"The Least" -- My New Story in "Sparkler"

Are you or someone you know on the hunt for clean fiction that is appropriate for teen readers?  If so, then you definitely need to check out Sparkler, a brand-new online magazine!  Sparkler is devoted to connecting readers in search of clean YA fiction with authors who write exactly that.

Authors like me :-)

In fact, I have a flash-fiction story in their debut issue, which dropped today!  It's all about a young man striking out on his own who has taken what he was told is a shortcut, and he finds something unexpected along his chosen trail... something that forces him to make a difficult decision.  It's called "The Least," and you can read it right here. 

My short story is historical fiction, a cozy Christian western just like you'd expect from me :-)  But there are lots of genres represented in this magazine, including fantasy, contemporary, and sci-fi.

Did Someone Say "FREE Audiobook"???

I did, it was me.  I said free audiobook, and I meant FREE!!!

ONE Audiobooks, which has produced all of my audiobooks, picks one title from their catalog each month to let people listen to for free.  And, in March, that book is Dancing and Doughnuts, my Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling!

All you have to do is go to the OneAudiobooks website and follow the directions.  Once you save Dancing and Doughnuts to your account, you will have until June 1 to finish listening to it.

It's kind of like borrowing a book from the library, where you have a certain number of weeks to read it, and then you return it.  You don't get to download and keep the book for free, but you get to experience it for free within a certain timeframe.

If you're new to my books, I write cozy Christian westerns.  My Once Upon a Western series retells fairy tales as clean YA historical fiction.  These are non-magical westerns with no cussing or smut, containing sweet PG-level romances and mild violence only (think an old John Wayne movie from the 1950s).  

Dancing and Doughnuts is about a Civil War veteran trying to find work in a small Kansas town.  He takes a job trying to figure out who is spiking the refreshments served at a family-run dance hall.  Twelve sisters, uncountable doughnuts, rowdy cowboys -- nothing can stop our hero from solving this mystery and helping the family resolve some bigger problems in the process.

The audiobook version is read by Steve Corona, whose narration of my book One Bad Apple won a SOVA last year.  Steve has been my ideal narrator for Dancing and Doughnuts since the idea of audiobook editions for my books first entered my head, and he absolutely knocks this narration out of the park. Do yourself a favor and listen to it for free while you can!

"Shadows of the Valley" by Britt Howard

I have been looking forward to this book for months and months!  I very much enjoyed the first McCade Family Novel, Song of the Valley, when I read that a couple of years ago, but I liked Shadows of the Valley even more!

This is a suspenseful story with a modern western setting and a slow-burn romance. Kasey Carter is a retired military veteran who has suffered severe wounds, both physical, emotional, and spiritual.  When her younger half-sister begs Kasey to hide and protect her children for a while, Kasey agrees, but reluctantly.  She ends up guarding them in a remote cabin in the Montana mountains near the small town of Cascade Valley.  There, she encounters Dean McCade, a local rancher who senses she's guarding more than a few secrets and tries repeatedly to help her. 

This book is a lot more serious than the first book in Britt Howard's McCade Family series, but it features the same beautiful scenery, courageous and compassionate McCade family members, and a message that real answers and truth can be found only in Christ Jesus.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for mentions of spousal abuse, memories of military violence and trauma, small children being put in danger, and some violence on-page.  No cussing, no smut, and no gore.

"Deep in the Heart" by Gilbert Morris

I picked up this book and its two sequels on a whim at a used bookstore a couple months ago.  I can remember my mom reading Gilbert Morris books when I was a teen, but I hadn't read him before.  

On a whole, I liked this first book in the Lone Star Legacy trilogy pretty well. I loved Clay and I liked Jerusalem Ann.  I liked most of the characters, actually.  And the history of Texas always fascinates me.  Though that ended up getting in my way a bit here.

