Men go out in the desert to find their puha–their power. Why can a woman not do the same? The girl wondered. She looked at her hands. Maybe this is a dream, she hoped. A medicine woman once told Wa Shana that if one could see their own hands in a dream, they could control their dream to learn many secrets. Wa Shana’s hands were cracked and bleeding, from days of scraping buffalo hides and tending the cooking fires. Her whole life was one of toil, drudgery and scolding from the older women of the village. The dizziness, this sense of being apart from her body, had started in mid-afternoon. Only a swallow or two remained in her goatskin bag; she needed to save it. Except for some pemmican and a small knife, she had no other provisions. What little status Wa Shana had in the tribe was gone. A woman’s power, her ‘puha’, came from being the center of a family—the power of drawing in a man, becoming the wife of a warrior, giving birth and raising children. Wa Shana no longer had any of that. She only had the reputation of humming strange songs to herself when she worked, which only intensified the tribe’s belief that she was possessed by an evil spirit. Amelia D. Smith 6002 Cayce Lane Columbia, TN 38401 931-626-2856 [email protected]

First, the Comanche raided Isobel's hacienda and swept her away to the New Mexican desert. Then, she saw her abductor's face. The young chieftain Stands Alone had claimed her, his childhood companion and first love, as his bride. Isobel called him a savage; he called her his prisoner. Yet his fiery kisses freed her heart and imprisoned his own. Now, if two warring cultures don't divide them forever, they may finally join in one indomitable love.

"Emilie Gayarre grew up in luxury but left it all for a safe haven on the isolated island of Fairweather Key, where she has made a new life for herself as a schoolteacher. But now she has been called home to New Orleans and her father's deathbed only to learn the life she was raised to enjoy was all a lie. A stigma attached to her birth could steal any hope for a happy future..."--Book jacket.

Changeling destiny-an injured Apache girl adopted by a powerful rancher, the rancher's son kidnapped in revenge by the last free Apaches. Inspired by historical events that took place in the 1920s Sierra Madre, Far Blue Mountains is a gothic western like no other. In 1926, when rancher Jubal McKenna discovers an injured Apache girl and welcomes her into his family, he sets in motion an irrevocable exchange of destiny. The girl is a member of the last unsurrendered Apaches. They live in freedom well into the 20th century, hidden in the wild mountains of Mexico, where they keep the old ways. An eye for an eye, blood for blood-in reprisal, the Apaches kidnap Jubal's young son, John Russell McKenna. They take the boy into the sierras to live as one of their own, a beloved captive. The boy is immersed in Apache culture, a world of freedom and adventure, brutal violence and strange magic. John Russell becomes Denali, an Apache warrior. Meanwhile Jubal searches the sierras for Apache camps, as the quest for revenge threatens to consume his soul.This magnificent first novel by Max McNabb, the editor of TexasHillCountry.com, has all the relentless pace of a classic western and the elegiac beauty of a lost myth. At once a grand adventure and a darkly beautiful tragedy, Far Blue Mountains is a meditation on identity and destiny, freedom and revenge.

Dr. Rebecca Daniels is a well known child psychologist who has overcome her own troubled childhood to help children who cannot help themselves. After meeting with a judge about one of her young patients, she witnesses the judge's murder and is knocked unconscious by the man who invaded his chambers. The judge's assailant then kidnaps her and whisks her away to parts unknown, and she finds herself in a fight for her life. Detective Kevin Jacobs believes integrity is the most important trait a detective can possess. For the past ten years, he's been an honest, hard working cop with an innate ability to root out evil. His case closure rate is one of the highest in the department. Then a man he thought was a loyal friend frames him for murder, and he's forced to take a beautiful doctor hostage in order to clear his good name.

An intimate portrait of a marriage intertwined with a meditation on reality TV that reveals surprising connections and the meaning of an authentic life. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL. In Lucas Mann's trademark vein--fiercely intelligent, self-deprecating, brilliantly observed, idiosyncratic, personal, funny, and infuriating--Captive Audience is an appreciation of reality television wrapped inside a love letter to his wife, with whom he shares the guilty pleasure of watching "real" people bare their souls in search of celebrity. Captive Audience resides at the intersection of popular culture with the personal; the exhibitionist impulse, with the schadenfreude of the vicarious, and in confronting some of our most suspect impulses achieves a heightened sense of what it means to live an authentic life and what it means to love a person.