Tales both historical and contemporary are told in the western United States.
Sons of Texas
Elmer Kelton
Ambushed in 1816 Texas for trying to capture wild horses, the sons of murdered veteran and farmer Mordecai Lewis are eventually permitted to resettle in Texas, where one of them falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy French landowner and both are treated as horse thieves by Spanish patrolmen.
Read More View in CatalogTo Tame a Land
Louis L'Amour
When the beautiful Liza Hetrick is abducted and held in a mountain fortress, reclusive gunfighter Rye Taylor must face his deadliest enemy yet, the very man who taught him, as an orphan, about manhood, friendship, and the way of the West.
View in CatalogMany a River
Elmer Kelton
The Barfield brothers are separated by a Comanche raid. Years later, they are destined to be reunited and discover how their separate lives have changed them.
View in CatalogHard Country
Michael McGarrity
Struggling with the death of his wife in childbirth at the end of the 19th century, John Kerney gives up his Texas ranch to pursue the outlaws responsible for his brother's murder and participates in nearly half a century of turbulent history in New Mexico Territory.
Read More View in CatalogA Big Sky Christmas
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone
From the masters of frontier fiction comes a holiday tale set in the very heart of America--a Western saga of courageous souls coming together, with a little help from the Jensen family. . . In the fall of 1873, a wagon train of immigrants sets off from Kansas City, Missouri, bound for the Montana Territory. Leading the group is newly elected wagonmaster Jamie Ian MacCallister, a giant of a man and frontier legend who swears he can get them there by Christmas--come hell or high snow drifts. . . Plagued by brutally harsh storms and rugged terrain, outlaws and hostile Indians, the journey will be the greatest challenge these pioneers will ever face. But when things look nearly hopeless, help arrives in the form of two unlikely saviors: an old mountain man known as Preacher and legendary frontiersman Smoke Jensen. Two hard-willed men who believe in the settlers' dreams with all their hearts--and who will get them to their destination by Christmas. Even if it takes a miracle. . .
Read More View in CatalogThe Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel
Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry chronicles the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Tracing their legendary friendship from the settlement of Long Grass, Texas, to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, The Last Kind Words Saloon finds Wyatt and Doc living out the last days of a cowboy lifestyle that is already passing into history. In his stark and peerless prose McMurtry writes of the myths and men that live on even as the storied West that forged them disappears. Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of our most original American writers.
Read More View in CatalogParadise Sky
Joe R. Lansdale
A rollicking novel about Nat Love, an African-American cowboy with a famous nickname: Deadwood Dick. Young Willie is on the run, having fled his small Texas farm when an infamous local landowner murdered his father. A man named Loving takes him in and trains him in the fine arts of shooting, riding, reading, and gardening. When Loving dies, Willie re-christens himself Nat Love in tribute to his mentor, and heads west. In Deadwood, South Dakota Territory, Nat becomes a Buffalo Soldier and is befriended by Wild Bill Hickok. After winning a famous shooting match, Nat's peerless marksmanship and charm earn him the nickname Deadwood Dick, as well as a beautiful woman. But the hellhounds are still on his trail, and they brutally attack Nat Love's love. Pursuing the men who have driven his wife mad, Nat heads south for a final, deadly showdown against those who would strip him of his home, his love, his freedom, and his life.
Read More View in CatalogThe Long High Noon
Loren D. Estleman
A decades-long feud between Old West cowboys Randy Locke and Frank Farmer are separately approached by a man with the popular Buffalo Bill show who proposes they publicize a winner-take-all duel.
View in CatalogCape Hell
Loren D. Estleman
U. S. Deputy Page Murdock is ordered by Federal Judge Harlan A. Blackthorne to Cape Hell, Mexico, to verify a report that former Confederate Captain Oscar Childress is raising an army to take over Mexico City--and then intends to turn north to rekindle the Civil War. Childress, it seems, has the weapons, wealth, and moral compass to do it. Unable to talk himself out of the mission, Murdock heads south on a steam train named El Espanto--The Ghost. With only Hector Cansado, an engineer who can't be trusted and Joseph, a Native American fireman with a few secrets of his own, Murdock hurtles through the murderous desert of a foreign land toward a man bent on wholesale massacre . . . unless Murdock can stop him.
Read More View in CatalogThe Western Star
Craig Johnson
Sheriff Walt Longmire is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back. Armed with his trusty Colt .45 and a paperback of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the young Walt was ill-prepared for the machinations of twenty-four veteran sheriffs, let alone the cavalcade of curious characters that accompanied them. The photograph--along with an upcoming parole hearing for one of the most dangerous men Walt has encountered in a lifetime of law enforcement--hurtles the sheriff into a head-on collision of past and present, placing him and everyone he cares about squarely on the tracks of runaway revenge.
Read More View in CatalogDodge City
Tom Clavin
Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West. Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed, returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off into the sunset. #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin's Dodge City tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) that has gone largely untold—lost in the haze of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now.
Read More View in CatalogWolves of Eden: A Novel
Kevin McCarthy
The Civil War may be over, but in this thrilling historical novel, the battle for the West is only just beginning. Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with “boots for the gallows” to appease powerful figures in Washington. The men journey west to the distant outpost in a beautiful valley, where the soldiers inside the fort prove to be violently opposed to their investigations. Meanwhile, Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, they reenlist in the army and are shipped to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley. Here they are thrown into merciless combat with Red Cloud’s coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds. Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle—a moment that will change their lives forever. Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the cruelty of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.
Read More View in CatalogRobert B. Parker’s Buckskin
Robert Knott
After marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch lay Appaloosa's sheriff to rest, an emerging handful of men eagerly vie for the deceased sheriff's vacant office. No sooner are various campaigns under way when gold is discovered in the foothills just outside of town, sending Appaloosa buzzing with excitement. With the strike, a slew of new problems develop for Cole and Hitch. Two shrewd mining factions and their hired gun hands square off over the claim. And on the eve of the new sheriff's appointment, a powerful snowstorm blankets Appaloosa. As the town braces for the severe weather, Cole and Hitch's problems multiply with the emergence of anonymous letters to the editor of the Appaloosa Star, leading the duo to a series of murders and the pursuit of a vicious serial killer.
Read More View in CatalogThe Peaceful Valley Crime Wave
Bill Pronzini
Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that’s just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it. Aside from the occasional drunken brawl or minor disturbance out on the reservation, he hasn’t had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years. That is, until mid-October, 1914, when the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. Teenager Charity Axthelm goes missing, Reba Purvis’s housekeeper is poisoned with cyanide Reba is sure was meant for her, and Lucas’s gut tells him that this is only the beginning. It’s not long before the first corpse shows up, bringing the peace in the valley to a thundering end.
Read More View in CatalogInland
Téa Obreht
In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives collide. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life, her husband, a newspaperman, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home, and her husband's seventeen-year-old cousin, who communes with spirits. Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve from their longing in an unexpected relationship that inspires a momentous expedition across the West.
Read More View in CatalogTexas Outlaw
James Patterson
Rory Yates of the Texas Rangers doesn't seek out hero status, but it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his new-found fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo to investigate the death of a local councilwoman. Local detective Ariana Delgado is convinced that this seemingly accidental death is actually a murder. Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets and lies. To get to the truth, he's forced to step outside the law he has dedicated his life to upholding. Now, while Rory is tracking a killer, the Texas Rangers are tracking him...
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