Morris sets this during the time leading up to the Texas Revolution in the 1830s, and he has a whole lot of scenes where real-life people like Colonel Travis and Jim Bowie discuss why they are trying to separate Texas from Mexico.  Scenes that really have nothing to do with the book's characters.  They're just there to explain things.  It wasn't necessarily a bad way to explain Texan history... but it also made the actual story come to a screeching halt every now and then, especially in the last third of the book.  And, you know... if I, who love Old West history, got increasingly annoyed by having history lessons inserted that way, I am betting most readers were downright vexed.  

I can see what Morris was trying to do, but it would have been way more effective and enjoyable to have the book's main characters themselves discuss these things!

So, that left me feeling like this is a four-star read.  I'll try the next book, which I suspect won't have that issue so much because the Texas Revolution should be over pretty early in the book.  We'll see.

Particularly Good Bits:

"I wish things would go wrong one at a time, but they never do" (p. 214).

"I found out one thing after all these years.  And that's never to run away from problems.  As sure as you do, a worse one will meet you" (p. 350).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for allusions to men consorting with prostitutes, drunkenness, a family with illegitimate children, women worrying about being captured by Native Americans and assaulted, and scenes of frontier violence.

"Follow the Lonesome Trail" Releases Today!

It's here!  The wild west anthology Follow the Lonesome Trail releases today!

This brand-new collection boasts stories by Allison Tebo, Hannah Kaye, A. Hartley, Emily Hayse, Elisabeth Grace Foley, and Rachel Kovaciny (aka me).  

My short story in this book is called "Safekeeping," and it's a story of second chances and hope.  A loner learns that he's inherited a poke of gold, but it's in the clutches of a greedy bartender, and he has to come up with a creative solution to get what's rightfully his.  Along the way, he helps out a whole lot of other people and just might find himself a place to belong.

Here's what one reader had to say about it:

You can buy Follow the Lonesome Trail as a paperback and ebook today!  And you can check out more reviews (and review it yourself once you've read it) right here on Goodreads.

If you're on Instagram, I invite you to join me there at 1pm (CST) for a live video chat where I will read the first scene from "Safekeeping" aloud to you -- and I might have time to answer a few questions, too.

If you want to know more about the other books I've written, you can check out this page on this blog or my author website.

Happy reading!

A Realm Awards Finalist? Yes! It's True!

I'm not even joking.  My book A Noble Companion is a finalist for this year's Realm Awards!!!  

This little Ugly Duckling retelling was such a challenge to write.  For one thing, it was the first time I had been part of a multi-author project.  For another, I had never written fantasy before, so I struggled with that aspect of the book a lot.  And also, every book in this series focuses on a side character of the fairy tale being retold, not the usual main character, but... there aren't any other named characters in The Ugly Duckling.  In fact, even the main character is only referred to by that description.  That made figuring out who to focus on pretty tricky.

I freely admit that I'm not a fantasy writer, I'm a historical fiction writer.  I did a lot of praying that God would help my imagination and writing skills grow and change to suit this new project.  And I did find ways to make it truly a fantasy book, but the story rests solidly on a foundation of historical research for the setting. 

I never really expected that it could compete against more obvious fantasy books for the Realm Awards, which are for Christian fantasy and sci-fi.  The fact that it made the long list last month felt like a really amazing honor, and I really didn't even hope that it would go farther.  But it did!  It's a finalist now!  Wow.

If you want to see who all the finalists are, you can find the official list here.  If you want to know more about A Noble Companion, check out my page about it.

Top Ten Tuesday: It's About Time

This week's prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl for Top Ten Tuesday is "Books Set in Another Time."  I'm using that to talk about my ten favorite historical fiction books.

I think of historical fiction as fiction set during a time before the author's adult life.  For instance, an author born in 1930 who writes about the 1950s isn't writing historical fiction... but if they write about the 1850s, or even the 1930s, then it's historical fiction.  (For another example, Jane Austen's books are not historical fiction because she wrote about the early 1800s while she was living in the early 1800s.)

