NEW RELEASE -- The Saga of Indian Em’ly Book 3: The Orphanage by Sara Barnard -- Giveaway!

Be sure and leave a comment for a chance to win an ecopy of Sara Barnard's The Orphanage!

Far from home in a land foreign to them, kidnapped Apache siblings Wind That Knocks Down Lodges and Cactus Flower are at the mercy of the Army soldiers they have grown to despise. When ordered to dispose of the children or else, the Army soldiers waste no time in depositing them at the nearest Catholic orphanage, where unlikely alliances are forged and Knocks Down must make a decision: conform to the Pale Face world or risk everything for an unlikely chance at escape.

Excerpt

    “A new garrison,” Cactus translated, though she didn’t have to. I was rolling the pale face words off my tongue easier with each passing sunset. “Wants to see the …prisoners?” Her word tweaked up at the end, turning it into a question. She looked at me. “Do they mean us?”

     Glancing over the seat again, I could see that they did. “They’re coming with a big man that is red in the face and whose head is covered in silver hair, like the cunning fox. Sit up and look like one of The People.”

     Cactus Flower did as I said, just as the dirty canvas pulled back. The red faced man peered in, a brown wad that looked like a fat twig clenched in his teeth. He must have held it there often, because a brown stain from the juice had crusted on his lips. “Kids!” he spat, flinging the wad of juicy brown paper and leaves into the back of the wagon with us. Neither Cactus nor I flinched. “Brats! Whelps, they are.”

     Silence covered the men like the burial shroud had covered my mother.

     The big man with the hair like the silver fox continued, his face growing redder with each breath he sucked in. “You call these Injuns prisoners? It’s no wonder why the general saw fit to relieve you bunch of misfits. Me and my men are taking over. Now.”

Buy Links       B&N Nook       Smashwords

     

New Release -- LONE STAR RANGER VOL4: A RANGER'S CHRISTMAS by James J. Griffin--Giveaway

Be sure and leave a comment to throw your name in a drawing for a free ebook of James J. Griffin's A RANGER'S CHRISTMAS.

BLURB

Nate Stewart has avenged the deaths of his family by seeing their pale-eyed murderer dead. But his days of being a Texas Ranger have only just begun. With Christmas on the way, and the Rangers sent to the Big Bend area to patrol, they’re faced with everything from a buffalo stampede to having to resort to finding water any way they can even if it means taking it by force. When Nate believes he may have accidentally killed a friend, he falls into danger that leaves the Rangers believing he’s been drowned. Can a Christmas miracle save him and reunite him with Captain Quincy’s men for A RANGER’S CHRISTMAS?

James J. Griffin's quest for authenticity in his writing has taken him to the famous Old West towns of, Pecos, Deadwood, Cheyenne, Tombstone and numerous others. While Jim's books are fiction, he strives to keep them as accurate as possible within the realm of fiction.

EXCERPT
    “We gonna be able to outrun that stampede?” Nate called to Hoot, shouting to be heard over the horses’ thundering hooves and labored breathing.
    “You’d darn well better hope so,” Hoot hollered back. “I’ve seen men killed in cattle stampedes, more’n once. It’s not a pretty sight, and I’d imagine gettin’ trampled by a herd of buffalo would be even worse. I sure don’t want to die that way. I’d sooner take a bullet, any day. So just lay over your horse’s neck and give him his head. Let him run until he’s run out. You just might save your neck if you do.”
    Stung by the fear and urgency in Hoot’s voice, Nate bent as low as he could over Big Red’s withers, and slapped the reins against his neck, getting still more speed out of the long-legged sorrel. Within moments, Red was even overtaking Jeb’s speedy paint, Dudley. Jeb’s gelding had long been the fastest mount in Captain Quincy’s company, but right now, Red was pushing him for all he was worth.

BUY LINKS    B&N Nook   Smashwords

    

Just in Time for Christmas -- New Release -- A COVEY OF QUAIL by RIchard Prosch -- Giveaway!

