"Jasmine Lee Keith possesses a fathomless creative well, the courage to plumb its depths, a love of language and a compulsion to render moments with clarity and unblinking emotional honesty." -Daniel Knauf, creator of Carnivale When Jenny Ames travels from Scituate, Rhode Island to Montana Territory as a mail-order bride, she expects to find love and security. But when she arrives in the lawless settlement of Above Snakes, she learns her intended husband is already dead, killed during a botched robbery. Penniless and alone, Jenny takes work at The Devil's Drop Saloon as a housekeeper and dancing girl. There, she finds unlikely solidarity with the soiled doves who work the establishment and a wary protector in saloon owner Buck Taliaferro. But when Jenny catches the eye of Dick Slade, a dangerous rivalry begins to brew, one that threatens to consume them both. Slade is a professional gambler with a growing body count and a reputation that spans the territory. He answers to no one, takes what he wants, and eliminates threats without hesitation. But in a land haunted by the Ghost Riders, a nihilistic gang of outlaws who kill for sport, the line between predator and prey isn't always clear. Set against the brutal landscape of 1869 Montana, Above Snakes is a dark gothic western romance that explores the price of survival, the nature of power, and the razor-thin boundary between civilization and savagery. Above Snakes is the debut novel of writer and poet Jasmine Lee Keith.