Western Mystery

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.

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations, in pursuit of a group of white renegades who were in hiding there - above all a particularly vicious renegade named Caddo Pierce. He had a wagon of captive renegades when he was shot and seriously injured. He managed to come out of the Nations with his prisoners, but decided that he had enough of that job and so resigned.

Business lately has been deadly for Ike Kelly. Recent unexpected gunplay has left his agency to a single operative. John Henry Cole is that operative. Kelly has received a letter from former lover Lydia Winslow, who operates an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. "Three young women have been murdered since they arrived in camp." It is obviously a dangerous assignment, and Cole is advised that he must take every precaution - as if he needed such advice.

A trail robbery and multiple murders end up as the problem of Ranson Nye, town marshal of Temptation, Texas. This town built in the hopes of taking the last dollars from tired cowboys headed back home after cattle drives to Kansas is becoming more than it ever intended to be. When a newspaper comes to town, almost everything changes for this dusty little spot on the Red River across from The Indian Territory. When Mother Nature intervenes, tragedy brings out secrets and hidden talents. Add a Texas Ranger to the mix and we have Bad News in Temptation.

A lady farmer and a disgraced detective - will what starts as an arrangement turn into something more? Leigh Hawthorne, a widow and local farmer in Tucker Springs, Massachusetts, answers an unusual letter from a man out west, who wants to marry a woman with ranching expertise. Hoping to find a better life, Leigh embarks on a journey to Chance City, Oklahoma. Join the Chance City adventure as its citizens battle opposing forces and mayhem in their searches for love and a brighter future.

In 1893, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer and his brother, Gustav "Old Red," find themselves in a situation that they never expected: they have a bit of money and time to do something other than scramble. It's enough to confound even that most unconfoundable of men, their mutual inspiration, Sherlock Holmes.

Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer is an old-fashioned kind of guy: He prefers a long trail ride even when a train ticket can get him where he's going in one-tenth the time. So when it's Old Red who insists on guarding the Pacific Axpress, despite a generations-old family distrust of the farm stealin', cattle-killin', money-grubbing' railroads, Big Red is flummoxed. But as usual, he'll follow his ornery brother just about anywhere.

The last thing Ruby McGavin thought she would be doing after her husband, Cole, died was meeting his family. He had claimed his relatives were all dead, and she didn't know him long enough - they were only married one year - to think otherwise. But it turns out that members of Cole's family, from a small ranch town in California, are very much alive, and they show up on Ruby's doorstep with the news that she has inherited some land from her husband.

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.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

Scott Wilkinson is a young advertising executive on his way to the top. Christopher Miller is an FBI legend who has been willing to do whatever it takes to see that justice is done. Two weeks before Christmas, Wilkinson goes on a business trip that will forever entangle their two lives. It starts like so many others. Wilkinson calls for a car service to take him to the airport. But the driver drives like a maniac, and Wilkinson feels fortunate to reach the airport alive. Then he makes a big mistake.

Thad Taylor is no one's idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he's disapproved of by most - especially his father. But when his father doesn't return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he's far from ready for the ordeal. Because his father is already dead. He has fallen victim to the bloody Benders - a demented family who lures travelers into their cabin way station only to rob and brutally murder them.

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.

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.