Blog Archives
Cherry Creek
Cherry Creek, by Linda Griffin, is a historical western romance about Molly, a young woman in 1850s Ohio who wants more from life than duty, patience, and a cramped future in her husband’s family home. After marrying Andrew MacLeith, she grows restless and frustrated, then impulsively leaves with his charming gambler brother, Hugh, for the Pike’s Peak gold region. What begins as a bid for romance and freedom becomes a hard lesson in survival, independence, and the true meaning of home.
What struck me first was how grounded the book feels. Griffin doesn’t treat the frontier as a shiny adventure waiting to transform everyone into legends. Cherry Creek is dirty, noisy, exhausting, and often lonely. Molly’s life there is built from work, not glamour. She cooks, washes, nurses, bargains, saves, loses, and keeps going. I liked that choice. It gives the novel weight. This is a western romance, yes, but the romance is not only between Molly and Andrew. It is also Molly’s romance with possibility, with the idea that somewhere beyond the next hill she might become the person she imagines herself to be. The book is candid about how costly that dream can be.
I also appreciated the way Griffin lets Molly be young without making her foolishness feel shallow. Molly can be impulsive, proud, unfair, and painfully naive, but she is never empty. Her mistakes come from hunger, the kind that makes a person reach for the door before asking what waits on the other side. Andrew, too, is drawn with restraint. He is not a sweeping romantic hero in the obvious sense, and that makes him more interesting. His steadiness can feel dull beside Hugh’s sparkle, especially early on, but the novel slowly asks whether steadiness might be its own kind of courage. That question stayed with me. The pacing is steady, and readers who want constant drama may find the middle more reflective than urgent, but I found that slower rhythm suited the story. It gives Molly room to change.
Cherry Creek felt like a thoughtful historical western romance about growing up the hard way. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction, frontier settings, and romance that develops through regret, distance, and self-knowledge rather than grand speeches. It will especially appeal to anyone who likes stories about women testing the limits of the lives handed to them and discovering that freedom is not always escape. Sometimes it is knowing what, and whom, you choose.
Pages: 82 | ASIN : B0GX2TH5Q5
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
The Corridor by William Klenk
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Silver Book Award
Celebrating the brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Rough, Rough Country
Josh Jensen’s Rough, Rough Country is a hard-charging action thriller with a strong neo-Western spine. Graham Hayes, a former Army Ranger and recon operator, is trying to rebuild his family’s outfitting business in Payson, Utah, while knowing that old violence is still circling him. The book opens with mountain mornings, family dinners, dogs, firearms, and unfinished grief, then steadily pulls Graham back into a fight with a cartel boss who has turned obsession into strategy.
What gives the novel its pull is how grounded Graham feels even when the action gets big. He’s highly trained, dangerous, and watchful, but Jensen doesn’t let him become just a weapon in boots. His bond with his mother, brother Colt, niece Lily, and longtime friend Luis gives the story emotional weight. The family scenes give the book a lived-in warmth that makes Graham’s dangerous world feel personal instead of just action-driven.
The action is sharp, tactical, and easy to visualize. Jensen writes firefights, ambushes, escapes, and close-quarters violence with a clear sense of space, which keeps the bigger set pieces from turning muddy. The Mexico sections, especially Graham and Luis moving through cartel territory and relying on instinct, training, and each other, give the book a larger scope without losing the personal stakes. The line “The shooter is way more important than the gun, kid” neatly captures the novel’s practical, old-school attitude toward skill, discipline, and survival.
Luis is one of the book’s strongest assets. He brings humor, loyalty, and an emotional openness that balances Graham’s guarded nature. Derek, also known as D-Mac, adds a different kind of competence, and his shift from tech support to being pulled closer to the danger gives the back half of the story a fun change in energy. The villains have a mythic, decaying-cartel quality, especially Montezuma, whose rituals and paranoia make him feel less like a simple criminal and more like the rotten center of a collapsing world.
Rough, Rough Country is a confident, fast-moving thriller about legacy, brotherhood, trauma, and the cost of being the person everyone calls when things go bad. Jensen blends small-town Utah, military brotherhood, cartel violence, and family history into a story that feels both rugged and personal. It’s the kind of book where the quiet scenes matter because they show what the violence is protecting, and that gives the gunfire more than just noise.
