Mystery Western Historical Fiction

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nevada, 1872. Out of the merciless 40-mile desert, a stranger appears in the town of Golgotha, home to the blessed and the damned. He carries with him an innocent victim of a horrible massacre and a dire warning for Sheriff Jon Highfather. The conflict between the Indian nations and Mormon settlers has been brewing for years, and now the spirits of the fallen Indian dead have begun to rise to join in the fight.

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.

Smart and sassy bookkeeper China Bohannon is a modern 1890s career woman who'd rather sleuth than type. China is in charge of the Doyle & Howe Detective Agency office on the day a 14-year-old girl shows up seeking the detectives' help in a case of what she's calling murder.

December 1863. Daniel Stark, New York lawyer and radical abolitionist, has come to Alder Gulch to get enough gold to redeem his family from disgrace after his father’s suicide revealed that he had gambled away his clients’ assets. But as travelers are robbed and murdered, Dan realizes that he will likely not survive. Then a friend is murdered, and Dan successfully prosecutes the suspected murderer in miners court.

Susan Cameron, a young Missouri woman, arrives in Wyoming Territory determined to homestead on her own. Her nearest neighbors, Ellen Watson Averell and James “Jimmy” Averell, operate a small road ranch not far from the Oregon Trail on homestead land formerly grazed illegally by Albert Bothwell’s cattle. Ellen purchased a small herd of cattle and brand, but Bothwell claimed the Averells were operating a rural brothel and that Ellen took calves for her “favors.” Trouble haunts Susan, her veterinarian friend, Michael, and the Averells from the moment Susan attempts to take possession of her new homestead land, culminating in the hangings of both Ellen and Jimmy Averell by six prominent cattlemen, who then spread vicious lies in their controlled Cheyenne newspaper, calling Ellen “Cattle Kate.” The mystery deepens when the cattlemen are brought to trial and all the witnesses to the hangings have died or disappeared and Susan and Michael are kidnapped by hired gunmen...

Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case. Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a metis mountain guide with too many secrets.

Ten years after the events of Riders of the Purple Sage, John Shefford, a disillusioned preacher from Illinois travels to Arizona and takes refuge in a village controlled by polygamist Mormons hiding from the federal government.

In the spring of 1880, Steve Dancy travels to Prescott, Arizona, to gain control of a remarkable invention. But on his first night in the territorial capital, his friend, Jeff Sharp, is arrested for a midnight murder at Thumb Butte. Dancy launches a personal investigation to find the real murderer, only to discover that the whole town wanted the victim dead. For help, he turns to another old friend and associate, Captain Joseph McAllen of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren't all heroes. Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He's a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything -or anyone - could be the fuse to ignite them.

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy US marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations when he was shot and seriously injured. Now, 15 years later, employed as a deputy for Judge Roy Bean in Texas, Cole receives a personal summons from Judge Parker to appear in his court within 30 days. Cole isn't inclined to go, but he knows whatever's on Judge Parker's mind is serious and decides he has to go.

Los Angeles, 1921: Ex-Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo is living in quiet retirement when Wyatt Earp knocks on his door and asks him to track down Earp’s missing horse. What begins as horse thievery turns into a deeper mystery as Siringo and another ex-Pinkerton, the young Dashiell Hammett, follow clues that take them from the streets of Los Angeles to Jack London’s farm. There they discover a conspiracy masterminded by the notorious and powerful Joseph P. Kennedy.