Action Fiction Western

In The Rustlers of West Fork, the quick-thinking, fast-shooting cowpuncher heads west to deliver a fortune in bank notes to his old friend, Dick Jordan. When he arrives at the Circle J, he discovers that the rancher and his daughter, Pam, are being held prisoner by a desperate band of outlaws led by the ruthless Avery Sparr and his partner Arnold Soper. Even if Hopalong Cassidy can free Jordan and Pam, he will have to lead them across rough and untamed Apache country, stalked by the outlaws who have vowed to gun him down.

Born and bred in the Texas Pandhandle town of Comanche Crossing, William "Wild Bill" Longley gunned down a dozen of its men in cold blood before he got around to the sheriff and deputy - so he could take over the job himself. Then he found the perfect sidekick in a vicious career criminal named Booker Tate.

The Clayborne brothers were a rough gang of street urchins - until they found an abandoned baby girl in a New York City alley, named her Mary Rose, and headed to Blue Belle, Montana, to raise her to be a lady. They became a family - held together by loyalty and love, if not blood - when suddenly a stranger threatened to tear them apart.

It was the only water for miles in a vast, sun-blasted desert where water meant survival. So Logan Cates naturally headed for Papago Wells. But he wasn't the only one. Fleeing the fierce Churupati and his Apache warriors, other travelers had come there, too. And when the Apaches found them, they began a siege as relentless and unforgiving as the barren land - and just as inescapable.

Tell Sackett was no ladies’ man, but he could spot trouble easily enough. And Dorinda Robiseau was the kind of trouble he wanted to avoid at any time - even more so when he had 30 pounds of gold in his saddlebags and a long way to travel. But when she begged him for safe passage to Los Angeles, Sackett reluctantly agreed. Now he’s on a perilous journey through the most brutal desert on the continent, traveling with a companion he doesn’t trust...and headed for a confrontation with a deadly gunman who also bears the name of Sackett.

Filled with exciting tales of the frontier, the chronicle of the Sackett family is perhaps the crowning achievement of one of our greatest storytellers. In Ride the Dark Trail L'Amour tells the story of Logan Sackett, a cynical drifter who changes his ways to help a widow keep her land from falling into the wrong hands.

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. You mess with it at your peril. You can let it move fast or slowly, but what you mustn't do is allow it to stop. The Monks of History have the glamorous job of time management in the Discworld. They store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater—how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd.

It seemed the perfect place to lie low. The owner of the ranch was an attractive, gray-haired lady who had once been an actress. The other woman was a beautiful, fragile-seeming blonde. They needed repairs done, and he needed to disappear for a while. The first sign that things were not as they should be was when a Pinkerton man questioned him about a missing woman. Then he accidentally found a will belonging to the previous owner of the ranch. After that, a young lady showed up in town making claims that the place belonged to her.

Two years after Wild Bill Hickok made his mark on Deadwood, Scratch Morton and Bo Creel make theirs. Their job is guarding gold shipments from the mining camps — shipments that keep getting hijacked by a gang called the Devils of Deadwood who plunge pitchforks into their victims’ bodies. With Thanksgiving approaching, Scratch just wants to carve a turkey with a handsome widow woman at his side. Course, when the US Army comes to the rescue, all hell breaks loose. The widow gets taken hostage. So do a bunch of soldiers. Now, Scratch and Bo are going after missing gold.

With his legend dogging him everywhere he goes, Frank Morgan longs for a place to settle down. His choice is a remote corner of untamed Northern California, a land of towering trees and rugged hills. But for Frank, the haven is a hell. A man who is his exact look-alike has been terrorizing the local population and when the townspeople get their hands on Frank, a hangman's rope is sure to follow. If he's going to be taken for an outlaw, Frank Morgan is going to act like one.

The stench of death hangs over Happyville. When Flintlock rides into town, he sees windows caked in dust, food rotting on tables, and a forgotten corpse hanging at the gallows. The citizens of Happyville are dead in their beds, taken down by a deadly scourge, and Flintlock must stay put, or risk spreading the killer disease. His quarantine is broken by Cage Kingfisher, a mad clergyman who preaches the gospel of death.

Exiled from the Smoky Mountains for gunning down a man in self-defense, Breck Wallace tries to make a new home in St. Louis, even tries his hand at romance, but some men are too wild to settle down. Breck is soon back on the trail, where a vicious gang of trappers, after his goods, picks up his scent and begins to dog his every step, until Breck’s only choice is to bed down for the winter with a tribe of friendly Indians. In the frigid, brutal cold of a Rocky Mountain winter, he hopes to find peace...but death is not done with Breck Wallace.

Tap Duvarney lost his innocence in the War Between the States and then put his skills to the test as a soldier in the frontier army. Now, leaving behind a devoted fiancée, he is trying to make his fortune on the Texas coast, working a ranch as the partner of his old friend Tom Kittery - and finding himself in the middle of a feud between Kittery and the neighboring Munson family.

Sixteen-year-old Echo Sackett has never been far from her Tennessee home - until she makes the long trek to Philadelphia to collect her inheritance. In the wilderness Echo can take care of herself as well as any man, but she never imagined the challenge that awaits: a crooked city lawyer who intends to take advantage of her by any means necessary. Echo will need all of her wits to best this scoundrel and make it back home in one piece.

Luke Jensen has seen some sorry looking bounties in his time, but this one takes the cake. A wanted poster is offering a reward of one dollar and 42 cents — plus one busted harmonica — to capture Three-Fingered Jack McKinney. Turns out, McKinney’s 12-year-old son Aaron wants revenge on his daddy for abandoning him and his mom. The reward is all the money Aaron can scrape together. Luke can’t say no to the poor boy — or his beautiful mother — so he agrees to go after McKinney and his bank-robbing gang.

The tales of the Mountain Man represent the best of the Western genre in all its thundering glory—and few gunfighters are as compelling, or as deadly, as Smoke Jensen. In Shootout of the Mountain Man, Billy Ray Cabot is set to hang, but the people planning to string him up haven’t reckoned on his old association with Smoke Jensen.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner earned his badge the old-fashioned way. He shot the bad guys, saved the good guys, and won the fear and respect of everyone in between. That’s how legends are born. But when he visits a friend at his ranch and ends up confronting a trigger-happy horse thief, Will earns the wrath of the deadliest, lowlife killers west of the Mississippi. This is how legends die....Turns out Will Tanner is nothing but a moving target on a blood-soaked trail of revenge.

Major James Brionne brought Dave Allard to trial for murder. Just before the hanging, Dave swore his brothers would take vengeance.... Four years later, the Allard boys returned to settle the score. Only Brionne's son escaped. They murdered his wife, destroyed his home, and left Brionne nothing but the charred ruins of his past to haunt him. Seeking peace and a new life, Brionne and the boy headed west. But the Allards hadn't finished with him. He knew they'd call him for a showdown - and this time he'd be ready....

Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener's magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America's past, the story of Colorado - the Centennial State - is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; and the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe.

In the first in this trio of Western stories by Louis L'Amour - "Black Rock" - Jim Gatlin, a Texas trail driver, arrives in the town of Tucker where he finds himself quickly drawn into the middle of an all-out battle for the XY Ranch when, due to a case of mistaken identity, he kills the segundo of Wing Cary's Flying C Ranch. Gatlin is a dead-ringer for Jim Walker, who, like Cary, wants control of the XY. Gatlin is thrown into a situation in which all he can do but fight for his life.