So!  Here are my top ten favorite works of historical fiction, along with links to my reviews and a little info into when and where they are set:

1. Shane by Jack Schaefer (1889, Wyoming)

2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows (post-WWII, Great Britain)

3. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King (1915, Great Britain)

4. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss (Medieval England)

5. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1751, Scotland)

6. Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George (1920s, USA)

7. Up from Dust by Heather Kaufman (c. 30 AD, Judea)

8. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (Medieval England)

9. King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (1700s Morocco, France, and England)

10. A Flame in the Dark by Sarah Baughman (1500s, Germany)

Have you read any of these?  Any here that surprise you?

Or, did you do a Top Ten Tuesday post this week?  Please share in the comments!

Reading Goals Past and Future

I've got a bit of time this evening, so I'm ready at last to look over my reading goals from 2024, and set some for 2025.

I set myself the goal of reading 55 books in 2024, and I read 68, so hooray!  I didn't just meet, I exceeded that goal!

I wanted to read 48 books off my shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.  I failed.  I did read 41 books that I owned this year, but only 28 of them counted for that challenge because their rules insist they have to be books you owned before the beginning of the year.  Oh well.

I joined the #DisneyOriginsBookClub2024 on Instagram again this year, but I quit after the first couple of months because I simply had less reading time this year!  A lot of that is due to my younger daughter's ballet lessons now overlapping with my older daughter's gymnastics lessons, so I spend a lot of time driving between those instead of sitting and reading while I wait/watch.

Also, I don't have a photo here to illustrate this, but I participated in the #JaneAustenDeepDive2024 reading group on Instagram this year.  I read all six of the annotated editions of Jane Austen's major works (edited by David M. Shapard -- one review still to come) and had a wonderful time learning about Austen's works and world.  But those annotated editions are not light reading!!!  They soaked up a lot of my reading time.

I wanted to read twelve books for my fourth Classics Club list.  I read ten, so didn't really hit that goal.

I wanted to read twelve books about people substantially different for myself.  The image here only shows eleven, but I realized after I took these photos that I left two books off, so I actually read thirteen for that list! 

Back in 2023, I decided to read all of the Sackett books by Louis L'Amour over the course of 2023 and 2024.  I read the Sackett short stories included in War Party and End of the Drive at the very end of December, thereby completing that goal!  You can read my reviews of all the full Sackett novels under the label My Years with the Sacketts.

I absolutely loved the Sackett books.  I've become a firm L'Amour fan over the past two years, and I am particularly fond of Tell Sackett, though I very much like quite a few of the other Sacketts too.

Now for my 2025 goals!

Once again, I want to read at least 55 books.  That's slightly more than one a week, and even when I have "low" reading years, I can still manage that, so I like that goal.  Achievable, but not inconsiderable.

I am NOT setting myself a goal of numbers of books to read from my TBR shelves for the first time in years.  I will read what I read.  My house will be full of books.  I like that life.  Time to stop obsessing over how many books I own and haven't read yet -- I think keeping a careful count of them for the past few years has actually made me buy MORE books, oddly enough.

Once again, I want to read twelve books for my fourth Classics Club list, and I aim to read twelve books about people who are substantially different from myself in some way.

And I have a new challenge for myself this year!  I'm joining Andy at @places_and_books in picking #25for25 -- 25 specific books I want to read this year.  From my list above, 8 are rereads and 17 are books I haven't read before.  I like that mix.  

How about you?  Have you set yourself some bookish or reading goals for this year?  Share a link if you've blogged about them!

"Lonely on the Mountain" by Louis L'Amour

Well.  Hmm.  What in the world is up with the ending of this book?  It's a cracking good Sackett adventure for 23 chapters, and then it's like someone else finished it off from Louis L'Amour's notes.  Everything gets wound up ridiculously quickly, and the writing gets patchy.  As in, it jumps from first to third person within paragraphs or scenes, with zero reason.  There were other Sackett books published several years after this one that weren't that way at all, so it's not like this was L'Amour's last book and he just didn't get it edited properly or something.  Maybe the editors were on strike?  I don't get it.

