Western Thriller

With his rugged-cowboy good looks and the kind of smile that makes a lady's pulse race, Trey Calder could have his pick of women. But he's been holding out for someone special, and the minute he lays eyes on freelance photographer Sloan Davis, he knows he's found her. The attraction between the two is immediate and charged as heat lightning, even if they are as different as can be. But Trey's fierce passion may blind him to a terrible threat... Soon passion turns to suspicion.

In Assault of the Mountain Man, Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally travels to Goth, Colorado, to open a restaurant. There she’s caught in a bloody confrontation prompted by five merciless bank robbers. With the town sheriff sent to the great beyond and Sally clinging to life as a frontier surgeon tries frantically to save her, Smoke is filled with an all-consuming rage - bad news indeed for anyone who opposes him.

Hondo Velazquez was once a decorated Marine corporal. But now, having returned stateside to civilian life, he's taken a lowly job as a new deputy in Brooks County, Texas–a place where the border crisis has everyone on edge. For Hondo, it feels like a demotion, but when the bones of a mother and her child are unearthed on a remote oil ranch, Hondo is dragged back into a world he thought he left behind. Violence, death, pain. For a boy who grew up on the border, with blood mixed from both sides of the line, he feels a tribal drum-beat-calling to do what any dog does best: dig.

Levon Cade and his daughters are on the run and living under assumed names in a remote corner of Idaho where Levon has taken on the role of gentlemen rancher. But when someone rustles his girls’ favorite horses, Levon puts aside his gentlemanly ways in exchange for hunting them down. Too bad Lew Dollinger, a man Levon unwisely allowed to live, is—at the same time—tasked with locating the runaway Cades by an international crime cartel.

From one of the bestselling western novelists of all time, comes another classic story. Templeton Lambeth had so desperately wanted a son - an heir to ride by his side through the vast, wild ranges just west of the Pecos River. But to his disappointment, his wife bore a girl. His hopes crushed and in denial, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a boy. In honor of Lambeth's more successful brother, they named her: Terrill.

Clint Belmet's parents were killed in a Comanche raid when he was young, but that hasn't stopped him from taking a job leading freight caravans on the old Santa Fe Trail, from Saint Louis, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico - a route that goes right through Comanche territory. Here is the raw, primitive West of the early pioneers, great caravans of freighters rumbling across the deadly prairies, risking attack by Comanche.

Savage and dangerous, the unexplored Rockies hid threats that could kill even the most experienced mountain men. For mountain man Nathaniel King, helping stranded travelers had become common. But when he takes in a pair of strangers who have lost their way, his kindness is repaid with vile treachery.

In 1866, the border between the U.S. and Mexico is a hotbed of gunrunners, mercenaries, and the Emperor of Mexico's spies, saboteurs and double agents. On top of which, West Texas is plagued by Comanche warriors. Into this mix ride two massive gangs of the meanest, most kill-happy bunch of bloodthirsty ravagers to ever draw a breath. Sam Heller and Johnny Cross have got the marauders in their sights, but they aren't ready for the slaughter and destruction the raiders unleash on Hangtree County.

No one liked Jake Kinsey. A rich man, he turned up out of nowhere, acquired Exmouth’s trophy penthouse flat, and then bought his way into the local rowing club. And now he’s dead. D/S Jimmy Suttle, a newcomer to the Devon and Cornwall force from his old job on Major Crimes in Portsmouth, is the one detective who suspects that Kinsey has been killed. His boss, beset by budget cuts and the pressure of other cases, needs to move on. The enquiry is dead in the water.

The bloody barbarism of the Civil War scarred Morgan’s soul as well as his body. He sent so many soldiers to Hell and almost joined them when he was struck by a bullet from the sniper known as the Arkansas Traveler. The only man to ever survive the notorious Rebel’s sharpshooting skills, Morgan finds himself back in the assassin’s sights. But the ex-Confederate isn’t the only one gunning for Morgan.

Drawn to a killing ground... Ten thousand dollars. That's the bounty on the head of the most hated man in Texas - the man Flintlock has been hired to guard. The crime was the brutal murder of a young schoolteacher. The verdict was not guilty for lack of evidence. And the suspected killer's first guard was murdered by a shotgun blast.

A hard term in Yuma Prison gave Ralph Tinsdale and his gunhawk sidekicks time to nurse a deep hatred for Smoke Jensen - the man who put them there. A bloody escape gives them the chance to get even. Their posse is already 40 strong, the price on Smoke's head is up to 20 grand, and with Jensen's own wife shanghaied into Tinsdale's deadly trap, this time there's more at stake than Smoke's own life....

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

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.

All Patrick Flint wants is a peaceful getaway in the Wyoming mountains for his rare days off. He’s grown weary of the bicentennial celebration and the angry families of patients. When his wife Susanne balks at the trip just as they’re walking out the door - leaving him to go it alone with his lovestruck teenage daughter Trish and eager-but-adolescent son Perry - Patrick is wounded but determined, despite the news of a murderer escaping custody on the other side of the mountains.

There'd been several killings in Melville. Unusual killings, no witnesses, no clues, and no suspects. Sheriff Jim Bonner was having a time trying to narrow his search down. He had no idea where to look, or what he might be looking for. The murder was so gruesome, so unexpected, neither him nor his deputy, Smitty Younger, knew where to start looking. Whoever was doing this to his peaceful town was clever and covered his tracks. So Jim set about setting a trap for the villain.

Rusty Peters moved to Hard Tack and became their sheriff, leaving his medical career and wife behind in Melville. Elmer Martin was looking for a new chance at life. He'd done some dastardly things and he wanted to change. So he became John Conroy to the citizens of Hard Tack. John prospered in Hard Tack, becoming the local butcher for the cafe. He met and fell in love with a rancher's daughter, Penelope Carver.

Victor Frank is no ordinary killer. For one, he kills women with his bare hands. When he kills John T.'s mother and tells him he's "better off without her," John T. swears he'll track him down someday and kill him. Wesley Collins is a Texas Ranger, who's already had a run-in with Victor in his earlier days. He's bound to find him once the Rangers retire him before he does any more damage. Rascal Mills' wife was killed by Victor. He's got three kids left without a mother.

1942 - Granbury, Texas. A 95-year-old man walks into a recruiting office with the crazy idea to enlist - and an even crazier story. He claims to be the one and only Jesse James, the infamous bank robber allegedly shot by Robert Ford 60 years earlier. Using another man’s corpse to collect the reward, Ford allowed James to slip away and start a new life. Changing his name to Dalton, Jesse worked as a cattle broker in Fort Worth and fathered a pair of twins named Bill and Frank.

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...