Sandra Dallas

Set in the high country of Colorado during the Depression, this is the story of an unforgettable friendship between two women--eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort and seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle--and the deepest hardships and darkest secrets they shared

Prayers for Sale

Sandra Dallas's Little Souls is a gripping tale of sisterhood, loyalty, and secrets set in Denver amid America’s last deadly flu pandemic Colorado, 1918. World War I is raging overseas, but it’s the home front battling for survival. With the Spanish Flu rampant, Denver’s schools are converted into hospitals, churches and funeral homes are closed, and nightly horse-drawn wagons collect corpses left in the street. Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Ohio after their parents’ death. Helen, a nurse, and Lutie, a carefree advertising designer at Neusteter’s department store, share a small, neat house and each finds a local beau – for Helen a doctor, for Lutie a young student who soon enlists. They make a modest income from a rental apartment in the basement. When their tenant dies from the flu, the sisters are thrust into caring the woman’s small daughter, Dorothy. Soon after, Lutie comes home from work and discovers a dead man on their kitchen floor and Helen standing above the body, an icepick in hand. She has no doubt Helen killed the man—Dorothy’s father—in self-defense, but she knows that will be hard to prove. They decide to leave the body in the street, hoping to disguise it as a victim of the flu. But the police are not fooled and soon come asking questions. Meanwhile Lutie also worries about her fiance “over there”. As it happens, his wealthy mother harbors a secret of her own and helps the sisters as the danger deepens, from the murder investigation and the flu. Set against the backdrop of an epidemic that feels all too familiar, Little Souls is a compelling tale of sisterhood and of the sacrifices people make to protect those they love most.

Little Souls

Where Coyotes Howl

Her life turned upside-down when a Japanese internment camp is opened in their small Colorado town, Rennie witnesses the way her community places suspicion on the newcomers when a young girl is murdered, an event that prompts Rennie's own perspective change and the discovery of dangerous secrets. By the author of New Mercies. 75,000 first printing.

Tallgrass

From the bestselling author of Prayers for Sale, Sandra Dallas' Westering Women is an inspiring celebration of sisterhood on the perilous Overland Trail AG Journal's RURAL THEMES BOOKS FOR WINTER READING | Hasty Book Lists' BEST BOOKS COMING OUT IN JANUARY “Exciting novel ... difficult to put down.” —Booklist "If you are an adventuresome young woman of high moral character and fine health, are you willing to travel to California in search of a good husband?" It's February, 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter, she has nothing to lose. She joins forty-three other women and two pious reverends on the dangerous 2,000-mile journey west. None are prepared for the hardships they face on the trek or for the strengths they didn't know they possessed. Maggie discovers she’s not the only one looking to leave dark secrets behind. And when her past catches up with her, it becomes clear a band of sisters will do whatever it takes to protect one of their own.

A Novel

Westering Women

Unexpectedly married to the man considered the catch of her hometown, a young woman finds herself traveling via covered wagon to Colorado in search of a new start, with only her reticent husband and her personal journal to keep her company

The Diary of Mattie Spenser

In 1930s Harveyville, Kansas, Rita Ritter, a recent arrival, is invited to join the Persian Pickle Club, but her interest in journalism brings her dangerously close to a secret the club has sworn to keep

The Persian Pickle Club

From Sandra Dallas, the best-selling author of A Quilt for Christmas, comes The Patchwork Bride, the irrepressible story of a runaway bride. Ellen is putting the finishing touches on a wedding quilt made from scraps of old dresses when the bride-to-be—her granddaughter June—unexpectedly arrives and announces she’s calling off the marriage. With the tending of June’s uncertain heart in mind, Ellen tells her the story of Nell, a Kansas-born woman who goes to the High Plains of New Mexico Territory in 1898 in search of a husband. Working as a biscuit-shooter, Nell falls for a cowboy named Buddy. She sees a future together, but she can’t help wondering if his feelings for her are true. When Buddy breaks her heart, she runs away. In her search for a soul mate, Nell will run away from marriage twice more before finding the love of her life. It’s a tale filled with excitement, heartbreak, disappointment, and self-discovery—as well as with hard-earned life lessons about love. Another stunning, emotional novel from a master storyteller.

