder, and betrayal made a legend of May Anna, only Effa and Whippy Bird could set the record straight.

It is the spring of 1885 and wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen has been estranged from her younger sister, Lillie, for a year when she gets word from her aunt and uncle that Lillie has died suddenly in Denver. What they do not tell her is that Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered in the brothel where she had been living.