The Wives of Bowie Stone

To kick off my Fall/Winter reading, I was on the search for not-a-harliquin historical romance. Great lead female characters and charming male counterparts. It’s romantic, a little heart wrenching and the tension is palpable.

I could have kept reading this story for another 500 pages it was so wonderfully written. I have so much admiration for Ms. Osborne, she has such a colorful writing style, I was living right on the ranch with the characters, I loved the hedgehog and poking. This is a totally great story and I wish I were just starting so I could experience it for the first time all over again.

I read perhaps 3 romance novels a week by a number of authors. This is BY FAR the best book I have read in my many years of reading. Thank you Maggie Osborne. You have given me characters that will live on in my mind long after this book has been put on the shelf.

I have read this book twice and will read it again at some point because I think it's brilliant. Maggie Osborne (who also writes as Margaret St. George) is always great at humor and emotional depth -- a mix which few writers can handle. It's a profoundly moving story of a woman who dresses and drinks like a cowboy and marries a man to keep him from being hanged so she can have a free ranch hand. That's just the first few pages -- the rest of the story is unforgettably poignant.