Western Action

When Will Bentley was nine years old, he promised his dying father that he would take care of the family. Growing up quickly, Will provided whatever his mother and sister needed, whether that meant putting food on the table, fixing a leaky roof, or driving off troublemakers. This became more than Will's duty. It became his identity. Then war took him away. Now, Will's coming home to Texas. Caring for his family and the intriguing young woman next door will be a tall order. The economy is dead, corrupt bluebellies are on the prowl, and old enemies want Will's land, his women, and his life.

Once he was a young, happily married businessman. Then he lost his wife to human madness and that young man was gone, replaced by the Loner, the wandering son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan and the current occupant of a cell in Hell Gate prison. The Loner’s crime? He looked too much like an outlaw who escaped from this very prison. So the Kid teams up with a fellow inmate with an escape plan, vowing to hunt down a look-alike killer on the loose.

Johnstone country. Looking for trouble? Then look no further. As a Pinkerton agent, Stoneface Finnegan faced the deadliest killers in the West. But now that he runs a saloon, he serves them hard liquor - with a shot of harder justice. The devil walks into a bar. Stoneface Finnegan and his new partner are busy renovating The Last Drop Saloon when a very unusual stranger comes to town. He's nothing like the prairie rat drifters, world-weary miners, and would-be outlaws who normally pass through Boar Gulch.

The damsel is in distress, or so it seems to Conrad Browning. On his way across the wide, tall Utah territory to California, the Loner meets a beautiful Mormon girl on the run from a forced wedding - and the gun-toting faithful trying to hunt her down. But there are two sides to every story - and the ones you don't hear are the ones that can get you killed. The runaway bride has a little history of her own. Soon, the Loner touches off a storm of unholy gunfire, drawing blood from an outlaw and a death sentence from a patriarch.

When Duff MacCallister journeys to Texas to deliver 100 head of Angus cattle, he finds a land on fire. Unruly, lawless teams of fence cutters, branded Blue Devils by the locals, are rampaging across grazing land and cutting fences in the name of an Eastern land company. The ranchers are fighting back, and Duff joins the fray. But the fight leads to Austin and into an even deadlier mission.

Some came for freedom; others, to build a new life. But in 1858, when gold is discovered in the Colorado region, thousands of desperate men and women descend on Denver like a hungry swarm. Homesteaders struggle to hold onto their claims, but none are immune to the effects of gold fever. Wagon train veteran Chet Harris risks his life to repeat the success he found in the California gold fields. Mineral expert Luke Brando masquerades as a banker, while his wife hides a yearning for riches of her own. And young Cathy Blake discovers just how far she’ll go to defeat a voluptuous rival.

Kate Kerrigan has seen the blood-soaked face of war. But nothing has prepared her for the assault on her land that begins with an eviction order hammered onto the door of her family's cabin. Beautiful, cold-blooded Savannah Saint James has her sights set on the Kerrigan property - and 12 of the deadliest hired guns in Texas are ready to back her play. Kate has her sons by her side, a ragtag group of ranchers who don't like outsiders messing with their cattle, and a fighting spirit passed down from her Irish ancestors.

Smoke Jensen sat in a cave and boiled the last of his coffee. He figured he was in Idaho - somewhere south of Montpelier - but he was certain about only two things: He was cold and he was being hunted by a small army of men. Smoke knew why he was cold - it was winter. He just didn't have a clear idea of why anyone was after him.

The accidental gunslinger Dooley Monahan has quit wandering and settled down to a farmer's life. But when the itch for adventure gets too strong, he packs up and rides west. Along with his horse General Grant, and Blue, a dog who's too smart for his own good, Dooley rides for the Black Hills to strike it rich in the gold fields of Colorado. But fate has other ideas.

When iron clears leather, anything can happen. In Frank Morgan's case, a sudden duel with an assassin has left an innocent woman with a bullet in her back - and a friendship between Frank and a young Texas Ranger in tatters. Wanting to make up for his part in the tragedy, Frank rides to central Texas to help Ranger Tyler Beaumont put down the so-called Fence-Cutting War. But as big ranchers battle small ones, an outlaw gang has hellish plans of its own.

In the town of 34 Corners, Colorado, Matt Jensen rides into a savage blood feud. Thirty years ago two friends came West and built a thriving cattle business. Now, their families have become kill-crazy enemies and the town is awash in a frenzy of killing. Add in hired gunmen on both sides of the fight, and two lovers crossing the dividing line, and the terror will never end. Eager to put as many miles between himself and 34 Corners, Matt Jensen just can't bring himself to leave without trying to stop the bloodshed.

First published in 1935, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Traven's most famous and enduring work, the dark, savagely ironic, and riveting story of three down-and-out Americans hunting for gold in Sonora.

David Fitzgerald’s award-winning 2010 book Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All pointed out the top 10 fatal flaws of Christianity’s origin story. Now, Jesus: Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and the surprising history behind Jesus’ evolution.

Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk — from way back East. What is he doing out here? The Mountain Man’s former neighbor, Humbolt Puddle, has died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir, just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron is circling the Humbolt ranch like a ravenous vulture. Poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap. Smoke is the not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke’s neighbor is his enemy, too.

Judge Ephraim Doolittle is begging for help. A killer he sent to the gallows has a brother who has sworn vengeance on judge and jury both. John Henry Sixkiller is the perfect man for this job. And he will do it the hard way: getting himself arrested, busting out of jail, and worming his way into an outlaw haven run by a beautiful, amoral woman.

Smoke Jensen and his adopted son Matt are cooling their heels in Colorado when they are called to the Dakotas. Preacher, the legendary mountain man, is in the midst of a vicious struggle. Someone has kidnapped a proud Indian chief’s daughter and grandchild. When the kidnapping turns to murder, and Preacher vanishes after clashing with a ruthless Union colonel turned railroad king, Matt sets out to infiltrate the Colonel's gang of killers; Smoke seeks out the only honest citizens in the crooked town of Hammerhead.

The Lucky Lizard is bad luck. Not that the Nevada mine is empty; it’s full of silver. But the man who thinks he owns it fair and square is in for a very unpleasant surprise — a ruthless, hard driving Easterner named Dex Brighton shows up with a seemingly valid claim. Town marshal Frank Morgan has his suspicions and sends for some San Francisco legal eagles. They don’t make it to Buckskin alive....

Buckskin, Nevada, was once a boomtown, then died a peaceful death. But when a fresh vein of silver is struck, Frank Morgan lets himself get pinned with a tin badge at the worst possible time. It's not the petty swindlers, or the stray murderer or two that will give Morgan problems. Instead, Buckskin is heating up from a miners strike, industrial sabotage, a hostile state militia, and an outlaw gang that decides the time is ripe for an all-out assault on the town.

The Border Empire trilogy concludes, as Wes Stone’s quest for revenge leads him to destroy the plot by the Golden Dragon gang to endanger US currency by switching counterfeit coins for real ones within the walls of four different mints in the southwest. Battling long odds and high stakes, Stone and his friends El Lobo and Byron Silver must solve a double kidnapping, face a mercenary army of renegades from the Sandlin gang who are assembling in Durango, and avoid the many young hotheads who seek to add to their own reputations by challenging Wes’s skill with a gun.

A gunslinger with four affinities is a myth. It's the kind of story whispered in frontier saloons one drink before closing and around campfires in the dead of night. For the heroes and villains in those tales, that impossible power is a boon, a gift. For Mr. Jones, it's a curse. Of course, that's not his real name. He's had many. Changing names is necessary when you possess a power that every lawman and outlaw would kill to obtain. To survive, you keep your head down, kill when you must, and never stay in one place too long.