Action Fiction Western

It starts with a jailbreak. Frank Thorson and his gang ride into Wolfwater to bust Frank's brother out of the slammer. First, they slaughter the deputy. Then, the town marshal. Finally, they run off with the marshal's daughter and no one's sure if she's dead or alive. The townsfolk are desperate enough to ask that drunken old coot Catfish Charlie to put down his fishing pole and wine bottles, pick up his Colt Army .44, and go after the bloodthirsty gang. Sure, Catfish Charlie may be a bit rusty after all these years. But when it comes to serving up justice, no one is quicker.

A rash of deadly train robberies has the chief investor of Dover Station feeling itchier than a quick draw without a target. And he wants Sheriff Aaron Mackey to scratch that itch with every bullet his battered badge authorizes him to shoot. When Mackey and his backup gun down four kill-crazy bandits, they uncover a plot cooked up by respected citizens of Dover Station - someone who can pull enough strings to replace Mackey with a disgraced marshal from Texas.

Dewey “Mac” McKenzie is wanted for a killing he didn’t commit. He saved his hide once by signing on as a cattle drive chuckwagon cook and bolting the territories. Turned out Mac was as good at fixing vittles as he was at dodging bullets. But Mac’s enemies are hungry for more — and they’ve hired a gang of ruthless killers to turn up the heat....

Busted out of prison by an outlaw friend, Flintlock joins a hunt for a fortune - a golden bell hanging in a remote monastery. But between the smouldering ruin of his former jail cell and a treasure in the Arizona mountains there will be blood at a U.S. Army fort, a horrifying brush with Apache warriors, and a dozen bloody showdowns with the schemers, shootists, madmen, and lost women who find their way to Flintlock's side.

Residents and news media still recall a gun-blazing tale of the land-grabbing battles fought by Maddox's and Drew's ancestors. Meanwhile, their present-day descendants face a new kind of war that's every bit as bloody. Sheriff Drew's girlfriend/deputy is shot and seriously wounded in what appears to be a routine traffic stop. When Ashton Maddox's rival rancher's foreman is found murdered and a modern-day vigilante group hires a hard-drinking, publicity-hungry retired Texas Ranger to investigate, Drew and Maddox decide to do what their forefathers did so many years ago: join forces.

As the deputy sheriff in a small Missouri town, "Slick" Parker Jones doesn't have much to do except get drunk and chase saloon girls. Life is pretty dull in Rory's Junction—until Slick sees the wanted poster for a notorious train robber. Parker's never met an actual outlaw before. He's never faced any real dangers, to be honest. But when that wanted man staggers into Parker's nightly watering hole—half dead, with a hole in his gut and a bloody map in his hand—the young deputy's life takes a wild turn . . . quite possibly fatal.

Rascally cowboy Hewey Calloway is heading north to Colorado on a horse drive for an old friend when he gets word that one of his hired hands is planning to rob him. After the plot is foiled, the fugitive horsehand is on the run and leaving bodies in his wake. Hewey, the worst pistol shot in the West, is deputized to bring the criminal to justice, bestowing him with a weight of responsibility he's long avoided and leaving him to wonder if even the help of a retired Texas Ranger is enough to put an end to this trail of dastardly deeds.

Robber baron Clifton Satterlee's plan is twofold and simple: Wrest the timber-thick hills in New Mexico Territory from the Tua Pueblo and then populate the town with his own subservient labor force. But in his near-perfect campaign of terror, Satterlee has overlooked one mighty obstacle: Smoke Jensen.

Jack Sage is ready to hang up his guns. So after rescuing a family from a flooded house, the guarded lawman is delighted to discover a steal of a price for a string of horses and 400 head of cattle to start his ranch. But to get his herd from Texas to Kansas, he faces a seven-hundred-mile journey fraught with swollen rivers, difficult crossings, and a cutthroat gang of rustlers.

