Half-broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
This is the fictionalized biography of the author's maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Lily was born on a West Texas ranch in 1901, at five years old was helping her father train carriage horses, and at fifteen got her first job teaching at a remote school in Arizona 500 miles from her home. Lily got there by riding her horse all the way. As she grew older, she was married twice, raised a family, helped manage a large Arizona ranch, learned to drive a car and to fly an airplane, and managed to obtain a college degree.
The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
Sofia is a young woman in one of Stalin's prison labor camps in Siberia in 1933. Only two things keep her going - the hope of one day being free and the stories told by her friend, Anna, of a charmed childhood in St. Petersburg before the Russian Revolution and of the love she had for a young revolutionary named Vasily. Sofia does escape and after months of hardship finally finds Vasily - she thinks. Good depiction of Russian life during that time.
Foul Play by Janet Evanovich
The first one of her romances that I have read. This humorous story involves a young woman fired from her job as the host of a TV program for children, the dancing chicken that replaces her, and the handsome veterinarian with whom our heroine gets a part-time job. The chicken is brought to the veterinarian's office when it becomes sick and then mysteriously disappears. Our heroine is blamed for the disappearance and she and her employer cooperate on trying to find out what happened..
