"Lost Lake House: A Novella" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Novella)

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fairytale

Type of Short Story:  Novella

Summary:  All Dorothy Perkins wants is to have a good time. She’s wild about dancing, and can’t understand or accept her father’s strictness in forbidding it. Night after night she sneaks out to the Lost Lake House, a glamorous island nightclub rumored to be the front for more than just music and dancing…in spite of an increasingly uneasy feeling that she may be getting into something more than she can handle.

Marshall Kendrick knows the truth behind the Lost Lake House—and bitterly hates his job there. But fear and obligation have him trapped. When a twist of circumstances throws Dorothy and Marshall together one night, it may offer them both a chance at escaping the tangled web of fear and deceit each has woven…if only they are brave enough to take it.

Excerpt:

At eight-thirty Dorothy turned out the light in her bedroom and put on her hat and coat. If her room was dark and her father had not heard an outside door shut he never came to look in on her, but assumed she was asleep. She had learned his routine carefully, lying awake and listening on the nights she was at home. Still she had lately taken to rumpling up her bed and putting pillows under the coverlet, just in case—her conscience, recovering from the sulkiness that had set her on this path, was beginning to be jumpy. Then she climbed out the window onto the sloping back porch roof, slithered down an ivy-covered trellis and ran through the dark backyard to the side street. Their house was a big old-fashioned brick with a mansard roof, with the boughs of stately old oak trees brushing the upper story; situated at the corner of a block, its yard rimmed with hedges. There was an opening at the side for the path where the milkman and the grocer’s boy came to the back door, and Dorothy slipped through this and darted across the street in the dim light from the lamp on the next corner.

By quarter to nine she had reached the street corner where a group of girls and young men were waiting, milling about and laughing and teasing each other under the street lamp by a drugstore. Dorothy joined them, and they walked a few blocks to where some of the young men had cars waiting. They piled in and drove out the winding roads through the outskirts of town toward the lake, a little too fast once they were out of the part of the city more regularly patrolled by the police. Dorothy had at first been exhilarated by this ride, later a little alarmed by it, and then shamed into saying nothing by the nonchalant way in which the other girls took the whirling speed amid careless banter with the drivers. She laughed with the others, but kept a tight grip on the inner door-handle.

The dock for the Lost Lake ferry was at the bottom of a steep hill—cars were parked up above in an empty lot off the road that was supposed to be secret but which everyone knew about. Standing a little back from the dock, on the trodden gravelly shore, Dorothy stared across the water. On cloudy nights like this the lake and sky and island all melted into a uniform invisible black, so the blazing golden windows of the Lost Lake House seemed suspended in the middle of the lake like a floating fairy palace. The lighted ferryboat, which had left on one of its trips before her party reached the landing, inched across the lake like a little glowing caterpillar swimming toward it.

Dorothy shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets and suppressed a little shiver. It seemed they always arrived when the ferry was halfway across the lake to the island, and had to wait for its return. She could never entirely escape the chill of nervousness in her stomach while waiting, almost as bad as it had been the first time she crossed. It had not taken her long to hear the whispers about the Lost Lake House—that there was a hidden speakeasy inside—that there had been police raids before, and that it might happen again. Every time she had to wait in the half-dark by the ferry, near a little group of girls and men still teasing and laughing in half-whispers—by habit rather than fear with them—her jangling nerves expected at any moment the white glare of headlamps on police cars would pour down from the bank above and pin them in their blinding beams, branding them all as criminals and exposing their secret expeditions to the world. (Oh, wouldn’t her father be furious then!)

The ferry was coming back now, the strings of little Japanese lanterns that ornamented it bobbing above the black water. Dorothy’s breath came quicker as it always did at this moment, when the lighted ferryboat drew closer and the fear of the police began to recede. This was the moment—as the ferry bumped against the lower dock, and she followed the others down the wooden steps—the moment she tried to hug to herself, to savor the magic of as she stepped under the string of lanterns, fixed her eyes on the shining house across the lake, and felt the little lurch of the ferry carrying them out from the shore. She tried not to hear the chatter of the other passengers and the chug of the motor; she was busy making the Lost Lake House into fairyland.
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"Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Short Stories)

