The Winner
of a signed copy
of
Is
Kim Hampton
Kim, I will contact you to find out where to mail your book
Mary Connealy
Ambush of the Heart – Coming next month!
Is releasing on February 3
And I’ve got my author’s copies so today I’ll draw a winner for one of them from anyone who leaves a comment.
Ambush of the Heart is Book #1 in the Rocky Mountain Marshals Series
I’ve been wanting to do US Marshals for a while now.
I’ve got an author friend, Sharee Stover, who writes US Marshals, but contemporary and when we’d talk, I realized how LITTLE I knew about what exactly a US Marshal does.
That led to research, including a trip to the US Marshals Museum in Fort Smith, Arkansas…a place mentioned in True Grit. Yep, Rooster Cogburn was the only US Marshal I could think of.
I could do a lot worse than base my western romances on JOHN WAYNE.’
I did have three marshals as back up characters in the book Marshaling Her Heart. Even when I was writing that book, I knew those three marshals needed their own story. These were tough, solitary men…now how do I get them to open their hearts to love?
I, of course, had to find three women who were strong enough and soft enough to get past their hearts.
It was a fun challenge and we start with the leader of this band of marshals, Owen Riley. He’s transporting a prisoner…completely routine job. Five marshals, one prisoner. Until a woman and her brother ask if they can join their party. And why not? They are expecting no trouble.
Then there’s trouble. And they are driven into the front range of the Rocky Mountains, onto unknown trails, running, fighting, running again, deeper and deeper into a wilderness that they do NOT know how to get out of. Tough men that they are, they know how to survive. But what they want is to get this man, an escaped prisoner, back in jail.
It was a little hard to find time for love and comedy, but I managed it.
Leave a comment about a time you were in the mountains. I’ve had very few mountain experiences but I remember being struck by riding down a perfectly paved, 4-lane highway and thinking, what was it like when there was no road? How lost could I get?
I hope you enjoy a book that asks the question…just how lost can someone get in those massive, unknown mountains.
Ambush of the Heart
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Mary Connealy’s Winner
The Winner of a
$25 Amazon Gift Card
is
Deb Volkman
Deb, I will email you to make sure the email I have from this website works
Then get your card sent.
Ambush of the Heart is available now from pre-order
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US Marshal’s Service
Research done nearly a year ago…becomes a book.
I traveled to Fort Smith Arkansas…and the fact it was February and warm enough for my husband to play golf…well, that’s not why i went, but it’s why he cooperated.
There was so much to see. Fort Smith has really done a great job of preserving it’s history. At it’s most basic…Fort Smith was the gateway to Indian Territory…and outlaws treated Indian Territory like base in a gun-slinging game of tag.
They’d run across the border into Indian Territory and local law enforcement couldn’t follow. Once they were in there, they were safe from capture.
Remember True Grit? I’m thinking of the original with John Wayne.John Wayne was a US Marshal. That picture is photos of movies featuring US Marshals. Here is a collection of some of the more famous movies.
When Rooster Cogburn went hunting Lucky Ned Pepper…he rode into Indian Territory…and Kim Darby wanting to go along was outrageous. it was a lawless (except for the marshals) dangerous place…worse than the usual western landscape.
Assigning the US Marshals Service to go in there, that was federal. However, Fort Smith, Arkansas was a place of corruption. Even with the Marshals going in and arresting them, those outlaws would bribe the judge and walk right back into Indian Territory…until they assigned Judge Parker to the court there.
He was a hangin’ judge for a fact. Honestly most of the history of the city is about him more than the marshals…except for the Marshals Museum. And he was so quick and ruthless to sentence everyone to hanging that is caused some trouble.
Some pictures from my trip:
A list of the men Judge Parker hung
They rebuilt the gallows for a display…a little grim.
A replica of Judge Parker’s Courtroom
A quote from Judge Parker. What can I say?
They sent him in to clean things up…and he took his job seriously.
Fort Smith’s efforts to … ahem … soften? Redeem? Whitewash?
His image pretty much boiled down to …they all had it coming.
Get a load of the fees!!
$2 for a prisoner brought in. This could take days or weeks and you were risking your LIFE, for $2.
NOTHING if you brought him in dead.
75 cents to feed the prisoners. You could get reimbursed for mileage. Your posse earned money.
