Sandra Dallas Books in Order

An illustrated history of Colorado's early hotels, this book traces frontier lodging from rough mining-camp bunkhouses to ornate railroad-era resorts, mixing architectural detail with stories of travelers, proprietors, and the boom-and-bust towns they served.

Focused on Colorado's historic homes, this visual survey tours mansions, cottages, and farmhouses across the state, pairing photographs with lively anecdotes about the families who built them and the changing neighborhoods that grew up around their gaslit porches and gingerbread trim.

This in-depth study of Victorian architecture in Denver explores the exuberant style known as Cherry Creek Gothic, showcasing mansions, churches, hotels, and commercial blocks whose towers, iron lace, and fanciful rooflines defined the city's early skyline.

Combining archival photographs with clear narrative, this volume recreates Denver's past, from muddy frontier streets and vanished neighborhoods to landmark buildings, offering a guided tour of how the city evolved through booms, busts, and urban renewal.

Both art book and biography, this volume chronicles Western painter Ned Jacob's life and work, reproducing his images of Native American life, horses, and landscapes while tracing the experiences and influences that shaped his vision.

Drawing on field research and hundreds of photographs, this guide visits 147 Colorado ghost towns and mining camps, recounting how each sprang up around the promise of ore, briefly flourished, and then faded back into the mountains.

Surveying everything from adobe homesteads to mountain Victorians, this large-format book uses more than 350 photographs to tell the story of Colorado's domestic architecture and the people who adapted their houses to plains, canyons, mining towns, and growing cities.

Told by two lifelong friends, this novel follows small-town girl May Anna Kovacks from the rough streets of Butte, Montana, to Hollywood stardom, then back to the legends and lies surrounding a long-ago scandal that only her friends can explain.

In Depression-era Kansas, young farm wife Queenie finds solace in a quilting circle whose members share gossip, hardship, and fierce loyalty, until an ambitious newcomer starts digging into a long-buried death and the women must decide how far they will go to protect one another.

In a 1930s Colorado mining town, eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort befriends teenage newcomer Nit Spindle after the girl sees the weathered sign on Hennie's porch offering prayers for sale, and the two women trade stories of loss, resilience, and the high-country community that shaped them.

Presented as the discovered diary of a young Iowa bride, this novel follows Mattie Spenser as she travels by wagon to the Colorado frontier, struggles with isolation, marriage, and harsh weather, and slowly uncovers unsettling truths about her husband and herself.

Through a series of vivid letters to her sister, irrepressible newlywed Alice Bullock describes running an Iowa farm with her stern mother-in-law while her husband fights for the Union, only to find herself entangled in local gossip, quilting bees, and a shocking accusation of murder.

When hard-bitten bordello owner Addie French impulsively takes in shy Emma, a mail-order bride abandoned at a dusty New Mexico depot, the two women, a smooth-talking con man, and a loyal cook are drawn into an audacious scheme that tests their wits, loyalties, and hopes for a fresh start.

Blending women's history with quilt history, this richly illustrated nonfiction book follows pioneer women across the Overland Trail into Colorado, showing how their patchwork quilts recorded love, grief, community, and survival from mining camps through the Depression to the present.

After her unfaithful husband's sudden death, Nora Bondurant flees 1930s Denver for the dilapidated family house she has inherited in Natchez, Mississippi, where whispers of an aunt's murder-suicide and the secrets of an old river town draw her into a dangerous, seductive past.

In rural Colorado during World War II, thirteen-year-old Rennie Stroud watches her town change when a Japanese American internment camp opens nearby; as fear and prejudice swell after a local girl is murdered, Rennie must decide whom to trust and what justice really means.

When an avalanche roaring off Jubilee Mountain buries nine schoolchildren outside the Colorado mining town of Swandyke in 1920, only four survive; the novel traces the intertwined lives of their parents and neighbors, revealing the betrayals, hopes, and small acts of grace that led to that moment.

