Tag Archives: Beautiful Bad Man

Dog Friendly (Books for Lovers of Dogs)

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Atlanta Burns (by Chuck Wendig) Young Adult

Armed with a single-barrelled shotgun and a can of bear mace Atlanta Burns fights bullies, white supremacists, corrupt police and the local criminal underworld.

Her trusty partner is a Dogo Argentino she rescued from a dog fighting ring.

 

 

Beautiful Bad Man (by Ellen O’Connell) Western Romance

After her husband is murdered by a wealthy cattle rancher with designs on her land Norah can do little except wait to join him.

When Cal is sent to get her off the land one way or another he sees something more than a broken and starving woman and switches sides.

Ellen O’Connell writes proper romance but still manages to imbue her books with gritty realism.

 

The Search (by Nora Roberts) Romantic Suspense

After surviving a serial killer, Fiona escaped to a remote island off the coast of Seattle. There she trains Search and Rescue dogs and lives a quiet life.  But the killer she thought she had put behind bars is killing young women again and he’s coming for her.

Honestly, it’s Nora Roberts. It’s derivative. It’s like every other RS she has written. But there are the dogs and it’s worth it just for them.

 

Midnight Curse (by Melissa F. Olson) Urban Fantasy

Scarlett Bernard is a Null, around her vampires, witches, werewolves all revert to human. She is despised in the Old World but she is also uniquely useful as a supernatural problem solver.

Together with her beast of a dog –– some sort of demon hound ––  she investigates a murder which someone is trying to pin on her old room-mate.

 

Dog Crazy (by Meg Donohue) Cute, Quirky Romance

Maggie is a grief counsellor with a whole shopping list of issues not least of which is she’s a recluse who can’t leave her house. She meets Anya, a young woman whose dog has gone missing. Anya is insistent that her dog didn’t run away but was stolen and she somehow convinces Maggie to help her search.

There isn’t much to this book. It’s cute and quirky and it has a big heart. And that’s enough.

 

 

 

 

Without Words (by Ellen O’Connell)

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Western Romance

After gunning down Rufus Petty, Bret finds himself faced with a half starved mute woman burying an old man. His only choice is to take her with him or leave her to die, so with her broken down old horse and half wild dog in tow they set off together.  His plan is to unload her on the first willing person, but it quickly becomes apparent that life isn’t easy for a woman on the frontier and if he wants to ensure her safety he’ll need to keep her with him.  

As they travel the West, searching for bounties, Hassie finds a place with Bret. Despite the limitations of not having a voice, she is smart and recognises bounties that Bret would have missed. Gradually Hassie’s view of Bret changes. She goes from seeing him as a cold blooded killer, to a man of honour who will put himself in harms way to protect those he loves.

Before long she has fallen in love, but Bret plans to return to his wealthy family in Missouri, and they will never accept a woman like her, poor and with an Irish father, so their time is short.

western
Westerns tend to fall into one of two camps.  There is the idealised version where the good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black hats –– where a bad guy gets shot and he dies without shedding any blood; and the gritty, more realistic and usually quite violent version.

What I love about Ellen O’Connell is she takes that more romantic notion of the West but overlays a layer of realism so it is somehow entertaining and realistic but not hard edged.  I’ve read three Ellen O’Connell books and I’ll definitely be reading more. This one is equal to my personal favorite, Beautiful Bad Man. 

Screen Shot 2014-03-17 at 5.44.24 pmYellow, Orange, Red –– what it means: http://wp.me/P2B7b5-9l