Genre:  Western

Type of Short Story:  Short Story Collection

Summary:  From the author of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories come six more short stories exploring the joys, heartaches and laughter of life against the backdrop of the Old West. In “Single-Handed,” a gunfighter’s courage comes in doubt when he refuses to explain to his friends the real reason he backed down from a fight. The capable proprietress of the busiest eating-house in town handles a day of disasters large and small in the light-hearted “The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s,” while in “Room Service,” a hotel night clerk finds himself in on odd position after he allows an exhausted traveler to stay in a reserved room. And in the title story, the novella-length “Wanderlust Creek,” a young rancher and his wife struggle to hold onto their land and their dreams in the face of adversity from weather, enemies—and even doubts of each other.

Excerpt:

(from “Wanderlust Creek”)

He reached up toward the reins with his other hand and his hard fingers closed round her wrist. Gloria had not expected it and could not use her quirt, which had slipped down and tangled around her other wrist. The bay horse slewed around sideways in displeasure at the pull on its mouth, but she could not twist her hand free. “Don’t touch me!” she said, a little breathless, hoping her anger concealed a sudden touch of panic.

The younger man put in, though doubtfully, “Hey, do you think—”

A rifle shot cracked and a bullet kicked up the sod a foot behind the other man’s riderless horse. All three horses shied violently; the man on the ground lost his hold on Gloria’s wrist and stumbled as the bay pulled away, and swore as he turned round angrily to look for the source of the shot. Relief leaped through Gloria as she steadied her spooked horse. Ray!

Ray Collins emerged on foot from the brush bordering the meadow, a little to the rear of the scene and closer than any of them had realized, a Winchester in the crook of his arm. In a few purposeful strides he crossed the intervening space and joined them, coming up alongside Gloria’s horse. He looked up at her, catching her eye for a second to see if she was all right, and then he spoke sharply to the men. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

“I been getting that question a lot lately,” said the man on foot, his face still dark with anger. “You crazy, shooting at us like that? What business you got doing it?”

“You’ve got no business at all trespassing on my land, or laying your hands on my wife,” said Ray. “Get out of here before I put another shot a lot closer to you.”

Here the younger rider, whose face at sight of Ray had registered first surprised recognition and then slight guilt, cut in. “Hey—Ray—”

Ray glanced at him, his own recognition failing to make any impression on his restrained anger. Chris Borden tried to smile uncomfortably. “Gosh, Ray, I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this. I—I didn’t know she was your wife—”

“And if she’d been somebody else’s wife, it wouldn’t have mattered?” said Ray cuttingly. “Thanks a lot.”

His glance took in both of them. “You’d better ride out—now.”

With little else they could do, the two men complied. The one on foot gave Ray an ugly look, and glanced once more at Gloria before turning to his horse. “You’ll be sorry if you ever try something like that on me again,” he said to Ray, and then turned away.

As the men rode away across the meadow, Gloria turned her horse back in the direction from which she had come, towards home, and Ray fell in to walk beside her. His own horse waited in the brush from which he had fired. Gloria looked down sideways at him. She had learned to know his moods well enough in a year of marriage to tell that he was still simmering with anger, though outwardly contained. He ejected the spent shell from the Winchester and slung the gun under his other arm. The rifle shot had shaken Gloria a little, though she could not say it was a surprise. Ray’s patience had been short lately, for a number of good reasons.

He looked up at her again after a few minutes, and the expression in his eyes had nearly returned to normal. “Are you all right?” he said.

Gloria nodded. “I—I think they may have cut our fence.”
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"Corral Nocturne: A Novella" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Novella)

Genre:  Western Romance

Type of Short Story: Novella

Summary:  Life on her brother’s ranch is lonely for Ellie Strickland. Ed’s ungracious manners and tight-fisted habits keep visitors away and his mother and sister close to home. But when Cole Newcomb, son of the wealthiest rancher in the county, meets Ellie by chance, he is struck by an unexpected impulse to rescue her from her solitude—and Ellie’s lonely summer is transformed.

When Cole asks her to go with him to the Fourth of July dance, Ellie is determined that nothing, from an old dress to Ed’s sour temper, will stand in her way. By the time the Fourth of July fireworks go off at midnight, will they herald only more heartache, or maybe—just maybe—a dream come true?