Aside from the vexing last two chapters, I liked Lonely on the Mountain a LOT because it has Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel all working together to help their cousin Logan, and Cap Rountree is there too, and yeah... I love it when the Sacketts assemble to help one of their own.  In a lot of the books where that happens, we focus on the guy in trouble and the assembling Sacketts just show up to help, but this is like the reverse, where we get to see the helpers heading out to rescue the one in trouble.  That was nifty.

But, man, those last two chapters.  They feel like first drafts that never got revised. What in the world.

Particularly Good Bits:

"There's two kinds of people in the world, son, those who wish and those who will.  The wishers wish to be rich, they wish to be famous, they wish to own a farm or a fine house or whatever.  The ones who will, they don't wish, they start out and do it.  They become what they want to or get what they want.  They will it" (p. 95).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for lots of western-style violence, as well as danger from nature and animals, and a smidgeon of cussing.

This is my 27th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.  AND I have finished my own personal challenge to read all of the Sackett novels in two years!!!

My New Book is Out Now!

My third new release for 2024 is here at last!  A Noble Companion retells Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling," but by focusing on side characters from the original fairy tale, not the ugly duckling himself.  

A Noble Companion is part of a multi-author project called The Cornerstone Series, a collection of sixteen fairy tale retellings by sixteen different authors.  Each book focuses on a character who is NOT the main character in the original story.  And all of the books in the series are non-magical fantasy novellas, which means that, yes, I have written something other than historical fiction!  

Well, sort of ;-)  I set A Noble Companion in a fantasy world based on Spanish California of the very early 1800s, in a place I call Costa Nueva.  This book has talking animals and dragons, but it is definitely low fantasy, or historical-esque fantasy.  I am a historical fiction author at heart, so this has a lot of similarities to my Once Upon a Western series, in that I did lots of research into the time and place I was basing my fantasy world on.  But it has little fantasy elements, too.

If you buy a copy of A Noble Companion before the end of November, you can receive some book swag related to it!  All you have to do to claim your swag is fill out this form and wait for me to email you to request proof of purchase and an address to send the swag to.  The swag includes:

• 1 double-sided bookmark
• 1 piece of dragon treasure
• 3 vinyl stickers

Here's what the goodies look like:

This swag bundle is available worldwide!  And you can buy either the paperback or the e-book.  Or, if you are a Kindle Unlimited reader, you can also get this swag if you read the entire book on KU before the end of the month.

If you want to know more, here's the official synopsis:

Raid a dragon's hoard for her dowry? It seemed like a good idea at the time... 

Madelena isn't in love with her friend Armando, but his marriage proposal offers the security she needs. She sympathizes with him—his father insists Armando must either find a bride or join the army. Armando would rather become a husband than a soldier, but his ugly face has scared away all other eligible ladies despite his family's wealth. Although she harbors only friendship for Armando, Madelena agrees to marry him on one condition: she insists on acquiring a dowry worthy of his family's noble standing in the land of Costa Nueva. But as a humble stablemaid, Madelena has no idea how to find such wealth. That's when the talking burro Terco mentions he's heard how to find a dragon’s treasure. 

Javier, Armando’s younger brother, has loved Madelena in silence for years. When he learns of their impending marriage, he offers to help her find the treasure, even though succeeding may cost him the chance to spend his future with her. Together, they face a dangerous wilderness, a charming bandit, and a dragon’s lair, forcing Javier to confront his feelings and Madelena to re-evaluate her heart.

I promise that's the last book I'm releasing this year ;-)  I'm tired and need a little break!

