Action Fiction Western

Rock Bannon, wounded in an Indian attack, is rescued by a wagon train heading to Oregon. He has fully recovered when the train pulls into a fort to stock up on supplies. It is there that the leaders of the train meet Morton Harper, a smooth-talking man who persuades them to take an easier trail that will allow them to escape an attack by Indians. Bannon knows that there will be no escape from attack on that route and that it will lead the train directly onto Hardy Bishop's vast ranching domain.

Kirby - later Smoke - Jensen has just earned his first paying job as a deputy US marshal for the Colorado Territory and is sent to the lawless town of Las Animas. There he finds a sheriff too cowardly to face the outlaw leader Cole Dawson, whose six-gun has left a lot of good men dead. Young Smoke feels no such fear. He takes Dawson down fast. Then the real fight begins. It turns out Dawson is only a cog in a crooked plot hatched by someone hiding behind the law.

Autumn, 1837. Driving onward - against the worst of man and nature - a legendary caravan of men, women and children forge a new link in the wilderness trek from Independence, Missouri to the "Promised Land" beyond the Rockies. They are pioneering Americans from North and South - side-by-side with immigrants, a Black man and an Indian - waging a fierce daily battle for bare survival on an uncompromising journey to their private destinies and the fulfillment of America's greatest dream.

Sheriff McCabe knew he’d make a lot of enemies when he agreed to be a special agent for the Texas governor. But now that he’s managed to keep the peace in the hopeless town of New Hope, he’s hoping he can go home to Two Forks and get back to business as usual. No such luck. The corrupt marshal of East City, Micah Moran, and his murdering band of kill-crazy cutthroats are running wild, leaving the folks in East City in a deadly grip of terror. Now, Two Forks will have to wait because Micah Moran and his evil gang need to be taught some manners—with McCabe’s own brand of retribution.

The completion of a new railroad line from Colorado to Texas is a dream come true for Smoke Jensen and the other ranchers of Big Rock. But this dream turns into their worst nightmare when the first herd they load onto the train is stolen by a vicious gang of kill-crazy rustlers. This is no ordinary train robbery. It's an inferno of slaughter that includes the friendly rancher who volunteered to take Smoke's place on the trip. Now Smoke is saddling up and riding out—to get the prairie rats who murdered his friend . . .

Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What's clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead. For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt.

At long last, US Marshal Aaron Mackey and Deputy Billy Sunday will see crime baron James Grant and his kill-crazy cronies stand trial for the suffering they unleashed on the people of Dover Station. As Montana Territory's statehood is approaching, murdering devils like Grant can no longer be tolerated in positions of political power. Or can they? Montana's capital of Helena follows its own set of laws - laws that not only set Grant free, but give peacekeeping authority to a sadistic murdering gunslinger like Colonel Warren Bell, Mackey's commanding officer during the war.

In a court of law, it takes 12 jurors to convict a killer. Two of them are Jensens. It all started when those Jensen boys, Ace and Chance, got roped into jury duty. It should have ended when justice was served with the killer dancing on the end of a rope. But no. This is just the beginning of the death sentence for Ace, Chance, and the other 10 terrified jurors. He's one of the most notorious outlaws in the west. He's also the brother of the hanged killer. Now he's here in town - and plans to slaughter the jurors, one by one.

Texas Ranger Rory Yates is not keen for hero status. But it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his newfound fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo, a municipality with two stoplights. And now, according to the chief of police, it has one too many Texas Rangers. Rio Lobo Detective Ariana Delgado is the one who requested Rory and the only person who believes a local councilwoman's seemingly accidental death is a murder. Then, Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal, and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

This exclusive audio collection includes four unabridged tales from The Frontier Stories: Volume Two that will continue to inspire and delight listeners and stand as a living testament to the enduring power of America's favorite storyteller.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered. Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

The Indians around Fort Laramie, Wyoming, are peaceful. Or so it has seemed - until killers ambush a detail of US soldiers and an officer's wife. One man, an ambitious cavalry officer, flees the carnage and lives to tell the story - his own story, an outright lie. When Duff MacCallister and a few brave men go after the attackers, they discover the officer's wife is very much alive and at the cold merciless hands of the sadistic warrior Yellow Hawk. To free the woman, Duff touches off a fierce battle.

Hewey Calloway and his brother Walter are young men looking for work. Their first job puts them in the middle of a territory war between two powerful ranchers, C.C. Tarpley and Eli Jessup. It's a tough trail for two green cowpunchers and the forks in that trail may lead the brothers in different directions.

In Broken Bridle, Wyoming, Jeremiah Purdy, the town's tinhorn sheriff is a college kid who wants to become governor some day. But outlaw Darius Pike couldn't care less about anyone else's ambitions. With Pike holding Broken Bridle in a bloody grip of terror, Purdy sends a desperate cry for help - to Shawn O'Brien, town tamer. Shawn's mission: ride to Wyoming and pry Broken Bridle loose from Pike's reign of fear.

Unlike his brothers Jacob, Sam, and Patrick, Shawn O'Brien isn't content to settle down on the family ranch in New Mexico territory. With his razor-sharp eye, lightning-fast draw, and burning thirst for justice, Shawn is carving out a reputation of his own. As a town tamer, he takes the most dangerous, lawless towns in the West and makes them safe for decent men, women, and children. When a stagecoach accident leaves Shawn stranded in Holy Rood, Utah, it doesn't take long to realize he's landed in one ornery circle of hell.

In a small Texas town in 1950, a man from the Pinkerton Detective Agency interrupts an old-timer's daily game of dominos to learn the truth about Butch Cassidy - who is still alive and well and sitting right in front of him.... So begins the novel of the West's most legendary outlaw - as told by America's master storytellers, William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone. Butch Cassidy: The Lost Years reveals the stunning secret behind that infamous shootout in Bolivia that claimed the lives of the Sundance Kid and, allegedly, Butch himself.

Changes have come to 1910 Texas and Hewey Calloway doesn't like them. An injury signals the end of his freewheeling life and he begins to see the loneliness of the road ahead, if he doesn't take action to change his direction. Can his past hold the key to improving his future?

Hewey Calloway is between a rock and a hard place: The open range and simple life of his childhood are disappearing. He can't live a cowboy life whose time has passed and he's not ready yet for the new challenges of the 20th century, like automobiles, telephones, and barbed wire fences. He and his friends, all of them good old boys, must learn that even the best choices involve some kind of sacrifice.

It starts with a jailbreak. Frank Thorson and his gang ride into Wolfwater to bust Frank's brother out of the slammer. First, they slaughter the deputy. Then, the town marshal. Finally, they run off with the marshal's daughter and no one's sure if she's dead or alive. The townsfolk are desperate enough to ask that drunken old coot Catfish Charlie to put down his fishing pole and wine bottles, pick up his Colt Army .44, and go after the bloodthirsty gang. Sure, Catfish Charlie may be a bit rusty after all these years. But when it comes to serving up justice, no one is quicker.