The Patchwork Bride

SANDRA DALLAS is the author of fourteen novels, including "A Quilt for Christmas," "Fallen Women, True Sisters," "The Bride's House," "Whiter Than Snow," "Prayers for Sale," "Tallgrass" and "New Mercies." She is a former Denver bureau chief for "Business Week" magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado.

The Last Midwife

In 1885, wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen investigates the brutal murder of her estranged sister Lillie, entering a dangerous world of prostitution where she discovers the truth about the sister she couldn't save, exposing the darkest side of Gilded Age ambition in Denver in the process. 75,000 first printing.

Fallen Women

"After Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese, twelve-year-old Tomi and her Japanese-American family are split up and forced to leave their California home to live in internment camps in New Mexico and Colorado"--

Red berries, white clouds, blue sky

Sewing a special quilt during the months she waits for her soldier husband to return from the Civil War, Eliza Spooner bonds with other women in the face of a terrible loss and makes a difficult choice when she is asked to help an escaped slave. Discussion guide available online. By the best-selling author of Fallen Women.

A Quilt for Christmas

True sisters

In 1880's Georgetown, Colorado, seventeen-year-old Nealie Bent deals with lies, secrets, and heartache before choosing the man who will give her the Bride's House. Years later, Nealie's daughter, Pearl, grows up in the Bride's House. When the enterprising young Frank Curry comes along and asks for Pearl's hand in marriage, Pearl's father sabotages the union. But Pearl has inherited her mother's tenacity of heart, and her father underestimates the lengths to which the women in the Bride's House will go for love.

The bride's house

Alice's Tulips

Her protective instincts brought out by Emma, who had been sent to 1880s New Mexico to marry a man she has never met, Addie French takes her new friend under her wing, and the pair begins unfolding secrets, hatching schemes, and questioning everything they once believed. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Chili Queen

Ten-year-old Emmy Blue learns the true meaning of friendship--and how to quilt--while making a harrowing wagon journey from Illinois to Colorado with her family in the 1860s.

The Quilt Walk

In 1933, what's left of the Turner family--twelve-year-old Hallie and her two brothers--finds itself driving the back roads of rural America. The children have been swept up into a new migratory way of life. America is facing two devastating crises: the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the country have lost jobs. In rural America it isn't any better as crops suffer from the never-ending drought. Driven by severe economic hardship, thousands of people take to the road to seek whatever work they can find, often splintering fragile families in the process. As the Turner children move from town to town, searching for work and trying to cobble together the basic necessities of life, they are met with suspicion and hostility. They are viewed as outsiders in their own country. Will they ever find a place to call home? New York Times-bestselling author Sandra Dallas gives middle-grade readers a timely story of young people searching for a home and a better way of life.

Someplace to Call Home

Natchez, Mississippi, in 1933 is a place suspended in time. The silver and china is still dented and cracked from Yankee invaders. And the houses have names...and memories. Nora Bondurant is running away--from her husband's death, from his secrets, and from the ghosts that dog her every step. When she receives a telegram informing her that she has an inheritance, Nora suddenly has somewhere to run to: a house named Avoca in Natchez, Mississippi. Now, she's learning that the lure of Natchez runs deep, and that, along with Avoca, she's inherited a mystery. Nora's aunt Amalia Bondurant was killed in a murder/suicide, and the locals are saying nothing more--except in hushed, honeyed tones. As Nora becomes more and more enmeshed in the community and in her family's history, she learns surprising things about the life and death of her aunt: kinship isn't always what it seems, loyalty can be as fierce as blood relations, and every day we are given new mercies to heal the pain of loss and love.

New Mercies

Depicts the history of more than one hundred Colorado towns abandoned after the end of the mining boom

Sandra Dallas

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