Robert James Waller

With over 10 million copies sold, bestselling author Robert James Waller returns with the haunting, evocative story of a small town, a beautiful and mysterious woman, and the man forever changed by both.The wild places are where no one is looking anymore. Out there on the high plains, among the Sioux reservations and the silent buttes, among the small towns dying and the people with them, you can hear the wind. And on the back of the wind is the sound of an old accordion--tangos--mingling with the lonely thump of a single drum in the nighttime and a far-off warrior's cry. On the back of the wind is the smell of worn saddle leather and sawdust, of sandalwood, and smoke from ancient ceremonial fires. To this, to a town called Salamander, comes Carlisle McMillan, a traveler and master carpenter seeking a place of quiet amid the grinding roar of progress. Near Wolf Butte, a strange and apparently haunted monolith, he finds his quiet, or so he believes, and begins rebuilding a decrepit house as a tribute to the gruff old man who taught him a carpenter's skills, rebuilding his life at the same time.He finds two very different, independent women: Gally Deveraux, who works at a diner in Salamander and longs for something more than she is, and Susanna Benteen, beautiful and enigmatic, who was drawn to Salamander for mysterious reasons of her own, a woman the town has labeled a witch. The women and his carpenter's trade and an old Indian known as Flute Player bring Carlisle a sense of contentment for a while. But his quiet is shattered as bulldozer treads begin to turn and the Yerkes County War commences. Run or stand your ground, that is Carlisle's dilemma, Gally on one side, Susanna on the other.Robert James Waller's fully imagined characters become people we know and care for deeply.High Plains Tango is the hauntingly lyrical story of a small town in the middle of nowhere, a town that forever changed--and was forever changed by--one man.From the Hardcover edition.

Most people don't run out the back door of a place called the Rainbow Bar in Dillon, Minnesota, with someone they don't even know, get in a pickup truck, drive all day, and end up without any clothes on in a motel room. But that's what Texas Jack Carmine did with Linda Lobo. It was the kind of thing Jack was famous for doing. The people who knew Texas Jack Carmine - such as songwriter Bobby McGregor and Jack's uncle Vaughn Rhomer back in Iowa - called him God's only freeborn soul, rider of the summer roads, traveler of the far places. Where he was headed with dark-haired, long-legged Linda was not just back to his one-horse Texas ranch. It was somewhere he had never been: face to face with his own heart and the wild, strange things that live there. Border Music is the story of Jack and Linda, of long, hot days on a high desert ranch, nights wild with loving beneath West Texas skies, and times when their relationship tears them both apart. It's about Vietnam and the Midwest, and Vaughn Rhomer, an old man who tries in his own fumbling way to be free. It's about men and women who work hard and care intensely, about romance and the passion that you only find once...and you never stop wanting to find again.

From Robert James Waller comes a wonderful collection of 19 essays--all of them as romantic, reflective, and timeless as readers have come to expect from the author of The Bridges of Madison County--a celebration of life and loss, of what things still can be.

The author of the blockbuster The Bridges of Madison County blends passion and adventure in the story of an American novelist in Mexico and his young lover, who take a trip with a killer.