Literary Fiction Western

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.

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.

In Broken Bridle, Wyoming, Jeremiah Purdy, the town's tinhorn sheriff is a college kid who wants to become governor some day. But outlaw Darius Pike couldn't care less about anyone else's ambitions. With Pike holding Broken Bridle in a bloody grip of terror, Purdy sends a desperate cry for help - to Shawn O'Brien, town tamer. Shawn's mission: ride to Wyoming and pry Broken Bridle loose from Pike's reign of fear.

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.

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.

Men with…more. More powerful. More heart. More guts and grit and sometimes…dimensions beyond. That’s the Marshalls, brothers Quinn and Josh and their cousin Case: strong, handsome and sexy protectors who will tackle evil in any of its forms to guard and keep safe those they love. This set includes Texas Refuge, Texas Star, and Texas Danger.

Three-book boxed set of small town love stories rich with emotion, ripe with secrets, scandals and sexual tension: Texas Secrets: Former SEAL Boone Gallagher returns to the only home he's ever known only to find that the ranch has been willed to a stranger who doesn't want it—and he must keep her there for thirty days, or it will be lost to them both. Texas Lonely: A loner who’s lost faith in love is the only hope for a mother and child on the run. Texas Bad Boy: Disgraced bad boy has his chance for revenge against the beautiful society girl who chose money over his love.

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.

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.

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.

Part of Ivan Doig’s acclaimed Montana trilogy, English Creek revolves around Jick McCaskill, a 14-year-old growing up in 1930s Montana. This incandescent coming-of-age tale dramatizes the climatic events of one summer that inevitably mark Jick’s awakening from childhood to adulthood.

Spur Award finalist Henry Chappell writes compelling historical novels set in the Old West. In Blood Kin, he tells the story of Isaac Webb, a Texas Ranger caught up in the conflicts surrounding the fledgling Texas Republic. Tensions between the Texans and Comanches begin to mount, and Isaac is sent to negotiate a peace treaty. But, his efforts are hampered by threats of violence and bloodshed.

After a prostitute is murdered at the Easy Nickel saloon, Texas Ranger Josiah Wolfe finds his best friend, Scrap Elliot, in jail and wrongly accused. A strangely familiar horse and a mysterious code are the only clues Josiah has to prove his friend's innocence and save him from execution. Once a Yankee reporter gets involved, Josiah is led to Blanche Dumont's House of Pleasures, where he learns of a thieving, jail-broken accountant with strange ties to both the Easy Nickel and the town's wealthiest banker. With a new railroad line blazing into town, everyone - especially the arrogant young sheriff - is determined to clean up Austin.

The last thing Ruby McGavin thought she would be doing after her husband, Cole, died was meeting his family. He had claimed his relatives were all dead, and she didn't know him long enough - they were only married one year - to think otherwise. But it turns out that members of Cole's family, from a small ranch town in California, are very much alive, and they show up on Ruby's doorstep with the news that she has inherited some land from her husband.