Central Kansas Library System

"Wildfire" is the story of Lucy Bostil, the daughter of a stable owner, who happens upon Lin Slone, knocked unconscious while chasing his unruly colt Wildfire through the hills. When Lin convinces Lucy to ride Wildfire in the upcoming race, the villainous Cordts will stop at nothing to make sure that it is his horse that wins the race instead.

A New Dakotah Territory Saga From Bestselling Author Lauraine Snelling! Book 1 of Dakotah Treasures. Author Lauraine Snelling once again takes readers west to the untamed land of Dakota Territory, introducing new characters both unique and appealing. Ruby Torvald and her young sister, Opal, have received an inheritance from their long-lost father who left home years ago to seek his fortune in the Black Hills. When they leave their comfortable situation...

When a pretty spitfire who's down on her luck clashes with a stubborn man in search of a wife, sparks must turn to flames. A year after the Civil War, courageous former Union nurse Lydia McQuire was gamely scraping out an honest living. But now, as she said yes to marrying a stranger, her knees gave way with fear. Mr. Devon Quade had seemed polite and handsome when she answered his ad for a wife. Only after Lydia had arrived in Washington territory...

A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, sink a well, and fight a prairie fire. A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.

Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise painstakingly recorded the adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbors—the early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas. First published in 1936, his "nonfiction novel" Sod and Stubble has since become a widely read and much loved classic. In the original, Ise changed some identities and time sequences but accurately retained the...

"Regional history at its best ... Many of the traditional tales of early hardships- grasshopper plagues, Indian attacks, the stress of loneliness and isolation, drought, blizzards, prairie fires, and the unaccostomed hazards of nature- are retold with vigor and a sense of immediacy. These gritty tales of pioneer persistence and stubbornness are used to illustrate the region's cyclical history of hope and despair ... Not the least is Miner's talents...

Eleven widows traveling west on the Oregon Trail must cope with the hardships of life on the road, but at the same time they discover bonds of friendship and community that sustain them.

A novel on 1855 Bloody Kansas, an armed clash between slaveholders and abolitionists, often referred to as a prologue to the Civil War. The heroine is Lidie Newton, the wife of a slain abolitionist. Dressed as a boy, she embarks on a mission of revenge against his killer. By the author of Moo.

"This book uses the story of Isaac Beckley Werner, a homesteader in Stafford County, Kansas, to reveal how the Populist Movement involved and affected Kansas farmers. From 1884 until his death in 1895, Werner kept a diary whose content revolved around the advice of Henry Ward Beecher: recording events around him rather than focusing on himself. Owner of an extensive personal library, an attendee of Populist lectures who contributed columns to the...