Western Adventure

The first wagon train to Oregon country moves slowly across the Great Plains, reaching the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in early autumn. Led by wagon scout “Whip” Holt, the 500-strong community of courageous men, women, and children prepare for the bitter winter ahead. Among them are dreamers and drifters, foreigners and natives, friends and enemies. But it is a pair of strong-willed women who are Whip’s most unexpected allies.

For a posse chasing a murderous band of outlaws, a quiet kid with a lightning fast gun is good company. And when the outlaws turn around and attack the posse, The Loner doesn’t have a choice: he’s now caught up in a running gun battle across West Texas. The Loner knows the men he’s fighting are bad to the bone - led by a merciless killer named Warren Latch. But what about the guys on his side?

Led by a charismatic fool, a group of pioneers are crossing Apache territory, blind to the danger around them. The Loner would ignore the passing pilgrims if it weren’t for a beautiful woman. Then, when he turns his back, the Apaches strike. The night is lit with an unholy fire. Mutilated bodies are left behind. And four women are taken prisoner across the Rio Grande....

Conrad Browning is The Loner, a man on a mission, crossing the country — and crossing a lot of bad men — to rescue his kidnapped young twins. The trail has led him all the way to San Francisco’s perilous red light-district, where a crime lord is the proud father of newly adopted twins. The Loner knows his children when he sees them. But they’re hostage to a brutal, violent mob feud. Then, just when he needs it most, The Loner is no longer alone: He is joined by his own father, Frank Morgan — the most notorious gunman in the West.

Scratch Morton and Bo Creel, two aging cowpokes and friends for years, have seen their share of cattle drives, shootouts, and bust-ups. They do their best to stay on the right side of the law, and never go looking for trouble, but it seems to find them just the same. In Arizona Territory, they get stuck in the midst of a battle between competing stagecoach lines. Of course, a pretty woman who happens to own one of the lines has a lot to do with it, and things aren't quite what they seem.

This latest installment in Johnstone's series about frontiersman Jamie MacCallister finds the former gunfighter, now 50, leading a serene life of retirement in Colorado even as his sons are fighting on both sides of the Civil War. Summoned to Washington, Jamie is offered the position of chief scout for the Union by Lincoln himself. But though the rugged Westerner loathes slavery, he loves states' rights more and, after a meeting with Robert E. Lee, he signs up with the Confederacy as commander of a guerrilla band.

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 now the current occupant of a cell in the brutal and unforgiving Hell Gate prison. The Kid'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.

Nox is a wanted man. While searching for a criminal, the fabled Coilhunter wanders into a tribal village massacre. He didn't do it, but that doesn't matter. The clues point to him, and he's made a lot of enemies over the years. Many would happily see the tables turned. His pleas of innocence fall on deaf ears. No sooner does he try to find the real killers than posters go up across the Wild North - posters with his face and his name. He isn't the only bounty hunter out there. Dozens assemble to cash him in.

Charley Sunday, a sensible, sober-minded Texas grandfather, imparts the American Cowboy legacy to his only grandchild as he and several of his grizzled cronies concoct a 1,000-mile longhorn cattle drive across 21st Century America. Four leathery cowboys, one insightful Indian, two strong-willed women, a two-gun oddball, a dog, and a little boy make an unlikely team as they trek from Colorado to Texas, continually running up against the forces of corruption.

Elam Eskers lives his days in peace on his ranch in the small town of Phoenix, Oregon, with his ranch hand, Samson, and his dog, Dusk, keeping him company. Gone are the days when he was the man outlaws feared the most. When he doesn't seek trouble, though, it finds him. Quincy Meiner has a hunger for money. He will stop at nothing to steal the land that belongs to Elam and his neighbors. At first, Meiner is just a nuisance. But when the Meiner gang kill Elam's dog, terrorize his town and kidnap Roxanna, the only woman Elam has ever loved, it becomes personal.