The Jo Harper series continues with an exciting new holiday story. Richard Prosch is giving away one free ecopy of A Covey of Quail to one lucky person who comments, so be sure and leave your contact information.  

BLURB

He came to Willowby every Christmas, an Arapaho boy looking for something, looking for someone. The first thing Stranger Cat found in 1910 was Jake Trail’s bullets, the next thing he found was a family of friends. But then the weather turned bad, and Jo Harper would have to rely on everything she’d learned as Deputy Constable to lead her covey to safety and, just maybe, a Christmas miracle.


Jo Harper leads her friends straight into the coyote’s den and a Christmas miracle!

EXCERPT

    Almost immediately, the teacher had Emily by the collar in one hand and Jo in the other. "I'm ashamed such nonsense is taking place on school property. I might have expected something like this of Frog Beemer. He's just a boy after all. But young ladies like you, Miss Jo Harper. And you, Miss Emily Bly. I expect so much more from you!" 

    Frog couldn't help but smile to himself. Mrs. Salamander was really laying it on thick.

    "And so close to Christmas Eve. Why...uh...girls? Are you listening to me?"

    Just like his teacher, Frog realized the girls weren't listening, at all. In fact, the attention of all four had been drawn away by the figure walking up behind them.

    Sneaking up!

    It was the Indian. Stranger Cat. But he was limping. He was hurt.

    "Excuse me," he said. "I seem to be...killed."

Buy Links          B&N Nook         Smashwords

PPB New Release -- Finding the Sky: The Jo Harper Collection by RIchard Prosch -- Giveaway!

Richard Prosch is giving away one free ecopy of Finding the Sky: The Jo Harper Collection to one lucky person who comments, so be sure and leave your contact information.  This is a great collection for old and young alike.

BLURB

Twelve-year old Jo Harper thought 1910 would be another boring year in the Wyoming range town of Willowby, Wyoming. Then tough-talkin' pistol-shootin' Abby Drake came to town and made Jo a deputy law and order woman...

Collecting four exciting Jo Harper novellas, Finding the Sky pits Jo and her friends against cattle rustlers, outlaws, a bank robber and a tinhorn gambler. With explosions of fire, flaming arrows, and a wild ride in a Model-T, Jo's introspective, early 20th Century life will never again be the same. 

EXCERPT

     Laughing and squealing, squinting into the sun, Jo didn’t see where she was going until it was too late. She hit the stranger full on, and bounced down, hard, on the boardwalk.

     Pain shot through Jo’s arm, and she cussed out loud, rolled onto her back, and kept her eyes squeezed shut against the tears.

     Funny bone!

     “Land sakes! Ain’t you a fireball,” said a woman’s voice.

     Holding her elbow tight, Jo opened her eyes.

     Scuffed leather boots, denim pants, a belt cinched tight around a thick middle, and a worn holster stuffed with iron. The woman’s gnarly bronze hand snatched up a big hat from where it had landed on the boardwalk and plopped it back onto a braided gray scalp.

     The face was impossibly old, a wind-burned landscape of chasms and puckered buttes with one eye, focused and alive, blazing over all, and the second one unmoving and made of glass. At her collar, a red neckerchief flapped in the wind “Name’s Abigail Drake,” said the woman. “And I wouldn’t take unkindly to an apology.”

     The breath caught in Jo’s throat. 

BUY LINKS      B&N Nook     Smashwords

     

New Release--Shootout in Old Amarillo by Sara Barnard--Giveaway!

Could the Dairy King restaurant be a portal to the past? Kelly will find out on Halloween night.

BLURB:

Halloween night can't get any worse when her boss, Joseph Clanton, is a no-show and Kelly is stuck closing up the Dairy King alone . . . or so she thought. A cryptic order from an empty room and late-season twister combine to make Kelly's Halloween night a truly unforgettable one by sending her spiraling back through the folds of time and depositing her smack in the middle of an ancient grudge match between none other than Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton. Can Kelly survive the shootout in the streets of Old Amarillo while dodging Virgil's knife and denying Doc Holliday's romantic advances all while trying to find her way back home?