"Ride the Dark Trail" by Louis L'Amour

I'm coming close to the end of my personal "My Years with the Sacketts" challenge.  Only one true Sackett novel left, and one that's tangentially related (or so they tell me).  

Ride the Dark Trail is a galloping good time.  You've got Em Talon, a fiery old woman holding off a host of greedy landgrabbers.  You've got Logan Sackett, a somewhat shiftless gunfighter discovering he's related to the old woman and coming to her aid.  You've got the Sackett version of the Bat Signal going up, and the Sackett version of "Avengers, Assemble!" happening, which is never anything less than delightful.  Smart and savvy folks on both sides, pert young woman to keep everyone on their toes, and a batch of rousing fights and brawls -- good stuff, friends.

Particularly Good Bits:

Now we Clinch Mountain Sacketts ain't noted for gentle ways.  The way I figure it is if a man is big enough to open his mouth he's big enough to take the consequences, and I was getting tired of talk (p. 11).

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for mild cussing, lots of violence with guns and fists, and very mild innuendo about a young woman leaving an employer because he made improper advances.

This is my 24th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"Bowdrie's Law" by Louis L'Amour

Well, this was fun!  Like its predecessor, Bowdrie, this is a collection of ten short stories starring Chick Bowdrie, a Texas Ranger who rides a mean hammerhead roan and always gets his man... eventually.  The stories range from a bit humorous to very serious, and some have more action than others.  But they're all enjoyable.  I read the whole book over a couple of very stressful weeks, savoring one short story every evening or so as a way to unwind and recharge, and they were perfect for that!

Interspersed among the short stories are several historical notes about real people and places from the Old West.  I loved those!  They were always short and to-the-point, but informative.

Particularly Good Bits:

He realized what a fool he had been.  There could be no tolerating of evil.  One stamped it out or the evil grew worse (p. 140, from "The Outlaws of Poplar Creek").

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild cuss words, some western violence, and some vague hints about what could happen to good women at the hands of bad men.

This has been my 22nd book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Treasure Mountain" by Louis L'Amour

It's so convenient that Tell Sackett is my favorite Sackett, because L'Amour uses Tell as his narrator for a LOT of the Sackett books.  And Tell never fails to delight me, with his keen observational skills and dry humor.  Treasure Mountain is no exception!  Also, I love the books where multiple Sacketts and their friends pop up, and this has Tell, Orrin, Tyrel, and random friends bopping in and out as well.  Very good fun!

In Treasure Mountain, Orrin Sackett goes to New Orleans looking for any possible clues as to where his dad went twenty years earlier when he left New Orleans and was never seen again.  It's a very cold trail to follow, but these are Sacketts, people.  They're part bloodhound.  And they're all smart and savvy and wise to the ways of the wicked.  

Except Orrin is always falling afoul of witches women.  And he goes missing.  So then Tell shows up in New Orleans looking for Orrin.  And, because Tell really just never fails to find what he's seeking, he and Orrin then head off on the cold trail of their dad, who, it turns out, left N.O. looking for a million dollars in gold someone had buried in the Southwest.  But there are bad guys, and bad women, and dubious food, and extreme landscapes, all standing in the way of the Sacketts and their quest to find any remains of their dad, who was on a quest to find gold.  Which, of course, makes for a great yarn.  I enjoyed it.

Today just happens to be actor Sam Elliott's 80th birthday.  Sam Elliott played Tell Sackett in the 1979 TV miniseries The Sacketts, which my husband and I happen to be planning to finish watching this weekend.  So this seemed like the perfect time to finally post this review.  Happy birthday, Sam Elliott!!!

Particularly Good Bits: 

"Once a man has lived with mountains you can't offer him a home with a prairie dog" (p. 34).

"Mountains are hard upon evil," I said.  "They don't hold with it" (p. 175).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a smattering of cuss words and some violence.

