A Thorn in the Bush: A Short Novel by Frank Herbert

She survived the Alaskan frontier. She built an empire. She reinvented herself as a respectable expatriate in a Mexican village. But no scheme survives contact with a young man determined to do something kind.

Mrs. Emma Ross — once known as Kodiak Kate, the sharpest businesswoman in Juneau — has spent decades cultivating respectability in the lakeside village of San Juan. When an insufferable young American artist arrives and begins painting the beautiful, partially paralyzed Paulita Romera, Emma's instincts scream danger. She has seen this before. She knows how this ends.

She is spectacularly wrong.

A Thorn in the Bush is a sparkling, long-lost novella from Frank Herbert — the legendary author of Dune — overflowing with sharp wit, vivid Mexican color, and one of literature's most magnificently mistaken protagonists.