Excerpt:

Ellie finished feeding the chickens, and stood for a moment holding the empty basket, watching them cluck and scratch and search in the dust for the kernels of grain. Then she turned and walked across the yard toward the little weathered frame house. The house, the low-roofed barn, the corrals and sheds made a half-circle around the hard-packed dirt ranch yard, and the garden patch lay east of the house. Sheltered by low hills, the ranch lay down out of sight of the main road. Few people came down the rutted track to the Strickland place. Those who did came on business with Ed—buying a cow, as today, or perhaps to borrow a piece of farming equipment; and they seemed to come rather of necessity than choice. Their infrequent comings and goings did little to affect the daily round of life. Though only five miles from town, the ranch was for Ellie a lonely place.

It was not a particularly hard life they lived here, though for Ellie and her mother there were often irksome extra tasks arising from rather unnecessary scrimping and making do. Ed was ‘tight’; he grudged every bit of new wire for mending a broken fence; he kept his cows as short on grain as possible and then complained when they did not gain flesh like the other ranchers’ cattle; he would never buy a new shirt when an old one could be patched. He was apt to grumble over small extra items in his mother’s modest grocery lists, and Ellie had long since given up asking for anything for herself, knowing she would only hear the familiar response, “But what for? We don’t need it.”

Ellie sat down on the front steps and put the basket down beside her. Ed was out of sight, and it was not yet time to start the midday meal, so she sat still for a moment and let the fresh breeze from off the prairie brush her face and flutter the edge of her calico apron. It was quiet—peaceful and beautiful, with the near-noon sun shining on wildflowers bobbing in the long grasses stirred by the wind. But today the quiet only served to remind Ellie that hardly anybody came down the road to the Strickland place, and those who did come disliked Ed Strickland so much that they never paid attention to Ed’s sister.

Ellie sighed a little, and scuffed the toe of her boot in the dust. She was eighteen now. A lot of the girls she had gone to school with in the little one-room schoolhouse over on Catlin Creek had beaus by now, who escorted them to picnics and dances and took them out for buggy rides on Sundays. Ellie and her mother seldom went anywhere except occasionally to church, for Ed disliked social gatherings and didn’t like to spare the team from work for them to drive anywhere. So they were cut off, to a large degree, from the other women in the area, who had plenty of acquaintances among their neighbors to keep them busy, and knew very little about the Stricklands except what they heard their husbands and sons say of Ed. And as for young men…well, the men that came out here usually left with a sardonic expression like John Bentley’s, and hardly even noticed that Ed had a mother and sister.

Ellie put her chin in her hand and stared away up the double-rutted track to the main road, with the green grass waving softly in its center strip. She was a quiet, practical girl, who simply accepted the little trials of her life that she could do nothing about. She did not spend her time pining for a beau—it was not a real cause of heartache, or something that constantly occupied her thoughts. But there were days, like today, when the accumulated loneliness of months made her heart weigh heavy; when she wondered wistfully how the right kind of young man was ever going to find his way down the road to her isolated home—and once there, what there possibly was that could make him want to stay long enough for a second look.

“No man in his right mind would want Ed for a brother,” she said aloud to herself, and then added as an afterthought, “and I wouldn’t want to marry the other kind.”

And with this reflection she stood up, looked round again at the sunny and empty horizon—empty of either kind—and then picked up the basket and went up the steps into the house.

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"Some Christmas Camouflage: A Short Story" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Novelette)

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Christmas

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  On a snowy December evening during the Great Depression, a high-spirited college student impulsively decides to do some spying on a quiet classmate—with unexpected results. A short story both funny and touching, in which mischief brings about a small Christmas miracle.

Excerpt:

He looked across toward the other side of the street, less well lit, where Philip had gone. A wild idea darted into his head. Had it not been for his unusual elevation of spirits, and the curious incident of the shop window, he might not have entertained it. But in his present mood it seemed like another splendid joke—to follow Philip Brown and see exactly where it was he did go in those evenings away from the campus.