This has been my 18th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

Cover Reveal and ARC Sign-Up for My Book "Prairie Tales"

It's finally time to share the cover for the sixth book in my Once Upon a Western series!  Prairie Tales: Volume One is a collection of ten short stories that are all related to the first five books in the series, whether as sequels or prequels to those books.

Here's the official synopsis:

Discover ten re-imaginings of fairy tales, folk tales, and even a Mother Goose rhyme in this heartwarming collection. Journey across the plains of Nebraska and Kansas and explore the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado with characters from the "Once Upon a Western" series—or meet them for the first time! Encounter a mattress filled with apples, a runaway basket of gingerbread, a house that looks like a shoe, a disappointing Christmas tree, and a Halloween prank gone wrong. Each short story brings a classic tale to life, offering fresh adventures and cozy charm in the Old West.

The ten short stories included are:

• "None Too Particular" (The Princess and the Pea) 
• "Let Down Your Hair" (Rapunzel) 
• "I'll Do It Myself" (The Little Red Hen) 
• "No Match for a Good Story" (Scheherazade) 
• "Run, Run" (The Gingerbread Man) 
• "Who Lived in a Shoe" (There Was an Old Woman) 
• "The Ugly Evergreen" (The Ugly Duckling) 
• "The Wind Makes a Poor Husband" (The Mouse's Marriage) 
• "The Blizzard at Three Bears Lake" (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) 
• "Gruff" (Three Billy Goats Gruff)

And now, it's time to reveal the cover!

I think this just might be the prettiest cover for this series yet!  And look how wonderful it looks with all the others:

If some of those short stories sound familiar to you, five of them have been previously available on their own as free e-books, and two of them have been free Christmas gifts to people who subscribe to my author newsletter.  If you're keeping up with my math here, that means that three of these short stories are totally new and have never been available before!  And none of them have been available in print before this. 

Only "Who Lived in a Shoe" and "Blizzard at Three Bears Lake" will continue to be offered as free e-books on their own.  All the rest will only be available in this collection from now on.

Prairie Tales: Volume One will release on August 6, 2024, which is less than a month away!  If you don't want to wait a whole month to read it, you can apply for an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) by filling out this form.  I will give out a limited number of ARCs, and they will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you want one, you'd better sign up soon!  All ARCs will be e-books, not paperbacks.

The Kindle edition of Prairie Tales is available for pre-order right here already, and you can also mark it as want-to-read here on GoodReads.

I'll be offering some book launch goodies, and taking this book on a virtual book tour during its launch week, so keep an eye out for news about those!

Oh, and yes... the title includes the words "volume one."  I fully expect to keep writing books and short stories in this series, which means there will be another volume of Once Upon a Western short stories one day!  I currently have plans for the next three books, and ideas for a couple more short stories...

The Cover Reveal for My Book "A Noble Companion"

As you may have heard, I will be releasing an Ugly Duckling retelling called A Noble Companion this fall as part of the Cornerstone Series from Beyond the Bookery. I am revealing its gorgeous cover at last!

A Noble Companion releases on November 12, and you can already pre-order the Kindle version on Amazon.

The books in this series are all non-magical fantasy, which means the authors will include fantasy elements such as creatures (such as dragons, centaurs, unicorns, mermaids) or settings, but there will be no magic-users, such as witches or wizards or sorcerers.

Is this a major step out into the unknown for me as a writer?  In some ways, yes.  I tried writing a fantasy novel in my teens and gave it up because the worldbuilding was driving me crazy.  I've never tried to write anything fantasy-ish again... until now.  

But, because I'm me, A Noble Companion has an American West flavor -- I've created a world based on Spanish California in the early 1800s (think of Zorro), but with talking animals and dragons.  

I have an inspiration board for this book on Pinterest -- you can check that out here!

Anyway!  I love my cover, and I'm having a great time writing this book.  If you'd like to see covers for more of the series, we are releasing four at a time every Monday for the whole month of June -- you can find the first eight here in my Instagram feed!