John Stockbridge was once a peaceful man of medicine. Now, he's better known as Dr. Vengeance, a man who is as fast with a shotgun as any other gunfighter is with a six-gun. The murders of his wife and child left him with an aching hole where his soul once was. His only solace comes from wandering the West. Along the way, he encounters a woman and her two children searching for their missing fur-trapper husband/father in the Rockies. In the process, they run afoul of some former Confederates who have amassed money and local power by robbing those traveling west through a mountain pass.

Rance Kirby returns from Mexico rich enough to buy back the ranch that was once his father's. But his hope is darkened when the current owner, who has agreed to the sale, is mysteriously murdered. Rance Kirby also finds himself under the spell of the strong and determined Libby Caddo, a woman who has her own ideas about Rance's future.

When Kate Thompson's father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the 18-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice. What she finds are devious strangers, dust storms, and a pair of brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, she gets closer to the truth about herself and must decide if there's room for love in a heart so full of hate.

When a wealthy cattle baroness hires Joe Buckhorn to track down her son, it sounds like easy money. But when he learns that the boy has run off with a girl - whose father is the leader of the cattle-rustling Riley clan - Buckhorn's only hope is to infiltrate the gang. Gain their trust. Live the outlaw life, even at the risk of death. There's just one problem: there's more than one gang. The Riley girl may have stolen a runaway boy's heart but the other gangs are stealing the baroness's cattle.

It starts with a prison break in Missouri. When notorious bank robber Ansel McCoy busts out, he teams up with five other outlaws. Then he and his gang rob a bank in Kansas. Now they're crossing state lines into Oklahoma Indian Territory. And that's where US Marshal Will Tanner steps in. Other marshals from Kansas and Missouri have already lost the trail. Which means Tanner has to go it alone. Deep in the wilderness. Outnumbered and outgunned. One good man against six blood-crazed killers.

Recklessly, joyously, Black Jack had ridden into town to see his infant son. Then a shotgun fired from a window had blasted him from his horse and flung him to his death in the street.

In the criminal underworld of Laramie County, Lucien Clay was king. He terrorized the locals, robbed the coffers, and ruled the place with an iron fist. Thankfully he’s behind bars now—along with a load of other lowlife scum—thanks to Laramie’s new sheriff, Buck Trammel. Unfortunately, Buck can only enforce the law while others specialize in working around it: namely, lawyers. And no lawyer is more crooked or corrupt than the belly-crawling snake Clay hired to get him out. By any means possible.

This latest installment in Johnstone's series about frontiersman Jamie MacCallister finds the former gunfighter, now 50, leading a serene life of retirement in Colorado even as his sons are fighting on both sides of the Civil War. Summoned to Washington, Jamie is offered the position of chief scout for the Union by Lincoln himself. But though the rugged Westerner loathes slavery, he loves states' rights more and, after a meeting with Robert E. Lee, he signs up with the Confederacy as commander of a guerrilla band.

US Navy SEAL Wes "Cowboy" McGraw goes home on leave to attend his 10th high school reunion. This brings him back into the orbit of a woman he knew in high school: Kia Silverbrook, renowned for her hacking ability. Hacker extraordinaire Kia has been making a sweet living doing some legal and not-so-legal hacking. But when a break-in makes her believe a secret investigation she has been conducting may be blowing back at her, she doesn't know where to turn. Except to Wes, the boy who had always intrigued her in high school with his cowboy charm and those ever-watchful, hot whiskey eyes.

Keeping the peace in a West Texas town like Buffalo Peak should be easy for a legendary frontiersman like Marshal Elwood "Firestick" McQueen. He’s got his longtime buddies "Beartooth" Skinner and "Moosejaw" Hendricks as his deputies — not to mention the famous rifle that earned him his nickname. But when Firestick learns that their ornery old friend “Rip” Ripley just rode into town, all bets are off.

The Reckoning is the first in the series of Jess Williams Western novels written by Robert J. Thomas. Jess Williams is an ordinary young boy with a loving family, growing up in Black Creek, Kansas. That all changes when he comes home and finds his entire family brutally murdered. Forced to become a man overnight, he vows to avenge his family's savage deaths.