Road Tripping Across the USA Mini Reading Challenge: Kansas

Anxiety ridden Sarah finds more than she bargained for in a no-nonsense rancher and baby cow.

Taking her best friend’s advice, Sarah travels to Indigo B&B to distract herself from her upcoming tour. Instead, she comes face-to-face with Indigo’s ruggedly alluring owner, Eli. The vision of strength and confidence, Eli evokes Sarah’s envy as well as an undeniable attraction. Sarah wonders if there is more beneath Eli’s façade and how deep both their demons go.

Wesley Holden migrated west with her brother, Clyde, to build a life neither of them could hope for back East.

To share the homestead claim, Wesley had to disguise herself as a man. As brothers, Wesley and Clyde began to carve a new home out of the Kansas frontier. When Clyde is unexpectedly killed, Wes is left alone with the farm, determined to carry on, but more isolated as the days pass.

Romanced and abandoned, Charlotte Rose embarks on a journey west in search of a better life. But the trip is cut short by disaster. Even worse, Charlotte can’t return home because she discovers after arriving in Kansas that she’s pregnant. Her only hope is to find a frontier husband. Desperate and out of options, Charlotte is resolved to win Wes’s heart.

A death on a farm lands Parker in the middle of a case where she questions who she can trust.

When Parker Avery asks Iris Falloney to assist on a murder case in Kansas, she is ecstatic, but upon meeting Cam Harris, a local police detective working on the same case, personalities clash.

When enemies fall into temptation, love brings out the most delicious flavor of all.

Marigold Lavender lights up every room she enters. Then she’s left to turn out the lights and head home alone. Soft on the inside and a go-getter on the outside, Marigold just wants to make sure everyone else is okay before worrying about herself. When an awful big-city food critic trashes her sister Aster’s new restaurant, Marigold pauses her search for her own happily-ever-after to go to war with the woman, who happens to be just as delectable as she is sour.

When your parents name you and your three siblings after flowers, the world is stacked against you.

At least, that’s how Aster Lavender feels. The youngest daughter, Aster always keeps her head down and lets her siblings stand in the spotlight. She sells her gourmet doughnuts from Hole in One, the small drive-through stand in sleepy Homer’s Bluff, Kansas, and daydreams about seeing the big beautiful world. Love is never going to happen, especially when the only other lesbians in town are already married to each other.

When their paths cross again after twenty-five years, will old secrets finally be exposed? Or will hearts be broken once again…

Ros McClure knows that she’s well-qualified and deserves the promotion the university has promised. But she didn’t expect that the good ol’ boys network would be standing in her way. She’s willing to stubbornly wait a little longer, but a family emergency is drawing her back to a time and a place she’d rather leave in her past.

A poignant novel about queer identity from National Book Award finalist Julie Anne Peters.

Mike (real name: Mary Elizabeth) is gay and likes to pump iron, play softball, and fix plumbing. In addition to her identity, Mike is struggling to come to terms with her father’s suicide and her mother’s detachment from the family. When a glamorous new girl, Xanadu, arrives in Mike’s small Kansas town, Mike falls in love at first sight. Xanadu is everything Mike is not: cool, confident, feminine, sexy… and straight.

Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer

Chely Wright, singer, songwriter, country music star, writes in this moving, telling memoir about her life and her career; about growing up in America’s heartland, the youngest of three children; about barely remembering a time when she didn’t know she was different.

The heart wants what it wants. Saddle up, ride out, and claim it.

A cinematic debut set in the American West about a scrappy orphan bent on making her own luck—and finding friendship, romance, and her true calling along the way.

Widow Maggie Tanner needs a ranch hand to work her thousand acres of Kansas hayfields.

Young Cash Tate takes the job—a summer break from the city and her girlfriend troubles. Cash is irritated by and enamored of this self-sufficient rancher woman who refuses to treat her as an equal, and she vows to earn her respect. While Cash struggles to win a place in Maggie’s heart, Maggie fights her unwelcome desire to take Cash into her arms. Not one to give in to forces of nature, particularly when they’re female and fifteen years her junior, Maggie is determined to suppress her feelings. But one soft summer night, with the prairie breezes swirling over her skin like the breath of an impatient lover, Maggie Tanner has to decide whether to deny her yearnings or ride the wind.

The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story filled with intimate bombshells—told by the bombshell herself.

Yours Cruelly, Elvira is an unforgettably wild memoir. Cassandra doesn’t shy away from revealing exactly who she is and how she overcame seemingly insurmountable odds. Always original and sometimes outrageous, her story is loaded with twists, travails, revelry, and downright shocking experiences. It is the candid, often funny, and sometimes heart-breaking tale of a Midwest farm girl’s long strange trip to become the world’s sexiest, sassiest Halloween icon.