This is Bass Reeves. A black US Marshal. There is a show about him on Paramount +. Very cool dude. Some of what I read said they based the Lone Ranger on him…simply because, in that day and age, a seemingly wandering black man would come into your town and suddenly a bad guy disappeared. Few people connected the outlaw’s disappearance to Bass Reeves. He caught (it’s said) 3,000 outlaws and worked as a marshal for 32 years.
This is Phoebe Couzins, the first female US Marshal…she was also one of the first licensed attorneys in the United States.
Sign at the entrance to the US Marshals Museum.
Some political strife, huh?
All this research is in an effort to write a series we’re calling Rocky Mountain Marshals. book #1 is Ambush of the Heart. Yes, Fort Smith is in Arkansas but my Marshals are in Colorado.
Leave a comment about trips that took you by surprise. I’m a big museum girl but you can talk about anywhere. One lucky winner will get a $25 Amazon gift card…in time for CHRISTMAS!!!
AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER.
RELEASING FEBRUARY 3, 2026.
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Mary Connealy’s Winner!
The Winner
of a
$25 Amazon Gift Card
is
Laura Michelle Delgado
Ambush of the Heart
is available for Preorder
And it’s on a VERY good sale at Baker Book House—Click Here
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The Series is complete—and here comes another one—and a giveaway!!!
Whispers of Fortune
Legends of Gold
Riches Beyond Measure
You know…I’ve ended up really liking this lost treasure series.
It’s all released now. Sometimes, from the author’s perspective, it’s a little hard to see the whole thing while you’re in the middle of writing it.
Trust me…sometimes its hard.
The Golden State Treasure Series is in the rear-view mirror and NEXT UP
Rocky Mountain Marshals Series
Book #1 coming in February
It’s about my favorite cover EVER
It’s about three US Marshals driven into the mountains to escape a band of outlaws who want to break the prisoner free who they are transporting.
And the rest of the book is running, shooting, getting so so so lost. And of course…falling in love.
Ambush of the Heart
So here we go again and starting a new series is just the most fun thing ever!!!
It’s too soon to give away a copy of Ambush of the Heart, I don’t have my copies yet. So leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a $25 Amazon Gift Card.
Tell me about the most LOST you’ve ever been in your LIFE. I am a person who gets lost. Life is MUCH EASIER since they invented maps on phones. I once got so lost for so long in Des Moines, Iowa…looking for the library I was supposed to speak at, I can still almost cry then I think of it. Does NO ONE IN THAT TOWN READ? I’d ask directions and they’d be like…do we have a library in this town? Never heard they built one!! (okay some exaggeration…still
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Mary Connealy’s winner!!!
The Winner
of a signed copy of
is
Jackie Wisherd
Jackie, I will write you and get your mailing address
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Hometown Hoedown – Mary Connealy – And a Giveaway
The Something-est Something
Have you noticed that all towns have a claim to fame?
All towns are the something-est Something.
I realized this years ago when we drove past a billboard somewhere in … Texas maybe?
Directing us to leave the interstate at the next exit to visit Wherever -The Home of the World’s Largest Bumblebee.
And I thought, That town is looking for a claim to fame. It’s looking for the World’s Largest or the Second Oldest, or the first … popcorn grown in America….I don’t know. But SOMETHING
I live near the Second Oldest Settlement in Nebraska. Note the qualifiers…not oldest. Not town (settlement is different than TOWN).
ASIDE…Have you noticed that you don’t get much pushback when you claim to be second? Most beautiful site in the world? Grand Canyon? Old Faithful? Niagara Falls? Mt. Everest? Lots of arguments on that. but the SECOND? Nobody cares. Everyone who thinks They are the most beautiful just think Yeah, not better than us but still real nice.
Not older than us, but still real old.
So we picked second oldest and nobody’s called a cop to strip us of that title.
Then they use that claim to fame as an excuse to build a visitor’s center, have a summer town festival and/or build a big sign.
Next town over? Swedish Capitol of Nebraska (there are four who claim that)–Sweden has chosen not to get involved.
On down the road…the Home of (gosh, who was it? had to google it), John Neihardt…famous author (okay, famous-ish).
Towns work hard to figure out a reason you should come and visit. Some towns are easy…hey, you can see Niagara Falls from our town…some of us have it a little harder.