Centered on an ornate Victorian home in Georgetown, Colorado, this multigenerational saga follows Nealie, her daughter Pearl, and granddaughter Susan as each comes of age in the Bride's House, confronting class expectations, passionate love, and long-hidden family secrets.

In 1864, ten-year-old Emmy Blue Hatchett leaves Illinois in a crowded wagon when her father moves the family to Golden, Colorado; armed with tiny fabric scraps from her grandmother, she learns to quilt on the trail and to see both the excitement and the hardships of frontier life.

Based on the real Martin handcart company, this novel follows four British women who join a Mormon handcart train from Iowa to Utah in 1856, enduring brutal weather, hunger, loss, and doubt as they discover unexpected sisterhood and the limits of their faith on the trail to Zion.

New York socialite Beret Osmundsen travels to 1880s Denver after learning her estranged sister has died, only to discover Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered; determined to find the killer, Beret descends into the city's red-light district and confronts the hypocrisy of high society.

In Civil War era Kansas, Eliza Spooner sews a patriotic quilt to keep her husband warm at the front, but when news comes that he has been killed, she must hold the farm together, shelter a vulnerable young widow and child, and decide whether to risk everything to help an escaped slave.

Tomi Itano, a twelve-year-old California girl born to Japanese immigrants, sees her world collapse after Pearl Harbor when her father is arrested and the family is sent to an internment camp in Colorado, where she struggles with anger, loyalty, and what it means to be American.

For decades Gracy Brookens has delivered babies in the Colorado mining town of Swandyke, but when a mine owner's newborn is found dead and suspicion falls on her, she must defend her work, protect the secrets women have whispered in the birthing bed, and face the hardest choices of her life.

After losing their Iowa farm in 1910, twelve-year-old Belle Martin and her large family claim a homestead on the dry plains of Colorado, battling dust storms, blizzards, and grasshoppers while learning to rely on neighbors and to find pride in the demanding work of making the land their own.

At her New Mexico ranch, Ellen pieces a wedding quilt while her granddaughter June debates calling off her marriage; to help, Ellen tells the story of Nell, a spirited young woman who, decades earlier, fled three very different proposals in her search for the love and life she truly wanted.

In 1933, orphaned siblings Hallie, Tom, and Benny Turner are driving back roads looking for work when their car breaks down on a Kansas farm; taken in by the family who owns the land, they must prove themselves to a wary community while holding tight to one another through Dust Bowl hardship.

This anthology of sixteen frontier tales, edited with an original story by Sandra Dallas, spotlights women on the Western edge who face violence, poverty, loneliness, and injustice, yet find inventive ways to fight back, protect one another, and claim small shards of hope.

In 1852 Chicago, seamstress Maggie and her young daughter join a wagon train of eligible women heading to a California mining town advertised as short on brides; as the brutal miles pass, the women uncover one another's secrets, form fierce bonds, and discover strengths they never expected.

Set in Denver during the 1918 flu pandemic, this novel follows sisters Helen and Lutie as they share a small house, take in a neighbor's child after her mother dies, and then desperately try to cover up the death of the girl's abusive father, testing their loyalties, loves, and moral limits.

In the rough gold-mining town of Tenmile, Colorado, in 1880, twelve-year-old Sissy Carlson assists her doctor father, witnessing deadly accidents, poverty, and prejudice; dreaming of becoming a physician herself, she begins to question what kind of future the town can offer a determined girl.

In 1916, idealistic schoolteacher Ellen Webster moves to the tiny Wyoming town of Wallace and falls in love with cowboy Charlie Bacon; together they build a life on the windswept High Plains, weathering brutal winters, isolation, and heartbreaking losses sustained by the stubborn, ordinary love they share.

In 1863, fourteen-year-old Haidie Richards cuts her braids, disguises herself as a boy, and escapes a grim orphanage with her little brother Boots to search for their gold-seeking father in Colorado, joining a ragtag band of trail companions on a risky, often funny journey into the Western frontier.