If you think A Noble Companion sounds like a fun read, you can mark it as "want to read" here on Goodreads.

"Galloway" by Louis L'Amour

Why is this one called Galloway when it's mostly about Galloway Sackett's brother Flagan?  I mean, Galloway is in it, lots -- but it starts out from Flagan's point of view, and he gets to narrate it in first person here and there, whereas Galloway's chapters get told in third person.  I'm not saying the title makes no sense, because Galloway does play a key role here -- but it's really Flagan's story.  That's Flagan on the cover, even.  Huh.  I wonder if the publisher titled this one, or L'Amour himself.

Anyway, I liked this book a LOT.  Flagan Sackett escapes from some angry Apaches, stark naked and on foot, and manages to not only evade them, but survive in the mountains alone, and eventually find other people... and more trouble, which is where the actual plot takes place -- there's a mean guy and his mean followers who want to take over and control a whole section of the country, and Flagan and Galloway Sackett like the looks of that area and want to ranch there too, and so other people take sides, and more Sacketts get involved, and there's not quite a range war, but it gets close to one.  Since one Sackett is a whole lot of Sacketts, and there are four involved here, it's pretty clear who will win in the end.  The fun is in seeing how they do it.

Particularly Good Bits:

Back up at the forks of the creek in Tennessee they don't raise many foolish children, and the foolish men don't live long enough to get knee-high to a short sheep (p. 26).

There's a saying in the mountains that if you harm a cricket his friends will come and eat your socks (p. 28) (This made me laugh so much!)

I had lived long enough to know that nothing lasts forever, and men torture themselves who believe that it will.  The one law that does not change is that everything changes (p. 46).

There's a saying that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns (p. 52).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for some brief discussions of torture, scenes of survival in harsh conditions, a little mild cussing, and western violence.

This is my 14th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"Mustang Man" by Louis L'Amour

I liked this one all right.  It was an enjoyable and fast-paced read, but I didn't love it.  I'm not sure why, either, as the story was solid, and Nolan Sackett was an interesting character.  But he felt a little detached, as a narrator, or maybe like he was trying to distance himself and the readers from the story in a way?

The storyline is good stuff -- Nolan Sackett, who could be a hero but is often labeled an outlaw, falls afoul of a witch.  Well, not a witch, really, but a sociopathic woman who likes to poison people and torture people and kill people.  Anyway, he escapes her clutches and then encounters a Wise Old Mentor who gives him tools and advice.  Then he finds a Woman in Distress and helps her seek out a treasure.  It's very myth-based storytelling, if you can't tell, and I usually really like that! 

You know, now that I've been mulling over it a bit, I think I know what the problem is.  I didn't really like the main female character, Penelope.  She didn't get as well-fleshed-out as most of L'Amour's heroines, and so I never got a chance to know her, and that means I didn't get invested in Nolan's desire to help her and his secret hope that she might see him as more than a crooked-nosed outlaw.

Oh well -- not every Sackett book needs to be my favorite!

Particularly Good Bits:

I knew I wouldn't get anywhere now trying to run; and when it comes to that, I am not a man who cares to run, unless it's toward something (p. 37).

It was always as Ivanhoe that I saw myself, and always as the Norman knight that I was being seen by others (p. 73).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence, non-detailed descriptions of someone who has been tortured, and a brief mention of prostitution.  Also some mild cussing.

This has been my 13th book read off my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"The Smoking Iron and Other Stories" by Elisabeth Grace Foley

I think this is Foley's best short story collection yet!  Also, how marvelous is that cover?  I absolutely love silhouettes, and the colors in that sky here are so delightful!

This is a collection of seven short stories, all set in the American West, but not all in the classic "Cowboy Era" of the 1860s-1880s.  In fact, some are set in the 20th century!  

