Western Mystery

Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson can't catch a break. All they want is a trail to follow straight through to Mexico, where a ranching job offers honest work, peace, and quiet. But no matter how fast they ride, trouble keeps hot on their heels. A gunshot breaks the silence of the lonely wagon road. By the time Twister and Chuckaluck reach the corpse, the killer is long gone. In the victim's pocket they find a letter from a woman begging for help, a woman whose savior now lies dead in the alkali dust.

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.

When journalist Amy Randall is abducted at gunpoint by her sister-in-law, Kelly, and left in an old mine tunnel to die, she is lucky to escape. Allowing Kelly to believe her sinister plan has succeeded, Amy goes into hiding to investigate. Local policeman Alex Hammond, her childhood crush and her brother's lifelong friend, agrees to help and offers Amy a place to stay at his flat. What is Kelly hiding, and why does she seem bent on revenge against the Randall family? It's a race to uncover the truth before Kelly finds a new victim, and meanwhile, Amy and Alex draw closer.

After two tours as a sniper in Iraq, Tommy Smith has returned to his former life as a cowboy and wilderness guide in California’s Sierra Nevada, hoping to reclaim the simplicity of his youth and heal the wounds the world can’t see. When, high on a mountain pass, he and his partner find the wrecked plane of a billionaire adventurer who disappeared months earlier, a seemingly innocent act triggers a breathtaking cycle of violence that threatens Tommy’s world.

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.

The present: His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself on the trail of that same cargo when skeletal remains are found near an excavation site in the Texas desert. She’s also dealing with the aftermath of a massacre that claimed the lives of all the workers at a intelligence company on her watch. These two cases are connected by a long buried secret, one that men have killed and died to protect. Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.

Sheriff Dan Rhodes knows it's going to be a bad day when Bert Ramsey arrives at the jail with a neatly wrapped arm and lays it on Dan's desk. He has another out in the truck, he tells the sheriff, and "a couple of legs, too, but they don't match up". Then Bert Ramsey is shot to death, and serious crime takes over. A tattoo on the body discloses that Ramsey was once a member of Los Muertos, a violent motorcycle gang from the city, and current members of the gang turn up in Blacklin County.

Highway roadhouse waitress Holly Duncan's life is on hold - until she can accept her mother's disappearance of five years ago, decide where her future lies, and move on. Loner truck driver Tom Searle's life would sure be looking up, and close to blessed, if the stunning roadhouse redhead didn't seem so uncertain about his approaches. When new information and revelations rock Holly's world, Tom seizes the opportunity to step up and offer support.

Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson are making their way through a West Texas canyon when they smell death. Finally, the two emerge onto the mesa, where they encounter the site of a massacre. A whole family of deer lies dead around a small pond, their skeletons bleached by the Texas sun. Someone has poisoned the water hole. Then a rider comes around the corner, rifle in hand, and gets the drop on Twister and Chuckaluck.

The hardworking single mother of young daughter, Joanna Brady still feels the acute pain of loneliness and loss, the hole that was left in her heart when her policeman husband was murdered. But Sheriff Brady is the law in Cochise County, and murder has shattered the small town's fragile peace. A local gun dealer has died violently, and his stock of high-powered weapons has been cleared out. When two more slayings follow soon after, suspicion falls upon rancher Alton Hosfield.

This program features multicast narration. “I read everything Ivy Pochoda writes. Her capture of the complexities, diversities, and insanities of today’s life and culture is next to none. I loved Sing Her Down. The world will too.” —Michael Connelly, author of Desert Star No Country for...

Kathryn Winchester, 33-years-old, has already lost three husbands to violence. The first died in the ravages of the War Between the States, the next died in a gambling hall in Hays, Kansas, and the third was killed in a pointless gunfight in Montana. Now her fourth husband, Ira, has been mysteriously gunned down and lies near death on the floor of their Idaho ranch house.

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.

Margaret Coel’s spellbinding Wind River mysteries have long celebrated the spirit of the American West. When Kiki Wallowingbull is found dead on the reservation, all signs point to a drug deal gone wrong. Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden and Jesuit priest Father John O’Malley begin an investigation into the murder, but soon find themselves spiraling toward a deadly world of drugs and deceit.

It’s early summer in Jackson, Wyoming. Former East Coast prosecutor Jake Trent, now a local fishing guide, is wading through a swift current of local politics, introspection, and tragedy. Three seemingly unrelated deaths have occurred in one day - unheard of in the scenic valley. A skier perishes in a freak late-season avalanche. A French couple is discovered mutilated on a remote trail in Grand Teton National Park - presumably by a bear.On the Snake River, Jake himself finds the body of an expensively attired tourist fisherman.

In 1946 a young couple is brutally murdered in the East Texas town of Cold Springs. Now—34 years later—rumor has it that the sole suspect in these murders has returned. While the response to this report ranges from giddy excitement to vile loathing, another dead body turns up.

It's 1867 in the Wyoming Territory. Chance Creager and his brothers have built their small, isolated ranch in the uninhabited valley near the Greybull River. While hunting, Chance stumbles upon a decaying wagon sunk in mud, near it the grisly remains of an Indian sacrifice. Nothing about the eerie scene makes sense. The mountains have secrets. Chance finds himself pulled deeper into the mystery when he finds a beautiful fugitive named Raven while hunting a deadly mountain lion.

In a small town where doors are left unlocked at night, everyone knows your name, and alcohol is strictly forbidden, it's difficult even for a teenaged boy to get in trouble. But 15-year-old Mark Stoddard has his ways, and with the help of his best friend Ferret and Ferret's newly arrived tomboy cousin TJ, Mark is determined to spice up his summer, and win the respect of his older brother Jess, the local deputy sheriff, by catching a local bootlegger, an evil old man with a deadly grudge against Jess...and wielding a switchblade.

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 1862 the largest Indian uprising in American history occurs in Southern Minnesota. Hundreds of whites are killed. Women are taken captive. Taken captive by the Sioux, Judith Raveling is given to Scarlet Plume, one of the many warriors who know their cause is lost.