Pages: 355 | ASIN: B0GYPLXB6T
Angel of the Waste: Unitarium Chronicles Volume One
UNITARIUM Chronicles Volume One by Rodney W. McWilliams is a space-western adventure built around Captain Dakota Maverick, a wanted outlaw whose piracy is really a kind of rough-edged mercy. The book opens with a great hook, then settles into a dusty frontier town, a hidden ship, a sarcastic android first mate, and a galaxy where the people with the least power need someone willing to break rules for them.
Dakota is the heart of the book. She’s tough, funny, stubborn, wounded, and deeply protective, which makes her easy to root for even when she’s doing illegal things. Her moral code is direct and personal, especially when she tells a drunken cadet, “The fact I don’t like it is reason enough; show some respect.” That line captures a lot of what makes her work as a lead character: she doesn’t give speeches about justice; she acts on it.
The world blends saloons, hovercycles, sentient ships, C-Gates, corrupt authorities, androids, brothels, frontier churches, and medical scarcity into something that feels lively and lived-in. Raven and Axel add a lot of personality, with their bickering giving the story a lighter rhythm between raids, grief, rescues, and bigger revelations. The book also has a strong found-family current, especially as Dakota’s circle grows to include people like Matilda, Simon, Paige, Preacher, and Aes.
What stands out most is the book’s sense of momentum. It starts as outlaw-with-a-heart-of-gold sci-fi, then widens into a story about corruption, trauma, time travel, loyalty, and second chances. The plot has plenty of moving pieces, but its emotional center stays clear: Dakota is trying to help people the system has abandoned, and each new complication tests how much she’s willing to carry.
UNITARIUM Chronicles Volume One is a fun, earnest, character-driven space western with a big heart and a sharp sense of adventure. It’s at its best when Dakota and her crew are bouncing off each other, sneaking through dangerous jobs, or choosing compassion in a universe that keeps making compassion expensive. The book gives readers a captain worth following and a crew that feels like it’s just getting started.
A Reckoning in Mercy
A Reckoning in Mercy by T. E. MacArthur is a classic Western ghost story set in 1888 northwestern New Mexico, where Eli Mercer, a haunted drifter with an unwanted connection to the dead, rides into the town of Bendición during a violent storm and finds himself pulled into a fight involving corrupt lawmen, racial tension, old land claims, a condemned Hispano man named Don Santiago de Álvarez, and a determined woman doctor, Eleanor. What begins as a desperate search for shelter turns into a supernatural reckoning, with ghosts, guilt, and human cruelty all pressing in from every side.
MacArthur doesn’t treat the setting like painted scenery. The desert, the river, the storm, and the town all feel alive, and often hostile. I could feel the grit, the damp heat, the pressure in the air before something bad happened. The book leans into the Western side of its genre, with horses, guns, gallows, land disputes, and frontier politics, but the ghost story elements are woven in as something more than decoration. The supernatural feels tied to memory and violence, not just jump scares. That worked for me because I felt like it gave the story weight.
Mercer could have been a familiar wandering gunman, but he’s more interesting than that. He’s scared, guilty, proud, and trying very hard not to care until he clearly does. Eleanor is another strong point. She’s brave without feeling polished into perfection, and her presence sharpens the book’s ideas about who gets power, who gets believed, and who is allowed to stand in the way of injustice. The book is candid about prejudice and social hierarchy in the Old West, sometimes bluntly so, and while that can make parts of the story uncomfortable, but I think that discomfort is part of the point.
The prose is big and stormy, matching the story’s mood. Some scenes use heightened, dramatic language, especially during the action and supernatural moments, but that intensity fits the story because this isn’t a quiet little ghost tale. It’s dusty, bloody, strange, and restless. I would recommend A Reckoning in Mercy to readers who enjoy Western fiction with a paranormal edge, especially those who like morally wounded heroes, strong historical atmosphere, and ghost stories that are really about what refuses to stay buried.
Pages: 288