EXCERPT

I sighed as the icy Amarillo breeze skittered a handful of dead leaves across the blacktop. Leaning farther out of Dairy King’s drive-through window, I inhaled deeply and willed the heat that burned in my cheeks to cool. Still no sign of Joseph’s car.

The luminous moon, high in the inky sky, had long since risen overhead and beckoned all the little hobgoblins home to sort their candy and deal with the obligatory bellyaches that came with Halloween night. “So much for Dorie Smith’s Halloween party.” I leaned out farther and peered down the deserted highway. Sure enough, candlelight flickered in the old forgotten graveyard across the street. I should be there right now, having a séance with my friends, calling back the ghosts of the Old West.

The heat flared in my cheeks again as I pulled head back in the window and glanced at my watch for the thirtieth time. “Not the best first day of work ever, but I had never figured my boss not to show up and help me close, like he’d promised. He’s not even answering his phone.” I glanced over at the large strawberry milkshake that the last drive-thru customer had ordered then forgot to pick up. Picking it up, I slurped a long gulp and walked back out to the front. Not bad, once I’d figured out how to use the agitator without crushing the Styrofoam cups.

Flicking off the lights, one by one, I swallowed back the anger that tightened my throat behind the thick ice cream. “If I could lock up and just leave, I would.” I hit the last light switch hard. “But no. Joseph said he’d be here with the keys to help me through the last part of my shift then lock up. In plenty of time to get to my Halloween party.” My palm throbbed as I sucked up another soothing drink of milkshake. “Worst. Boss. Ever.”

With a trembling hand, I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my newly-bought-and-freshly-stained khakis. “Since he can’t bother to call or text to check on his new employee, I’m going to send Joseph Clanton a message to end all messages. Then, I’m leaving.” Suddenly aware of the heavy darkness that surrounded me in the empty dining room, I ignored a shudder and moved through the thick plastic doors to the back, where I’d left one light on. “If the place gets looted, it’s his own fault.”

I’d just managed to get my phone unlocked when a familiar buzz met my ears. Before my thumb could hit the text message icon on the touch screen, I froze. Utter terror gripped my bones as I registered the noise I’d heard all too often that day. An order ticket being printed.

The cooks had left much earlier, all having Halloween parties of their own to get to. I was the only one left in the building…wasn’t I?

Slowly, I turned around. Sure enough, a freshly printed ticket stood straight and crisp from the machine nearest me. The strawberry milkshake bubbled in my stomach with a nauseating roil as I reached and tore the ticket free. “Sent from Station One, the cooks’ station, to Station Three, the drive-thru window.” I gulped. Casting a glance over my shoulder at the darkness that loomed behind the metallic freezers, I could have sworn I heard the creak of a door.

Panic began to build in my feet, making my toes twitch in my black Nikes. With adrenaline charging through me, I took one last look at the ticket. The cryptic words sent a final shudder down my spine. “Why r u wet?”

    I gripped my phone so tightly that I feared I would crack the screen as I gave the ticket a fling and pushed through the heavy curtains, back into the dining room. Without looking back, I shoved open the double glass doors and raced into the parking lot. Every horrific scene from every horror movie I’d ever watched flashed through my mind. Bad things always happen in dark parking lots. Tears filled my eyes as I struggled to open the keypad so I could dial 9-1-1 on the touch screen.

BUY LINKS:  B&N NOOK    SMASHWORDS

PPB New Release -- Shooting the Moon by RIchard Prosch

Richard Prosch is giving away one free ecopy of Shooting the Moon to one lucky person who comments, so be sure and leave your contact information.

BLURB
Jo Harper looked forward to the Willowby, Wyoming fall festival all year, but will an explosive bank robbery blow up her career as a law woman?  Going it alone under the harvest moon, the twelve-year old deputy constable will question everything she stands for and push her skills to the limit to save her friends from enemies old and new.

A fiery explosion! A jail break! A ghost town! Jo Harper's most dangerous adventure is here in this exciting sequel to ROPING A PLANET.

