Colorado

Yvonne Adamson, Bridey’s Mountain. Fiction
Several generations of women overcome the odds to keep their family’s mountain near Telluride.

Sandra Dallas, Diary of Mattie Spenser. Fiction
A woman keeps a diary of her life in the Colorado Territories with her new husband.

Diane Mott Davidson, Tough Cookie. Mystery
Goldy Schulz is hosting a cooking show at a posh ski resort when an ex-boyfriend dies on the slopes.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong. Fiction
A diverse group of people with personal troubles unite to form a family in a small town.

Stephen White, Warning Signs. Fiction
Boulder psychologist Alan Gregory is torn between protecting his patient and preventing a crime.

Idaho

Kim Barnes, Finding Caruso. Fiction
Two brothers fall for the same woman in a honky-tonk town near the Idaho logging camps.

Wendell McCall, Dead Aim. Mystery
A housesitter near Snow Lake is asked to help a woman find her missing husband and $50,000.

Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation. Fiction
A Japanese-American woman returns home to the Idaho potato farm owned by her ailing parents.

Heather Parkinson, Across Open Ground. Fiction
In 1917, a sheep herder falls in love with a woman but is sent to war without knowing she’s pregnant.

Kansas

David Anthony Durham, Gabriel’s Story. Fiction
After the Civil War, a black boy from New York joins his mother on a wagon train west to a new home.

Marlin Fitzwater, Esther’s Pillow. Fiction
In 1911, a woman who returns home from college to teach is ostracized & tormented by the townsfolk.

J. M. Hayes, Mad Dog and Englishman. Mystery
A sheriff must cope when a small Kansas town is rocked by its first murder in years.

Paullina Simons, Tully. Fiction
A Topeka girl survives an abusive childhood and a friend’s suicide and is torn between two men.

Judith Henry Wall, The Girlfriends Club. Fiction
Four childhood friends meet at a lakeside cottage in Kansas and share their troubles and dreams.

Charlene Weir, A Cold Christmas. Mystery
During a bitter cold snap, a police chief investigates the murder of a furnace repairman.

Montana

Ivan Doig, English Creek. Fiction
Family troubles and a forest fire change a 14-year-old boy’s life one summer during the Depression.

Jamie Harrison, Edge of the Crazies. Mystery
The murders of prominent citizens lead to tension between longtime residents and newcomers.

Chuck Hogan, The Standoff. Fiction
A burned-out hostage negotiator is called in when a white supremacist holds his family hostage in the Montana mountains.

Russell Rowland, In Open Spaces. Fiction
Sibling rivalry tears apart a Montana ranching family as they struggle to survive the Depression.

Melanie Rae Thon, Sweet Hearts. Fiction
A brother and sister are haunted by their family’s turmoil & half-forgotten Native American heritage.

Larry Watson, Montana 1948. Fiction
A sheriff is torn when he suspects his idolized brother in the death of a Sioux woman.

Mildred Walker, Winter Wheat. Fiction
A woman brings her college sweetheart to her parents’ Montana farm but he causes her to see her home with critical eyes.

Nebraska

Willa Cather, My Antonia. Fiction
A man tells the story of his friend and neighbor, a Bohemian immigrant who worked her family’s farm.

Ron Hansen, Isn’t It Romantic? Fiction
A Frenchman pursues his runaway fiancee to a small Nebraska town.

Alex Kava, A Perfect Evil. Fiction
Three months after a man is executed for serial murders, killings with the same M.O. start to occur.

Tom McNeal, Goodnight Nebraska. Fiction
A teenager who shoots his stepfather gets a second chance in a small town but happiness is elusive.

David Wiltse, Heartland. Fiction
A wounded Secret Service agent returns to his home town to recuperate and gets involved in investigating a school shooting.

North Dakota

Louise Erdrich, Master Butchers Singing Club. Fiction
A German immigrant couple set up a butcher shop and befriend a vaudeville performer.

Debbie Macomber, Buffalo Valley. Fiction
A man working for a discount store chain encounters resistance from the townspeople.

Susan Power, The Grass Dancer. Fiction
The interconnected lives of Sioux on a North Dakota reservation from the 19th century to the present.

Oklahoma

William Bernhardt, Silent Justice. Fiction
A Tulsa attorney represents families whose children developed leukemia after drinking tainted water.

Susan Rogers Cooper, Lying Wonders. Mystery
A friend asks Sheriff Milt Kovak for help when her son and his girlfriend join a cult.

Dorothy Garlock, A Place Called Rainwater. Fic
In the 1920s, a woman heads for the boomtown of Rainwater to help her aunt run a hotel.

Jean Hager, Ravenmocker. Mystery
A Native American advocate looks into the death of a Cherokee man at a nursing home.

Billie Letts, The Honk & Holler Opening Soon. Fiction
A roadside café and its owner are revitalized by the arrival of two new employees.

South Dakota

Harold Adams, The Ditched Blonde. Mystery
An itinerant sign painter stops in Green Hill, S.D., and looks into and unsolved hit-and-run.

Michael Doane, Bullet Heart. Fiction
Conflict arises when the bones of a Native American girl are unearthed at the site of a new golf course.

Kathleen Taylor, Cold Front. Paperback Mystery
During a blizzard on New Year’s Eve, waitress Tory Bauer looks into the death of a newcomer.

J. F. Trainor, Corona Blue. Mystery
No one believes a parolee when she claims to have found a corpse that vanished.

Judy Troy, From the Black Hills. Fiction
In the summer before he leaves for college, a teen must cope when his father kills his receptionist.

Wyoming

C. J. Box, Open Season. Mystery
A new game warden trying to fill his predecessor’s shoes must deal with a dead poacher in his woodpile.

Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer. Mystery
A priest banished to a poor reservation joins forces with a Native American lawyer to investigate the murder of a tribal chairman.

Allen Morris Jones, Last Year’s River. Fiction
In 1919, a debutante who becomes pregnant when her boyfriend rapes her is sent to a Wyoming ranch.

Karla Kuban, Marchlands. Fiction
A pregnant teen whose brother is in Vietnam and whose mother is bitter and unstable decides to seek the father who abandoned her.

Lise McClendon, Nordic Nights. Mystery
When her stepfather is accused of killing an artist, an art dealer takes it upon herself to clear his name.

Maureen O’Hara, Green Grass of Wyoming. Fic
A young man on a horse ranch falls for a girl whose aristocratic grandmother looks down on his family.

E. Annie Proulx, Close Range. Fiction
Stories about loneliness, love and violence set in the stark and magnificent Wyoming landscape.

Les Standiford, Black Mountain. Fiction
A cop accompanies the governor of New York on a trek to the Absaroka wilderness where they become stranded and tracked by assassins.