Preacher, against his better judgment, agrees to lead a wagon train of women across the West. He hires a pack of mountain men to assist him, but he gets more than he bargained for when a gang of cutthroats follows the train with murder, rape and slave trafficking in mind. Led by the nefarious Easterner Victor Bedell, the outlaws will accomplish what few have done before: they will get a bullet into Preacher. But they’ll make a fatal mistake. They’ll leave him for dead. Soon the mountains will echo with avenging gunfire.

Duff MacCallister has just returned from a trip back to his native Scotland - more determined than ever to build a new future in Chugwater Valley, Wyoming. But Duff will do it his way, buying up a herd of rare Scottish black angus from the Kansas City market. He can’t know that his dream is threatened by a man driven by one desire: to take other people’s money and other people’s lives.

In all the horrific corners of the Civil War, there was no hell worse than Andersonville, the Yankee prison camp run by evil, sadistic General Thomas Wainwright. In the war's aftermath, a survivor of Andersonville summons Joe Buckhorn to New Orleans and asks the gunslinger to kill the general - not simply for revenge, but to stop another atrocity. Wainwright has seized control of Wagontongue, a township on the edge of the Arizona desert, and he rules it as brutally as he once did Andersonville. With an iron grip on the town's only source of water, he keeps the locals cowering.

Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are lifelong drifters who keep one eye on the horizon, one finger on the trigger, and one foot out the door. Roaming the West is what keeps them young, or so Scratch tells Bo. But when they save the life of Cyrus Keegan - the owner of a matrimonial agency - they receive an unexpected proposal that's hard to resist. Keegan needs to deliver five mail order brides to a mining town in New Mexico Territory. All Scratch and Bo have to do is get these gals to the church on time - and alive, if possible.

Recklessly, joyously, Black Jack had ridden into town to see his infant son. Then a shotgun fired from a window had blasted him from his horse and flung him to his death in the street.

In a town like Chugwater, Wyoming, you know who your friends are, who your enemies are, and who your kill-crazy maniacs are. For Duff MacCallister, the last category belongs to Johnny Taylor and his gang. Duff has wrestled with this polecat before, and knows that his bite is worse than his smell. But when Taylor's gang tries to rob a bank - and Duff manages to shoot one and arrest Taylor's brother - the outraged outlaw raises a stink straight out of hell. First, he begins to randomly slaughter innocent townsfolk one by one.

As the deputy sheriff in a small Missouri town, "Slick" Parker Jones doesn't have much to do except get drunk and chase saloon girls. Life is pretty dull in Rory's Junction—until Slick sees the wanted poster for a notorious train robber. Parker's never met an actual outlaw before. He's never faced any real dangers, to be honest. But when that wanted man staggers into Parker's nightly watering hole—half dead, with a hole in his gut and a bloody map in his hand—the young deputy's life takes a wild turn . . . quite possibly fatal.

Harland Bull Eaton has lost many things - his first wife, his beloved mother, those three women he proposed to.... Oh, and there was that time he almost lost the family dairy farm due to a scandal. He's losing faith in just about everything, especially love. But one night, his friends give him a dare. Just buy that gorgeous redhead a drink. The big-city bombshell he's set his eyes on swirls him into a tailspin that lands them in bed for a one night stand he's pretty sure he'll never forget. But this time he won't let his heart ride herd on his common sense.

Welcome to the most dangerous town in the West. For Marshal Bob Hatfield, that means rough justice and 100 ways to die... In the shadow of the Prophecy Mountains, the ramshackle boomtown of Rattlesnake Wells draws schemers, predators, and desperate pilgrims. As for the law, that's the town marshal, a former Texas outlaw trying to make a new life for himself. But Sundown Bob Hatfield knows a man who's slick on the draw can't escape trouble for long. In Rattlesnake Wells, you fight fire with fire - and a new one has just exploded.

No gun. No horse. No water or food. And worse yet: No idea how he ended up in the middle of a desert with a bullet in his leg and a bump on his head. That's the sorry situation Matt Jensen wakes up to - dazed and confused - until he slowly pieces together what happened. The last thing he remembers: He agreed to help out a friend of Duff MacCallister's. A pretty lady and her husband at a horse ranch. He also recalls their cross-country trip through hell to deliver the horses safely to market. That's when the outlaws showed up. That's when the shooting began.