Here's a bit of what I thought about each story:

"Dakota Clothesline" made me angry.  This is not a great way to start a review, and I promise I liked the rest of the stories, but this one gets a huge red X from me.  No parent of a helpless infant has any business leaving that infant alone to go out into a life-threatening situation.  Sure, this mother did so to try to save her husband's life during a blizzard, but if she had gotten lost or otherwise died in that blizzard, she was dooming her child to a slow and horrible death by starvation.  That is absolutely unacceptable behavior, and I will never condone it.  Parents who abandon a child to try to rescue another adult make me furiously angry, and I don't care who knows it.

"The Heiress and the Horse-Trade" was pleasingly clever in places, though the main character annoyed me a little by getting herself into such a predicament in the first place.  Money should be left in the bank where it's safe, not toted all about the countryside just because you want to show it to someone.

"Sheep Need a Shepherd" was my favorite.  In fact, I would buy this book solely for this one story, even if I disliked all the others.  A minister with a young family takes a call to a church in a town surrounded by ranchers, only to have lots of trouble with the ranchers because of his unorthodox side job that he takes on to put food on his family's table since the church is too small to fully support him.  As a pastor's daughter, I am very particular about how ministers are portrayed in fiction, and I absolutely loved this fictional preacher.

"Professor Pruitt's Circulating Concert Company" made me chuckle aloud.  A young man tries to run away from home and join a troupe of entertainers, but mishaps abound.  

"Lark's Nest" was poignant and thought-provoking.  A young woman tries hard to be a hearthkeeper for her grandfather and her brothers, but her efforts seem useless for a long time.  Good stuff.

"Big Aspen" was a solid coming-of-age story, but also dealt with the difficulties of coming back home to 'normal life' after WWII.  In some ways, it reminded me of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), but make it a western instead.  It was my second-favorite story in the book.

"The Smoking Iron" was very exciting, and almost to tense for comfort!  A young man is accused of stealing cattle by changing their brands and has to find a way to prove his innocence.  Good stuff.

Particularly Good Bits:

"If there's one thing I've been convinced of -- maybe believed more strongly than anything else, ever since I first felt called to preach - it's just that one thing: the gospel is sufficient.  If I ever tried to preach in any way apart from that, I wouldn't be any good for anything." ("Sheep Need a Shepherd")

"I never have appreciated being told what's the Christian thing to do by people who aren't Christians." ("Sheep Need a Shepherd")

And even if no one saw or noticed, she must be faithful in the little things and trust that it would all matter in the end. ("Lark's Nest")

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some violence and threats of violence in several stories.  No cussing; no smut.

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.  I was not required to review it.  All thoughts and opinions here are my own.

"The Lonely Men" by Louis L'Amour

Not my favorite Sackett book, I'm afraid.  Even though it stars Tell Sackett, who IS my favorite Sackett!  Mostly, I think I disliked it because it had Laura Sackett for a villain, Orrin's ex-wife, and she is poisonous and spiteful and horrid.  I just wanted to get myself (and Tell) as far away from her as possible.  She's really just in bits here and there, but ugh, I hated having to deal with her whenever she cropped up.

I did love how Tell and three friends risked everything to rescue some children.  I love protective characters, and that is no doubt why I love Tell Sackett.  Also, Dorset was another of L'Amour's wonderful female characters filled with grit and grace.  She was the direct opposite of Laura, which was refreshing.

Particularly Good Bits: 

With none to share our sorrows or regrets, we kept them to ourselves, and our faces were impassive.  Men with no one to share their feelings learn to conceal those feelings.  We often spoke lightly of things which we took very seriously indeed (p. 17).

I figure I was shaped to be a wallflower, but I don't mind.  I sort of like to set back and listen to folks, to drink coffee, and contemplate (p. 20).  (ME TOO, Tell!)

The desert is the enemy of the careless (p. 40).

"It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy" (p. 94).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a lot of violence, including torture, and kids in peril.  The violence is not gory, but it isn't too glossed-over, either.  There is a smattering of bad language.

This is my 10th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.