Literary Fiction Western

In this panoramic tale of manifest destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer.

Eli Singer, a rancher and poet in remote Eastern Montana, sees his life upended when a long-buried corpse - which turns out to be a murder victim from Eli's childhood - erodes out of a hillside on his property. This discovery forces Eli to turn inward to revisit the tragic events in his past that led to a life-changing moment of violence, while at the same time he must reach outside himself toward Chloe, a literary agent from New York whom he is falling in love with.

Dusty Richards bases his scores of Western novels on extensive research on the Old West. With an unflinchingview of the violence and cruelty that marked both sides of the Indian conflicts, he spins the riveting tale of Apachescout Deuces. Unjustly condemned for murder, he escapes his guard and disappears into the wilderness. Now hot on his trail is a U.S. Marshal determined to catch Deuces, no matter what the cost.

Reporter Lester Booker joins legendary gunfighter Rance March on the trail of a dangerous outlaw to learn how the West was really won.

Charlie Roy and pale, skinny Sir Arthur, an English gentleman, arrive at the Crown B ranch, north of Cheyenne, which is owned by the sir's sister, Elizabeth, who was widowed just the past winter and left with a ranch that lost nearly all its beef stock from the brutal '86-'87 winter freeze. Additionally, Elizabeth's dead husband's former partner, Justin Harper, is hell-bent on taking over her ranch. But what Harper and his boys don't figure on is interference by the likes of Charlie and the fierceness of the Sir.

Hard Times is the name of a town in the barren hills of the Dakota Territory. To this town there comes one day one of the reckless sociopaths who wander the West to kill and rape and pillage. By the time he is through and has ridden off, Hard Times is a smoking ruin. The de facto mayor, Blue, takes in two survivors of the carnage - a boy, Jimmy, and a prostitute, Molly, who has suffered unspeakably - and makes them his provisional family.

Tom Prine figured that a stint as deputy in a backwash town like Claybank would give him a nice rest. Until, in the space of just a few days, arson, kidnapping and murder turn Claybank into a dangerous place Prine no longer recognizes. A lot of old secrets are being revealed and at their core is a single nagging question - is anybody in town who they pretend to be? Prine doesn't have long to find the answer . .

When Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack arrives in Mesa Grande with a few outlaws in tow, he finds the town in chaos. The sheriff's just been shot, and the new deputy - supposedly out in search of the gunman - is acting suspicious. Now it's up to Burrack to sort out who can be trusted and who needs to be put behind bars. But just as he starts putting the pieces together, a new kind of threat descends on Mesa Grande: Scalp hunters ride in - with a band of wrathful Apache warriors hot on their trail.

A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond. But while the prized Winchester is wandering the West - aimed, fired, battered and bartered - Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann is hunting for the outlaw who robbed the train in Texas.

Set against the sweeping panorama of Arizona circa 1880, this work has many of the surface trappings of a standard western. However, from the first shocking realization that the line between good and evil is being overstepped, the author then begins to dismantle the American cowboy myth.

When Jack McLaughlin drifted into Springwater, he carried little more with him than his bitter memories of the Civil War and the shattering secret of a promise betrayed in the heat of battle. Wounded soul-deep, and fearing the wrath of his own parents, Jack has hidden his identity and come to Springwater to see his mother and father from afar, even if he can't bear to face them. Taking odd jobs and keeping a low profile, Jack finds a safe haven at the town's new rooming house.

In Bramble, Texas, Dusty is the law. That means no leniency for the gorgeous rebel whose highway antics almost got them both killed. The divorced lawman doesn't need another rich, pampered princess, even if Brianne has the lushest body and sweetest smile in the whole darn state. But even as Brianne proves that she lives to walk on the wild side, Dusty begins to wonder if maybe he has what it takes to tame her.

Whirlwind, the twin brother of Stone, disappears during a raid into northeastern New Spain. So Stone brings together Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Gataka warriors to go after his missing brother - but there are many things between earth and sky that oppose his quest.

In Improbable Fortunes, Jeffrey Price takes us on a wild ride into Vanadium, a dusty, down-on-its-heels mining town in Southwest Colorado where it would be fair to assume that nothing has ever happened. But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, quite a lot has happened, starting with a suspicious mudslide that destroys the town's Main Street and a cowboy, Buster McCaffrey, arrested for the death of one of the richest men in America, Marvin Mallomar.

On her own in the Big Apple, Jenna Jay Scroggs can handle herself when trouble arises. But when she tries to rescue a horse, the passionate do-gooder ends up on a runaway Central Park carriage ride with a hunky stranger. With his sexy drawl and well-worn Levis, Beauregard Cates is doing his darnedest to make Jenna homesick for the small western town she's spent years trying to forget. And it's working: She's dangerously close to falling head over boot heels for the rugged rodeo star with hair the color of moonshine.

Katherine Galloway knew this moment of calm wouldn't last, blown away like the dandelion seeds she scattered as a girl. In 1880, three years after her husband's death, she struggles to run an Oregon boardinghouse and raise two girls alone. Things don't get easier when her critical, domineering mother moves in. Katherine must make the situation work, but standing up for herself and her family while honoring her mother isn't easy. And with a daughter entering the teenage years, the pressure on Katherine becomes close to overwhelming.

Spring Warren breaks onto the literary scene with a remarkable debut novel. This often comic picaresque follows Edward Turrentine Bayard III, who deserts his upper-class family and moves to Nebraska. Soon he finds trouble - and a Pinkerton agent following his every move.

In To Let, Irene's son Jon and Soames' daughter Fleur, now both 19 years old, fall in love. But when Jon learns of the past feud between their families, he decides that he cannot marry Fleur. To drive her from his mind, he travels to America with his mother Irene. Fleur now throws herself at her long-standing admirer, Michael Mont, a fashionable baronet's son, and the two are married.

The year is 1910. Halley's Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the "Great White Hope", Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region's biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution.

The separate lives of these driven men and independent women from Europe and America are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West.