It was almost too easy. Wesley crossed the street, and in a few moments again had Philip in view in the dimmer light of the now sparse street lamps, walking along with his head slightly down, the idea of an irrepressible classmate flitting from house to house like an amateur detective behind him evidently the furthest thing from his mind. Philip walked on steadily, turning down narrower streets where the snow was still crusted on the sidewalks, only trampled in a line down the middle by passing feet. They were getting into a different section of town now, made up mostly of cheap rooming-houses and apartments. Wesley hovered about a block behind, by this time brimming with suppressed glee over the sheer novelty of his escapade. At last he poked his head from behind the combined shelter of a tree and trash can to see Philip turn into the dark lower doorway of a small brick apartment house. Wesley waited a few seconds after his disappearance, then came out of hiding and crossed to the door himself. He examined the cards on the mailboxes in the entry and found the name ‘Brown’ on number 9. From a glance at the numbers on the doors in the ground-floor hall, he correctly calculated the position of number 9 at third-floor back, and darted back outside. The window at the back corner in question was lighted—and a fire-escape that doubled intricately back and forth over itself up the back of the house provided him easy access. Wesley was too far gone in adventure by now to even think whether he was doing something quite right.

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"The Silver Shawl: A Mrs. Meade Mystery" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Novelette)

Genre:  Mystery, Historical Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary: In a small town in turn-of-the-century Colorado, a young woman has disappeared from the boarding-house where she lives. Her distraught fiancé is certain that she must have been kidnapped. But the case takes a new turn when a city detective appears on the scene, looking for a woman who matches the description of the missing girl. Was Charity really kidnapped, or did she have a reason to flee? Mrs. Meade, a gentle but shrewd widow lady who lives across the hall in the boarding-house, feels that there is something wrong with the story of Charity’s disappearance…but can she unravel the mystery before it is too late?

Excerpt:

In about the time it takes for a fine horse to travel half a block, Sheriff Andrew Royal was surprised in his office and in the middle of his breakfast by a distraught young man who demanded that Sour Springs be turned upside down and vigorously shaken. Sheriff Royal, once he had got down the half a biscuit with honey which had prevented his interrupting sooner, made routine answer. He told Randall for Pete’s sake to calm down, said that yes, he was aware that Randall didn’t know where Charity was, but it didn’t follow that nobody else did, and reached for his hat to lend some credence to his assurances that yes, he’d ask around if anybody’d seen her. As Randall showed signs of giving vent to a burst of outrage at this innocuous understatement, Royal gave him (in an annoyed voice) a list of very good reasons why harm should not befall a respectable young woman in a town like Sour Springs, then jammed his hat over his bushy eyebrows and stalked out to prove it.

But by midday, a reasoned anxiety was not only possible, but excusable. After questioning her few closer friends or acquaintances provided no clue to her whereabouts, a general alarm was spread that Charity Bradford was missing, and when it had traveled around the town, the result was that no one had seen her that day.

Royal, once roused, though in no better mood, was persistent. His efforts at length turned up two witnesses. One was a small boy who rightly judged that his being an important witness in the case of a missing young lady would render insignificant the fact that he had been sneaking back into the house at a time he was not supposed to be out of it when he saw her. He had seen Miss Bradford walking along the street after dark, but hadn’t gotten close enough to see anything more because he had hidden to avoid her seeing him.

The second witness was an old man, rather shaky to begin with, whose closest friends were rather doubtful about his testimony because they knew he was in the habit of taking a nip of something on chilly evenings. But he was more specific, and more insistent. He had stepped out on his porch for a moment that evening, and had seen a young lady with dark hair walking on the other side of the street. She had on a light dress and a hat and a shimmery shawl of some kind. He was too far away to see her face, but yes, he thought it had been Miss Bradford. She was the right height and she’d been wearing what they said she had on that night. Sheriff Royal repeatedly cross-questioned him as though with a perverse desire to find some flaw in his story, but the old man stubbornly held on to every detail, chilly evening or no. She was wearing a light-colored dress—yes, it might have been green, but he wouldn’t say for sure; his eyes weren’t that good—and a silver shawl. Well, not a silver shawl, he admitted when Royal pounced on him, but a silvery one, or shimmery one—something light like that. That’s what he’d seen and that’s all he could say. No other girl had admitted she was walking up Main Street at that hour, had she? So who else could it be? Royal gave him up in disgust.
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"War Memorial" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Short Story)

Genre:  Historical Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Short Story

Summary:  At the bottom of an old trinket-box lies a misshapen bit of lead—a bullet from the Civil War, an old family keepsake preserved, but mostly forgotten, by later generations. And behind it lies a story—the story of a young girl’s experiences in the days surrounding the fateful battle of Gettysburg, which force her to examine her own heart and show her the face of war in a way she could not have understood before.