EXCERPT

October, 1910

    By four o'clock on Friday afternoon, Willowby, Wyoming's Fall Festival was well underway with a jillion people filling the town square. Twelve-year-old Jo Harper had looked forward to the yearly mix of farmer's market, circus carnival, and musical variety show for eleven months, 29 days and three hours. She just naturally kept track of the time. It wasn't like she was counting or anything!

    For a block in every direction, the brick-laid streets of Broadway and Main were closed off to automobile and horse traffic, and decorations were everywhere. Cornhusks tied in tall shocks with colorful ribbons, pumpkins piled high, and clean straw bedding made the streets come alive. Tables stocked with scores of winter goodies led the way to and from a central pine-board bandstand where The Sleepy Settlers would pick up their fiddles and rosin up their bowstrings for a dance on Saturday night. Acres of cozy quilts and thick blankets hung next to jars of fruits, vegetables, and canned meats. The moms traded coats, hats, and mittens. Dads traded jack-knives and know-it-all opinions.

    The sky was as blue as Jo could remember, and though Willowby had recently seen a dusting of snow, it wasn't winter quite yet. There were still a few leaves on the trees and most of the people at the festival had on light flannel jackets or simple yarn sweaters. Jo brushed a speck of dust off her leather jacket, walnut brown with fringes. Normally, she pulled her long black hair into a sturdy braid, but today she let it fly every which way in the autumn wind. She wore a green plaid shirt, tan corduroy trousers, and high lace-up boots. On her jacket, she'd pinned a polished deputy constable's star, but nobody noticed it.

    Probably they just pretended not to notice it.

    Perched on a bench beside the Congregational Church ice-cream stand, directly in front of the brick bank building, Frog Carpenter was dressed in his usual red flannel shirt, overalls and cap. Jo figured she wouldn't see him wear a coat until mid-winter. Not because his adopted parents, the Beemers, couldn't afford one. There were few families in Willowby as wealthy as the Beemers. It's just that Frog rarely slowed down long enough for the cold to touch him.

    "I've already et my supper and dessert," he said, cheeks full of chocolate cake. "And my noon-time dinner was hours ago. What do I call it when we sit down to eat tonight? I can't call it lunch. And I can't have two suppers. Can I?"

    "It's eaten, not et, and I'd call it a vulgar display of over-indulgence," said Jo, practicing her best high-falootin' vocabulary.

    "A booger's play of what?"

    "A vulgar display," said Jo.

    "Whatever that means," said Frog, washing down the cake with a fast swallow of bottled lemon-lime soda. "You're just sore because I got the last hunk of cake." Frog held his plate close to his chest, protective of the small bite that remained.

    Jo sniffed loudly. "Am not," she said, real snooty-like. Well, really. Her, angry with him? Over a piece of cake? The very idea.

    Frog was eleven years old; but next month, Jo would turn thirteen. She was certainly above being envious of Mrs. Beemer's German Chocolate Cake.

    Good as it was. And, it was rrrreeeeeaaally good.

    "Heard your dad was walking around on his stilts?" said Frog.

    Every year, Cecil Harper dressed up and strapped the stilts to his feet for the festival. Usually, Jo was embarrassed by the clown act. But this time, it might be a nice distraction.

    "He's right over there," said Jo, pointing straight into the crowd.

    "Where?"

    When Frog turned his head, Jo scooped up the remains of his cake and stuffed it into her mouth.

    "Ha!"

    Frog stared at his empty plate with surprise. "Did you just steal my cake?"

    "Who's stealing what?" said a familiar voice, and Jo jumped up with a smile.

    "Hi, Abby," she said.

    "Jo stole my cake," said Frog. "Arrest her."

    Willowby's tough lady constable stepped past a pair of bearded homesteaders and stopped beside Frog's bench. She was dressed in her official best, a tan colored buckskin outfit, black string tie, and white Stetson hat. Around her waist, she buckled the weathered leather gunbelt she'd had since her days in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and she carried an old-fashioned black-powder Colt Paterson five-shooter in her holster.

