Action Fiction Western

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the human side of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are seven stories penned by America's favorite Western author.

There are two kinds of traps in the Old West. One is the kind that Preacher and his buddy, Charlie, use to catch a mountain-load of fur pelts. The other is the kind that Charlie steps into - a trap set by a low-life gambler and his seductive partner in crime to swindle Charlie out of his fur money. Preacher hates to see a good friend get robbed. So, he sets off after the grifters - on a riverboat bound for New Orleans. First, he infiltrates the criminal underworld of the French Quarter. Then, he’s enslaved on a pirate ship heading straight to hell.

In 1848, Dooley Monahan, son of struggling Iowa pioneers, went off to to pick up a new milk cow. Young Dooley never came home. Now, nearly three decades later, Dooley Monahan has become an accidental legend, managing to plant a bullet in the chest of a dangerous outlaw. All Dooley really wants is to claim his reward at a bank in Phoenix and make his way north to a gold strike he read about in a newspaper. But fate has other plans. It starts with a family slaughtered by Apaches, a dog smarter than most humans Dooley knows, and a girl with a wounded soul.

Once a respected lawman in Kansas and Oklahoma, Ty Brannigan ended his career as town marshal of Warknife while he was still young enough to marry, start a family, and raise cattle. Now nearly sixty, he’s a proud husband, father of four, and proprietor of the Powderhorn Ranch. He’s more content wrangling cows than criminals. But for every outlaw Brannigan put in jail, noosed, or left to the vultures, he made even more enemies. They’ve made the mistake of targeting his wife and children—only to discover that Ty Brannigan enforces his own law with a lightning-fast draw.

They say that home is where the heart is. And no one knows that better than Perley Gates. After helping the lovely Miss Emma Slocum reunite with her sister's family in Bison Gap, Perley can't wait to rejoin his own kin at the Triple-G Ranch. No sooner does Perley settle in when he receives an alarming telegram from Bison Gap. Emma's brother-in-law has been murdered. Her sister wants justice. And Perley is their only hope to get it....

A collection of two stories by beloved Western writer Louis L'Amour. In "The Sixth Shotgun", Leo Carver has been sentenced to hang for holding up a stage, killing the driver and the guard, and stealing the gold they were transporting. He is convicted despite his protests of innocence, but questions soon arise over what really happened. "The Rider of the Ruby Hills" is the story of Ross Haney, who rides into Ruby Hills country hoping to settle down. What he finds is an intense rivalry between the two big ranches and a rustler who is taking full advantage of the situation.

Kate Coldane has sweated blood for this saloon, and she won't let it go down without a fight. Silas Atwood may be the richest rancher in Hudspeth County, but that doesn't give him the right to push her around. When Atwood sends one of his goons to cause trouble at her watering hole, Kate's son, Rusty, guns him down. It may have been self-defense, but Atwood is the law, and that means Rusty has to run.

After hunting down the notorious desperado Alejandro Vasquez, Territorial Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Everett Hitch return him to San Cristóbal to stand trial. No sooner do they remand him into custody than a major bank robbery occurs and the lawmen find themselves tasked with another job: investigating the robbery of the Comstock Bank, recovering the loot, and bringing the criminals to justice.

Ross Hardy had made his decision. He sat in the middle of all he owned, a splendid Appaloosa gelding, a fine California saddle, a .44 Winchester rifle, and two walnut-stocked Colt .44 pistols. These were his all. It was a life that had left him rich in experience, but poor in goods of the world. The experience was the hard-fisted experience of cold winters, dry ranges, and the dusty bitterness of cattle drives.

The great-grandson of iconic Old West hero Rooster Cogburn, acclaimed author Brett Cogburn delivers Panhandle, a novel of the Texas frontier. Cowboys Nate Reynolds and Billy Champion, one a well-to-do young man and the other a stubborn troublemaker, couldn’t be more different -- yet that doesn’t stop them from becoming friends. Determined to rid the frontier of the violent men who kill innocents without hesitation, they soon learn that playing hero can be deadly business.

Two drifters, flush with cash and looking to buy cattle, arrive in town—one nursing a bullet wound he claims he received accidentally when his friend was cleaning his gun. Jackson and Moran are suspicious but have no reason to challenge their story—until four more drifters show up looking for the first two. Moran may not be lightning quick when it comes to numbers, but reports say the Wells Fargo office was held up by six men. But Moran is going to need more bullets.

The sight of a rotting corpse hanging from a noose is enough to stop any man in his tracks—and Luke Jensen is no exception. Sure, he could just keep riding through. He's got a prisoner to deliver, after all. But when a group of men show up with another prisoner for another hanging, Luke can't turn his back—especially when the condemned man keeps swearing he's innocent. Right up to the moment he's hung by the neck till he's dead . . . Welcome to Hannigan's Hill, Wyoming. Better known as Hangman's Hill.

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.

A recent finishing school graduate, 18-year-old Garnet Cameron is desperate for direction. Too driven for the restrictive manners of the upper class, Garnet is naturally drawn to Oliver Hale, a frontier trader from the West. Unlike the men to whom she's accustomed, Oliver treats Garnet as an equal and respects her independence. His tales of adventure on the plains thrill her. And his proposal of marriage is accepted. Then Garnet discovers how ill-prepared she is for the punishing landscape of the Jubilee Trail and the even harsher realities of human nature.

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?

A cattle ranch stalked by the ultimate predator. A heiffer gutted and beheaded by razor-sharp claws. A ranch hand crushed and shredded by powerful jaws. According to legend - foretold by Sioux Chief Red Otter - the attacks are an omen of terrible things to come. When a grizzly attacks a man or his property during a blue moon, it is a sign that the bear has been sent from someone on the other side seeking revenge against the man that killed him. And that man - the avenger's true target - is Hunter Buchanon.

Hot-blooded Georgiana Stockwell will break a man's heart while he's eating out of her hand. Moving from the East to join her schoolteacher sister in the rugged wilds of Tonto Basin, Arizona, Georgiana makes quite an impression. Despite her sister's best efforts, Georgiana creates a culture clash as her modern, free-spirited personality comes up against the code of the West, the unwritten law of the range that everyone is expected to follow.

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.

In 1885, while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was becoming one of the best-selling American classics of modern times, Mark Twain began this sequel in which Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim head west on the trail of two white girls kidnapped by Sioux warriors. Fifteen thousand words into the work, Twain stopped in the middle of a sentence, never to go back. The unfinished story sat on dusty shelves for more than a hundred years until author Lee Nelson decided to finish it.

Smoke Jensen sat in a cave and boiled the last of his coffee. He figured he was in Idaho - somewhere south of Montpelier - but he was certain about only two things: He was cold and he was being hunted by a small army of men. Smoke knew why he was cold - it was winter. He just didn't have a clear idea of why anyone was after him.