LONG SHADOWS by Terry James

Ros West limps into town with blistered feet and a horse that has lost a shoe.

All she wants to do is find a place to clean up and get some sleep. Her progress is halted by a fight going on down an alley where Jake Rudd is being beaten up. Ros interupts the fight and when the three men get nasty with her Ros shows that she's not a woman to be messed with as she lets loose with a spray of bullets.

Although she wounds two of the men, the third gets behind her but not for long as Jake comes to her rescue. They escape to his hotel room where, in the lamplight, he recognises Ros. Just one problem she doesn't know him and she is wary as she draws her gun and holds it on him.

The problem is that she has no memory and with trouble following her Ros has no reason to trust Jake. But when friends and family are threatened by a power hungry businessman the long shadows of the past come full circle as Ros and Jake join forces.

I am looking forward to the rest of the book for Ros West does not strike me as the type of simpering heroine that waits for the hulking male to rescue her. A bit like the opposite I imagine. Also a reminder that women in the west were a lot tougher. They had to be to survive.

LONG SHADOWS by Terry James is a Black Horse Western that will be on sale on the 29th May 2009.