Western Mystery

Deputy Marshal Zebadiah Clemens can't die. After the Civil War came to a close, Zeb decided to head west to raise cattle and a family. No sooner did he step off the train in Texas, a stray bullet knocked him senseless. Believing he'd somehow cheated death, he gave up on his peaceful plans and became a lawman. After migrating farther west into New Mexico, he expected to find the usual run-of-the-mill outlaws - not a strange woman watching him from the edge of his dreams. He might be imagining it all - or still unconscious with a head wound - but with his luck, it's probably real.

In 1875, the Devil paid a visit to the town of Crooked Creek, Colorado.The townsfolk didn't think much of his visit then. Now, 10 years later, he's back. And he's got one hell of an agenda.

In tiny Blacklin County, Texas, a curse is nothing more than a four-letter word hollered in a barroom or muttered in the heat. So Sheriff Dan Rhodes is more curious than concerned when he dutifully responds to a complaint of witchcraft. When Dr. Samuel Martin, the local dentist - and unpopular landlord - claims he's been hexed by a tenant, Rhodes does his best to smooth things out between the distressed D.D.S. and the would-be witch. But in two shakes of a black cat's tail, the good doctor disappears...and his wife turns up bludgeoned to death.

Luna is a young woman in her twenties with a spark of innocence, but not without wits and intellect. She also happens to be a witch, a trade that has been passed on through generations. However, she knows not to use magic for the wrong reasons, and to always use it within reasonable boundaries. Her life with her black cat seems to be flawless, and her new gift shop is, however challenging, successful enough for her to make a decent living. But trouble is in the air. During a festive parade, she is pointed towards a dead body by a little girl.

What if you returned from a journey and your family was gone? What if someone else was living in your home, running what you used to manage - and trying to kill you? Wade Forester must stay in the shadows or be shot. His father has disappeared, and his sister won’t speak. Beautiful Patricia Laughlin is running the show. Few people gain her approval, though powerful landowner Bridger Calhoun has high hopes. Each in his/her corner, Wade must decide whether to risk his life for Patricia. Bridger must win Patricia’s heart, and Patricia must choose which killer to trust with her life.

Small ranchers in Harmony, Oregon, are up against it with the price of cattle down and Skull Ranch, owned by a syndicate, trying to buy them out. Dan Riley spends a month trying to find a bank to help them, but he fails. When the editor of The Clarion is shot, the ranchers blame Black Mike Sand, the manager of Skull, in spite of the circumstances of the shooting. As pressure mounts, Riley is determined to find out who is really in charge of the syndicate, and the only man willing to help him is Andrew Daniels, a former newspaper man whose courage comes from a bottle.

Rada Dunn is used to the solitary life of the arid valley north of the little town of Peace. Nothing much happens there, and her bean and wheat crops provide her with just enough to keep her away from the rest of her kind...which is how she's come to like it. But when she comes upon human remains that have recently been burned so intensely that they are merely sticky black bones, her serenity is shattered.

Texas rancher and lawman John Cronin knows what it means to be tough. A decorated Vietnam vet with connections to law enforcement agencies all around the world, he’s thwarted smugglers and drug plots across the globe with more than a few narrow escapes. Whether it’s a sniper competition or teaching the feds a thing or two about police work, Cronin doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Of course, this slow-talking lawman’s biggest challenge yet might be when his granddaughter Jesse falls in love with a Marine.

Six men rode into the west Texas town of Rook in December of 1895. Moments later, all six men lay dead in the street, shot to death by the good citizens of the town. Ira “Doc” Pearson is sent by the Texas Rangers to investigate, expected to just rubber stamp the proceedings for the dead men were known as the Lawrence Gang: wanted in Texas and New Mexico for bank robberies, rustling, and murder.

Montana, 1968: The small town of Paradise Valley is ripped open when popular rancher and notorious bachelor Tom Butcher is found murdered one morning, beaten to death by a baseball bat. Suspicion among the tight-knit community immediately falls on the outsider, Carl Logan, who recently moved in with his family and his troubled son Roger. What Carl doesn't realize is that there are plenty of people in Paradise Valley who have reason to kill Tom Butcher.

When Zekial Broome stops a sadistic slave chaser, Grissum McCord, from whipping his captive, he and the girl have no choice but to flee west into the untamed lands of the wild frontier. If they can make it to the Green River country, no one will ever find them. What they don't count on is McCord. With a 500-dollar bounty at stake and revenge in his heart, he'll follow them to hell and back, for as long as it takes. He's murdered before, but the revenge he plans for the buckskin-clad Broome would make a strong man quail.

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.

A rogue vigilante seeks redemption in a lawless, near-future America that fully protects the rights of armed citizens to stand their ground against mass shooters and motorcycle gangs. When a marksman known as the Wanderer opens war against injustice in the state of Arizona, his violent actions attract the attention of journalist Rosa Veras, writer of a subversive blog about America's return to the Wild West.

In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried. Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world.

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.

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.

Tales is a collection of six short stories by Montana author Dave Lloyd.

Zane Grey's first western story, written in 1909, is based on a real character, Buffalo Jones. Grey's descriptive art was just beginning in this story. But he brings color and life to the area between the Grand Canyon and Utah. The story follows Grey, Jones, and a company of colorful characters on a "hunt" bent on capture rather than shooting.

When Deputy Sheriff Royce McCall responds to a break-in at his family's cabin, he doesn't expect the intruder to be beautiful Sophie Conway - in her nightgown! The last time he saw her, she wasn't wearing much else, although the details of their New Year's Eve encounter are sketchy at best. Then she admits that not only has she become a killer's target, but she also lied about carrying Royce's baby in order to escape an arranged marriage. With too many unanswered questions surrounding this woman he barely knows, Royce still vows to protect Sophie when the bullets start flying.