Literary Fiction Western

Small-town boys Caleb and Jake Boyd spend their days splitting logs and barely scraping by in the badlands of New Mexico. Caleb, a decorated war hero, wants to put his fighting days behind him, find a decent job, and start a quiet life with his new fiancée. But Jake is always dreaming bigger than he should, and when he stumbles across a large crop of marijuana hidden in the wilderness, he thinks he has finally hit the jackpot.

Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his 10th birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Indians, settlers, and blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals.

Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.

When the McCandles' Gang decides to shoot up Coalville, Idaho, it seems like a pretty easy hit. But among the survivors is a young man named Joseph Roper. Joey worked with Sheriff Hackett, and he was not about to let Ian McCandles get away with what he has done. This is the story of Joey's search for justice, and the paths that his search took him on!

Cripple Creek, Colorado, is the most infamous sinkhole of vice and violence in the Rockies. The town's steamy bordello row and gambling halls beckon to Brad Medford, who is set on tasting all the pleasures a young man can find. He sets out across the long miles to reach Cripple Creek and prove himself a man, but misfortune takes a hand when Brad's path crosses that of a renowned gunfighter. It turns out Brad's first meal in Cripple Creek may be his last.

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.

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.

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.

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.