For Jess Cook, the Turn Around Ranch is her last best hope to keep her daughter Chloe from repeating Jess's mistakes. Jess was a teen mom and Chloe's started running with a bad crowd. Jess is willing to do literally anything for Chloe, including learning to cook for thirty hungry ranch folk, and it's the mother-daughter story which tugs on the heartstrings most in this book. The hero Wade, a co-owner of the ranch, is a lovely guy who'd come across a bit too good to be true if

A Fairy Tale Christmas by Leigh Greenwood Set in 1880, spinster Nan is the owner of a nice farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Just a few days before Christmas, businessman Will Atkins and his daughter Clara wind up on her doorstep when Will falls sick and there’s nobody else available to take him in. On his way to leave Clara with her maternal grandparents because he’s unable to look after her, Nan could be the answer to this lonely pair’s prayers. Two things struck me about this

I checked and this book is actually written by someone from Texas, so maybe this is accurate, but would the sheriff's department of a small town outside Amarillo really need to go to the local Mexican restaurant to find someone who could speak a few words of Spanish to two young human trafficking victims? I mean… I did two years of Spanish in high school almost 30 years ago, and I reckon I could have dredged up a few words to reassure them. Not having at least one Spanish-spe

Eva King’s a city girl, an urban artist only in the country because her next art project will (she hopes) be a giant mural on an old grain elevator. Casey Carmody is a country boy, a cowboy who sings for a country band, working himself to the bone with his brothers and sister to keep the family ranch afloat. On paper, they seem like opposites, but opposites attract as often as not, and in this case, their attraction is instant and scorching hot. Chemistry aside, the more time

I had a bit of a wince early on in the story when an aristocratic lord in 1870’s London criticised his younger brother for ‘hanging out with’ an actress, and wondered if the whole story was going to be full of such contemporary slang. I’m glad I stuck with it, though, because the rest of the book does feel solidly period, bringing the Wild West vividly to life through the lens of Lady Elizabeth, who chooses to make a new life in America out from under the thumb of her control

I was very much in two minds about how to review this book. On one hand, the premise - a cowboy stunt rider and a nurse on the set of an Old West TV series - was really unique, and some of the research was superbly done and obviously written from experience, like all the medical stuff and everything to do with the care and training of horses. On the other hand, I don’t think the author has ever been on the set of a TV series, and definitely has no idea how hedged about with s

Carolyn Brown's cowboy novels are so country you can almost taste the grits. Toughest Cowboy In Texas is the first in a new series set in the small town of Happy, Texas, following the three siblings of the Dawson family. I'm not even American, but Carolyn Brown sets the scene so well I can almost see the big Texas skies, hear the country music on the radio - country songs are sprinkled throughout the book and often used as metaphors to express the characters' emotions, so if

First in a new series by bestselling author Harper Sloan, Lost Rider absolutely oozes aww-shucks Texas country. The country songs at the beginning of each chapter only add to the feeling, and yes, I was sure from the beginning that Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy was going to wind up being one of the songs. Told in alternating first person points of view from Maverick, a champion rodeo rider coming home to the small town whose dust he shook from his boots a decade ago, and Leight

I'm going to start off by saying that this is a charming story and that I really liked Gina, the female protagonist. I actually thought it was a period romance from the title - mail-order brides being rather less common in contemporary stories - but the author really made it work, giving us a completely believable reason for both Rory to advertise for a wife and for Gina to answer the advertisement. Fisher, Gina's little boy, was completely adorable. The language in the book