Mystery Western Historical Fiction

Ever since their father's untimely death five years before, Wyatt Smith and his inseparably close twin sister, Lucy, have scraped by alone on their family's isolated ranch in Box Elder County, Utah. That is until one morning when, just after spotting one of their steers lying dead in the field, Wyatt is hit in the arm by a hail of gunfire that takes four more cattle with it. The shooter: a fever-eyed, fearsome girl-child with a TEC-9 in her left hand and a worn shotgun in her right.

The Civil War may be over, but in this thrilling historical novel, the battle for the West is only just beginning. Wolves of Eden sets four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the cruelty of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.

After a man is murdered during a trip on the Switzerland Trail of America railroad, police officer Harry McBride sorts through the suspects among the passengers in the hope of finding the killer before the train returns to Boulder.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

The life of a cowboy suits Thalis Christie just fine. A puncher for the Crescent H in Texas, he loves what he does and is damn good at it too. He doesn't even mind being away from his family - he's got good friends to keep him from getting too homesick. That is, until his folks write, imploring him to hunt down his brother, Myles, who's been shot while prospecting in the Black Hills. Thalis sets out to do his family duty and find his little brother - still alive, he hopes.

Young Gincy Tate's father is murdered before he can fulfill a contract to supply the Army with remounts. In order to pay his debts and save the ranch, she must make the sale in his place. Afraid the lien-holder, whom she suspects of being the murderer, will foreclose before June 7, 1883, she tells no one Morris Tate is dead. Instead, she says he is here, there, or elsewhere. Gincy hires two cowboys to help trail the herd to Fort Spokane.

Outlaw Wes Cavanaugh knows that crime doesn't always pay - at least not much. That's why he and his partner, Mose, are willing to pay Jimmy Stock for information on a job that's guaranteed to pay off big. Jimmy's made a career of selling tips to bandits, but the job he sells Wes - a payroll train about to leave Omaha - requires more than information.

Years ago Marshal Asher Thrall had shot mad-dog killer Ben Sharkey. And Sharkey has just repaid the favor in spades. With a bullet still in his chest, Ash knows he's a walking dead man. But he's going to make sure Sharkey is one step ahead of him.

In the lawless frontier town of Brownsville, Texas, a boy and his parents ride a carriage down a crowded street - when a kill-crazy band of kidnappers strike suddenly. Now, to rescue his family, veteran rancher Charley Sunday cobbles together a ragtag posse that starts with an outlaw and an Indian - and picks up recruits, weapons, and a lot of trouble all the way down into Mexico.

Former army scout Jack Gregory returns from battle to a homestead in ruins. A wanted man with no place to go, he chooses an even deadlier career - as a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. Under a new name, Jack serves bravely in the Seventh Cavalry. When Custer's disastrous leadership ends in devastating slaughter, Jack sets off to forge his own destiny. Winning a small ranch in a card game, he hopes to settle down and live a peaceful life.

In the waning days of the Wild West, Texas rancher Charles Abner Sunday wants to leave a legacy of the Old West to his grandson Henry-Ellis. Sunday buys 300 head of Texas longhorn cattle and leads his grandson - along with a ragtag crew of cronies and misfits - on an old-fashioned cross-country cattle drive. As the drovers struggle to push their 300 charges across a swiftly changing American frontier, they butt heads with a Colorado meatpacker hell-bent on living in the wild, wild past.

Having been drawn to the wild for a number of years, young Luke McKinney is forced to leave 1839 St. Louis for the North Country even sooner than he expected to go. At 17, along with a female companion and an elderly father figure, he is literally running for his life. With the law pursuing him and the wilderness unforgiving, he finds himself caught up in a survival system that has nothing to do with civilization or laws. Then the unthinkable happens, the only love of his life is taken from him.

David Robbins continues the proud tradition of Ralph Compton's Western novels with enough hardscrabble heroes, blazing gun fights, and twisted villains to fill a corral. Bluff City is a booming silver mining town full of pigeons to pluck. When two of its wealthiest citizens devise plans to rob their neighbors legally and illegally, only Clay Adams stands in their way.

Even at 17 years old, Carson Ryan knows enough about cow herding to realize the crew he's with is about the worst ever. They're taking the long way around to the Montana prairies, and they're seriously undermanned. While rounding up strays, Ryan hears gunshots ring across the range. Suspecting an Indian attack, he gallops straight into a US Army raid instead. The outfit he's with is nothing but a bunch of murdering cattle rustlers, and the law thinks he's one of them. Tied up, thrown in jail, and tried by a court that's more interested in hanging a man than learning the truth, Carson has only two options: escape or die trying.

Born in Brooklyn, Sammy Gregg is small in stature and naive to the ways of the world, yet headstrong and resolute to save enough money to marry Susie Mitchell. Gregg calculates that he needs $15‚000 and figures he can earn enough in six months out west. Although he is a small man who knows nothing of fighting‚ guns‚ or horses‚ he takes his $5‚000 in savings and heads west‚ arriving in Munson‚ a tough, lawless town.

Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch haven't seen much trouble of late. Fact is, burgeoning Appaloosa and the territory had been without incident for months. But with recent reports of village raids, coupled with the arrival of a young widow from San Francisco, the lawmen are about to be put to the test. Rose McMaster, the feisty daughter of Virgil's half-brother, ushers in a whole new unsuspected brand of trouble.

The Civil War has just ended and world-weary Sheriff Jesse Smith likes his town quiet and peaceful. One night, the body of a young woman is found torn apart, and that peace is shattered as it dawns on him that a predator is among them. With little to go on, all the men in the town are potential suspects, and Jesse begins an investigation that spans the social spectrum. Unable to find the killer, the mayor goes against Jesse's wishes and brings in bounty hunters. But the cure may be more dangerous than the disease.

After five years of virtual banishment because he sold out his small outfit to the Middle Arizona Cattle Company, giving it a foothold on the Mesa Grande range, violent-tempered Joe Bonnyman is summoned back to Lodgepole by his father when it appears that a cattle war between the syndicate and the various rangers is imminent. During his short stay in town, Joe has an unpleasant meeting with Ed Merrill, the brother of a girl Joe had once courted.

In 1900 a steadfast and feisty young woman, Jocelyn Belle Royal, joins a mule drive to earn back her Kansas farm lost to the bank. Entanglements over the mules, outlaws, women’s suffrage, and a disagreement over the governor’s mansion test her mettle to the limit. Jocelyn can’t give up if "home" can ever again be more than a few belongings tied in a shawl - all that she owns.

Colorado, July 1878. The nationally famous solar eclipse is almost upon the country, and a peak overlooking the fledgling town of Elkhorn is one of the centers of attention. In the midst of boisterous and chaotic frontier pre-celebrations, Caleb Marlowe - reluctantly deputized for the coming event - learns that local power broker Judge Horace Patterson is being targeted for assassination by agents of a financial magnate.