So my town is Nebraska’s Second Oldest Settlement and, something NOT boasted about. Stephen Decatur, who founded that town (seriously, his boat ran aground on a low spot 
in the river and started trading…or maybe he ran a ferry across the river…some dispute about that….that’s a settlement, I guess) He was a SCOUNDREL.
His name was NOT Stephen Decatur…lied about that. He was a married man who faked his own death by running off to war, then letting his wife believe he died. He moved to Decatur, started a trading post/ferry, married again…then when things got tough, he abandoned HER, went to Colorado, helped found the town of Georgetown, Colorado, married AGAIN…I based my series Brothers in Arms about him…trust me…when the truth got in the way of my story…I just started making things us. Plus all the names and locations are changed to protect me from having to write the strict truth…which is often short and boring,
The Beauty of Writing Fiction.
And no one knew because you couldn’t exactly run his ID through the computer when he applied for a marriage license.
It was a different time.
But anyway, the town survived his nonsense and Now, every summer, we have River Front Days to celebrate being Nebraska’s second oldest settlement.
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of Riches Beyond Measure...tell me what YOUR town’s claim to fame is. You know you have one…or think of one you’ve heard of. There are three towns that claim to be the Home of the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. I’ve personally seen the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball–trust me, it’s huge. And I’ve heard of The Home of the World’s Largest Cheeto,
AND does anyone know where to find the home of the World’s Largest Bumblebee? I promise I’ve googled it. There’s a statue in Canada called that but I know I wasn’t in Canada. It’s a mystery. And is the Alberta Statue life sized? Because even if it is the World’s Largest Bumblebee…it’s still really small.
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The Winner of a Signed Copy of Riches Beyond Measure is….
The Winner of
is
Alice
I’ll contact you to get your mailing address, Alice
And get it sent off to you asap
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Riches Beyond Measure–It’s OUT! And a Giveaway!!!
The great thing about having a book release is IT’S BORN AFTER BEING IN LABOR FOR ONE YEAR!!!
Both a triumph, love and the end of a LOT of work.
The other thing…also great…I guess is…it’s on to the next book. (oh, come on there is NOTHING bad about it!)
One more month of me talking about Riches Beyond Measure, book #3 in the Golden State Treasure Series.
Here’s one of the things about this series…it’s set in California. To me, I never think of California as truly western. So none of my cowboy writing reflexes aim me at California.
But historically it’s a big cowboy state.
The main thing I did that was truly Californian is EARTHQUAKES. This is actually the sixth book I’ve set in California. Ninth if you count the three I set around Lake Tahoe…though I mainly think of that as Nevada…but…well, my point is NINE BOOKS and I’ve never had an earthquake before. Well, that is OVER.
Riches Beyond Measure includes an earthquake. And it’s my 80th book. It makes me wonder what else obvious have I skipped about history? You’d think I’d’ve hit on nearly every area of history…I mean sure there are always details. But earthquakes are big and obvious. Hmmm…it renews my desire to keep writing, keep researching and keep thinking big as well as small.
Riches Beyond Measure…released October 8. To get your name in the drawing to win a signed copy of Riches Beyond Measure, leave a comment talking about things you’d like to see in a novel that you think have been missed.
Buffalo stampede? More about wagon trains? The flooding rivers? Tornadoes? What am I missing out on?
When they leave the ranch in search of stolen treasure, will the spark between them survive the perils ahead?When an earthquake strikes Two Harts Ranch, it shakes the life of Annie Lane along with that of Cord Westbrook, who has been working as a cowboy on Annie’s family ranch in anticipation of purchasing his own. The only thing delaying his plan is the deep attraction he feels toward Annie, a widow with a child and an established life as a teacher at the Hart School for Orphans. Unfortunately for Cord, she seems determined to avoid romance.
The aftermath of the earthquake reveals that prized artifacts from the long-sought MacKenzie’s Treasure have been stolen from the ranch. But the return of the MacKenzie family from out east has everyone focused on what other precious finds might be waiting at the end of the legendary two-part map. As Cord, Annie, and the MacKenzies set out in search of riches, they face dangers more treacherous than earthquakes. With gold in their sights and love within reach, Cord and Annie realize that some treasures may fade, but life’s true riches are far more valuable than earthly goods.
Embark on a rousing California wilderness adventure filled with danger, deception, and second chances in this riveting conclusion to Mary Connealy’s Golden State Treasure series–ideal for fans of frontier romances, cowboys, and treasure hunts.
