Del Norte Public Library

"Necktie Party" they called it-a quick and easy form of frontier justice. The hard-eyed cattleman named Price, leader of the lynch party, looked up at the hanging tree and knew it would serve his murderous purpose. He jerked the lasso tight around the boy's neck. The two other riders, younger even than the one they were about to hang, looked sick. "Get set to kick his horse out from under him," Price ordered. Then Laramie stepped out of the willows,...

The author draws on her travels and homestead life in the Colorado Rockies in an essay collection on her ties to nature that explores the symbiotic relationship between humans and the earth. "'How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us,' Pam Houston writes. On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, this beloved writer learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves...

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I...

"Former Delta Operative Colt Kingston knows when someone is lying. He may not know the truth, but he sure doesn't trust Tae, the mysterious woman his family rescued from an Alaskan blizzard. Behind those beautiful blue eyes, Colt can tell there is a troubled -- and smart -- woman. A few of her stories prove true -- they found the crashed plane and the dead body inside. Still, her tale of survival seems too incredible to believe . . . until the thugs...

"Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty, stretching back to her Irish immigrant great-grandfather. At nine, she was already a star- yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide and seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors....

"Tommy Reeves and his pal Red Armstrong make friends with the Mexican people who live near the ranch where they work. Their foreman tells them to stay away from the Mexican girls, but the boys do not heed the warning and are fired. Then they find out that Vinch Cushman, their former employer, is trying to force the Mexican people off their land by damming the creek that supplies their water. When Red goes to sabotage the dam, he is shot dead. Tommy...

Hate in His Holster is the story of orphan Dave Lanning. Rescued by Bert Haney, ramrod of the YT ranch, Bert is old and failing and it now falls to Dave to protect the YT from incursion by a gathering group of homesteaders. When the YT is taken over by a new owner who can't understand why the YT isn't turning a profit, Dave and the lady boss may have an incursion of their own. In Fighting Man, Tully Bain returns after a three-year absence to assume...