Julesburg Public Library

Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold, wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who has answered his advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, but her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, then slowly poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow....

1806. Astrid Poole is murdered on her wedding day. Her last words - a promise to her husband never to leave him. After finding her fiancé in a compromising position with her cousin, Sonya MacTavish needs an escape. When a lawyer turns up on her doorstep out of the blue with news that she has inherited a beautiful Victorian house, Sonya thinks maybe this is just the change of scene she needs. The house - nicknamed Lost Bride manor - is beautiful,...

A virtuoso killer is carving a path of death across the west, intent on killing only the most beautiful women, all in the name of love. He has claimed six victims and slipped through the FBI's fingers, each time leaving behind a handwritten note and a bridal veil. Special agent Brad Raines has hunted the Bride Collector from crime scene to crime scene, but each time he finds himself one step behind. Desperate for help, Raines turns to The Center for...

When her Russian biochemist's visa extension is denied, Julia Conrad and Aleksandr Berinksi enter into a marriage of convenience ; and when Alaskan Chase Goodwin advertises for a bride on a billboard, Lesley Campbell responds.

When Private Detective Agatha Raisin learns that her friend and one-time lover Charles Fraith is to be married to a mysterious socialite, Miss Mary Brown-Field, she sees it as her duty to find out what she can about the woman. Coming up empty, Agatha--out of selfless concern for Charles, of course--does the only sensible thing she can think of: she crashes their wedding, which ends in a public altercation. Nursing a hangover the next morning, she...

When mail-order bride Kate Whittington arrives in Texas to meet her new husband, Reed Banton, she is shocked to discover that he has never heard of her, and she becomes determined to melt the rancher's icy heart.

Eleven stories set in various parts of the world. In Sky Juice, a girl in Malaysia escapes prostitution by becoming a mail-order bride, The Way It Felt to Be Falling is on a woman sky diver, and in The Story of My Life a woman discovers her anti-abortion mother is no saint herself.

In 1999 Texas, Lia Cope, when her grandmother Mineko moves in, connects with her over stories of the Turtle House in Japan and the secrets they both carry, and when Mineko is forced to live in an assisted living community, she and Lia devise a plan to bring a beloved lost place to life.

When their pastor father dies suddenly, leaving little money, three sisters realize that they need to take drastic action to survive. Each answers a newspaper ad soliciting Christian brides. Faith goes to Texas, where her intended, a well-to-do rancher named Nicholas Shepherd, seems to be having second thoughts. While her wedding is repeatedly postponed, Faith meets a local widower and decides to teach his blind son Braille. In time, Nicholas...

A sheltered mountain girl, Glory is forced to build a life on her own after Poppy dies. With a bagful of gold and no change of clothes, she sets out in search of a new life. Far too naive for the cold world before her, she ends up on the run from a greedy uncle who wants her gold -- and who will kill her to get it. She manages to latch on to a waggoneer named Jackson and a group of teenage mail order brides. In her travels and adventures, Glory...