Readers should be warned that this book starts with a pretty graphic description of spousal brutality. The heroine, Evelyn, flees her husband’s abuse and winds up far from her society life in Boston, out in Wyoming’s high mountains, hiding out with a gang of outlaws after a case of mistaken identity leads to her being kidnapped off a train. Gabriel Sloan takes on responsibility for Evelyn, recognising something in her which calls to him. He’s Native American, having been take

Linda Broday doesn’t shy away from the dark side of the Old West. Yes, the central characters in her stories always manage to save each other in the nick of time and find their happily ever afters, but there’s plenty of gritty realism thrown in along with the sappy sweetness of romance. In Saving the Mail Order Bride, for example, Jack and Nora end up with a baby girl after the child’s mother dies in childbirth and the father perishes in a simple accident. It’s a sobering rem

Set amid the fervor of California’s Gold Rush, the Lucky Creek Lady is Laurie Sinclair, whose father left a comfortable life in Philadelphia to chase dreams of gold. When her entomologist fiance goes on yet another expedition instead of setting a wedding date, Laurie sets of the visit her family in Lucky Creek, and at first she can’t wait to go home. Far from the civilized world she knows, Lucky Creek is a rough frontier town populated with rougher characters, like Darcy the

Clay Colby’s an outlaw trying to go straight. Working with other men to build a new town called Devil’s Crossing, he longs for a partner in life. His friend Luke runs a rather unusual mail-order bride service, finding brides for men who can’t advertise through normal channels, and through Luke Clay finds Tally. Betrayed by her stepmother, she was placed in a lunatic asylum and horribly maltreated before being able to escape, taking with her several other women and Violet, a b

This is a collection of stories from Christian publisher Barbour Press all themed around runaway brides and set in America in the latter half of the 19th century. From a wealthy socialite getting cold feet about her arranged dynastic marriage to a mail-order bride choosing to marry a stranger rather than a man she knows for certain to be unpleasant, this is a pleasantly varied collection, and when I say pleasantly varied, I was surprised and delighted to find one of the stori