Off the Bookshelf: LONESOME COWBOY

Don't you love used book sales? Either the Friends of the Library sale, where no matter how big or old or new the book is, paperbacks are 25 cents and hardbacks are 50 -- or the ones where people set up tables in the center of the mall and you wander up and down haphazard aisles, looking at whatever people are offering. That's where I got the next few books I"ll be reporting on. I have 3 books in Debbie Macomber's Hearts of Texas series.

LONESOME COWBOY is a sweet, quiet story, and introduces several characters in the local community who I hope get their own romances before I'm done reading -- and make me wish I had found all the Hearts of Texas books, because if I don't read their stories, I think I'm going to be disappointed. Well, that's just what Debbie Macomber does with her stories. Once she introduces people, you want to know, "And? Did they live happily ever after?"

Savannah and Laredo, the main characters of COWBOY are two people who have given up on love. Who have decided to be content with other dreams in their lives. And just as they think they're getting what they "really" want, his truck breaks down and she drives by and offers him a ride and love sneaks up and ambushes them both. Of course there's the gruff, overburdened, overprotective older brother who has both feet in his mouth when it comes to saying what he's feeling, and who tries his best and keeps irritating the woman he wants to think well of him. And the interfering, gossipy biddies in town. And other characters who make the town of Promise, Texas solid and real -- and make you want to come back for more.

Anything by Debbie Macomber is worth the sit-down -- and worth whatever you pay for the book. They're always keepers.