    "Hope you two are enjoying yourselves," said Abby, with a wide smile that emphasized the deep grooves time had whittled around her eyes and cheeks. Happy grooves when she smiled, but grooves laid in by anger and sadness too. With more than sixty years living and working in the West, Abigail Drake had seen it all. She'd been a trick-shot and a tracker, a bounty-hunter and a judge. Once, when she’d been careless with a firearm, she’d paid for it by losing an eye. She taught Jo that one serious mistake was all it took to change your outlook on everything.

    "Hope you two are being careful," said Abby.

    Jo thought Abby's glass eye was a good reminder to always be careful. But why had she mentioned it today of all days?

    "Is something wrong, Abby?"

    "Maybe." She put an arm around each of them and led Jo and Frog into the intersection.   "Somebody I saw in the crowd. A man I thought I'd never see again. Seeing this owlhoot here, today of all days, got me to thinking.” Abby pointed at the Willowby Savings and Loan building. "Do me a favor and keep watch on the bank."

    Jo's heart skipped a beat.

    The bank?

BUY LINKS  B&N NOOK    SMASHWORDS

Painted Pony Books New Release -- Roping A Planet by Richard Prosch -- Giveaway

Rich will be giving away a copy of ROPING A PLANET to one person who comments, so be sure to leave a way he can contact you in the comments if you would like to participate in the drawing.

BLURB:

During the autumn of 1910 twelve-year old deputy constable Jo Harper is making the most of a warm Indian Summer until a deadly mystery brings a winter chill to the season. When chief badge toter Abby Drake asks Jo to help promote the movie career of Jupiter, an enormous prize-winning horse, neither of Willowby, Wyoming's top law & order gals expect the storm of fire and flaming arrows that follows.

And with so many other things straying off the trail—from a potential new boyfriend to keeping an autograph book, from a perpetually absent father to the unrelenting progress of 20th century technology—how will Jo rope her destiny and tie up her most dangerous adventure at the same time?

Jo Harper, Abby Drake, and Frog return with Jupiter, "a Horse to Remember!" in this sequel to RACING A DOG STAR.

EXCERPT:

Red faced with anger, spectacles sliding down her nose, her tiny fist clenched into a marble mallet, Beatrice Dunn pounded the old cherrywood lectern while her gray, crocheted shawl dropped from her long cotton shirt sleeves to the school room floor.

Twelve-year old Jo Harper had never seen the new school marm pitch such a hissy fit, and like the dozen students around her, Jo was fighting a nervous snicker. Chalk dust tickled Jo's nose with each thump of the lectern.

The target of Beatrice’s anger was one of the older boys in the row behind Jo, a farm kid with the unlikely name of Ned Salamander. The herd of wild boys sitting in the bench beside him called him Sally, and not appreciating the nickname, Ned complained aloud. So they teased him all the more, even during math lessons. Naturally, it was Sally, er, Ned that Beatrice blamed for the ruckus.

“Once and for all, I have had enough nonsense, Ned,” said Beatrice. “This is your final warning. Do you hear me young man? Your final warning.”

Seventeen year-old Ned couldn’t keep sober at being called a young man by the equally young Beatrice and, turning to the very boys who teased him, pulled a funny face. The boys laughed like a team of mischievous donkeys. Not that Jo could blame them.

Floundering behind the lectern, Beatrice was only a few years older than Jo, a student herself when the fall semester’s first teacher ended up in jail. As a stand-in, Beatrice was in above her head. And as a girl, she was completely the opposite of Jo. Where Beatrice’s hair was mouse brown and thin, Jo’s long, thick braid was raven black. While Beatrice dressed like a spinster with sweaters and long skirts, Jo wore tough canvas shirts and denim jeans. Beatrice liked to knit. Jo liked to shoot six-guns.

     Beatrice had really tried to be a good teacher, treading water for the past month or two, but she was going under.  Just as Jo started feeling sorry for her, the teacher turned and stomped down the center aisle, then ran from the building.

BUY LINKS:      Barnes and Nobles Nook        Smashwords