Excerpt:

Julia paused, listening, her hand outstretched to the top branches of the rosebushes by the split-rail fence. She gazed across the fields on the other side of the road, over to the gaps in the hills beyond. The sounds of unrest, of ponderous movement, of forces gathering were in the air. They were the sounds of a storm building and about to break, but they did not come from the soft lowering gray clouds that lined the sky above.

Julia slowly resumed her work, picking out the dead leaves and breaking off the withered heads of dead blooms, but she continued to cast glances toward the horizon at intervals, her eyes moving back and forth across the familiar spread of Pennsylvania farmland. She looked at last over the roses and saw nothing more to do, and she turned slowly and walked back across the farmyard toward the house, which stood silent and empty waiting for her.

There was little or no breeze. All near at hand was quiet—the very air seemed holding its breath; the slight whisper of the leaves was part and parcel of the stillness. None who waited that day in listening suspense yet knew the history of which they stood upon the brink; but they felt the import of whatever was moving toward them. A people who had lain securely north of the real conflict were about to enter for the first time into an experience they had perhaps never fully comprehended—about to encounter for the first time that hitherto faceless being known as ‘the enemy.’

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"The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories" by Elisabeth Grace Foley (Short Stories)

Genre:  Western

Type of Short Story:  Short Story Collection

Summary:  A collection of Western short stories that go beyond the standard action and adventure of the genre to focus on character and conflict. In the award-winning “Disturbing the Peace,” honorable mention in the 2010 Rope and Wire short story competition, a sheriff experiences a revelation about himself and his relationship with the people of his town, while in “The Outlaw’s Wife,” a country doctor worries that his young friend is falling for a married woman whose husband is rumored to be a wanted criminal. From the suspenseful “Cross My Heart” to the comedic romp of “A Rangeland Renaissance,” to a Western twist on star-crossed romance in the title story, “The Ranch Next Door,” these stories will appeal to a variety of readers, as well as established fans of the traditional Western.

Excerpt:

(from “Delayed Deposit”)

Across the street, Jim Beaudine rested his shoulder against the rough plank wall at his left, rifle in hand, watching the silent shaded windows of the bank. He heard footsteps behind him and then Sheriff Graham was at his side, breathing noisily after his run.

Graham was a stocky, sandy-haired man, rather short, with a round bulldog face which had a tendency to turn red at the slightest exertion or irritation. At the present moment it was already a warning pink.

“Who’s in there?” he asked of his deputy, squinting across the sunny street at the bank.

“Middleton, of course…one of Arnold’s freighters, Mrs. Eberley and the Murphy boys.”

“Well, this is a nice kettle of fish,” said Graham, and to do him credit, he did not mean the hostages.

“That’s who was seen go in, anyway, and haven’t come out. Nobody saw the hold-up gang get in. They must have come through the side door and got the drop on everyone.”

“Door should have been locked,” said Graham testily.

“Should have don’t mean it was.”

Graham wiped the sweat from his forehead with his hand, wiped his hand on his trousers and gestured impatiently toward the bank. “What’s going on in there? Have you seen anything?”

“Nope. They’re trying to figure out what to do, I guess.”

“They must be first-class idiots to try something like this in broad daylight, with the place full of people. And if theyare idiots it won’t be hard to get them out of there.” Graham nodded twice emphatically, highly satisfied with this conclusion.

“Always thought it was a bad idea to have a door back there,” said Jim Beaudine musingly.

“Well, if they didn’t have a door there, they wouldn’t be able to take shipments in and out without being seen from—” Graham realized the futility of the argument in mid-sentence and finished in exasperation, “oh, never mind.”

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