Fiction Literature Dramatized

The story of Michael and Andrew Lewis continues. Five years after the death of their father Mordecai at the hands of Spanish soldiers in Texas, Michael seeks revenge. He, in turn, is being hunted by the Blackwood family from Tennessee, who have declared a feud with the Lewises.

Once every year, Perley Gates and his brothers lead the Triple-G crew on its annual cattle drive. It’s a treacherous journey along the Great Western Trail, with a herd of 2,000 cows on one side and many opportunities for trouble on the other. This year, trouble shows up in the form of a beautiful young woman, her little baby, and her bizarre traveling companion — a colorful old cuss who goes by the name of Possom Smith. They’re heading to a settlement called Butcher Bottom, and risking their necks to get there.

He was 15 when he killed his first man. Before his murderous ways ended, Hardin killed 42 men in cold blood - one, the legend goes, because he snored too loudly. From then on, John Wesley Hardin stayed true to his calling, killing man after man after man, spending most of his life being pursued by both local lawmen and federal troops.

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 winter around Cheyenne Wyoming that year was devastating killing both people and livestock. John Henry Cole was three miles out of town on his small ranch waiting out the storm that was quickly killing his cattle and horses and starting to feel a little crazy himself. Everything he owned was dying before his eyes and there wasn't anything that he could do about it. His dreams of a settled life were as dead as everything else.

Hawk and Fisher, captains of the City Guard of Haven, are assigned to be bodyguards for a Reform candidate during an election campaign. Candidate James Adamant is beset from all sides by enemies - political, personal and supernatural. Keeping him alive long enough to count the ballots could cost the lives of both Hawk and Fisher, in a deadly game where the winner takes all.

The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Corvis is home to some of the city’s worst criminals, but now even these hardened thugs have reason to watch their step in the dark, shadowy undercity. Death moves in that darkness, leaving behind a trail of horribly mangled bodies. The identity of the killer is a mystery, although his calling cards - brutally savaged corpses and a distinct, repulsive odor - are constants at each bloody murder scene.

Jane Candia Coleman is a natural storyteller whose characters come from the lands between the southwestern valleys of Arizona and the Gila Mountains of New Mexico. The night Billy the Kid died is hauntingly depicted in "Corrido for Billy". "Lady Flo" is a memoir, based on historical fact, of the black wife of an Irish nobleman. "Moving On" depicts a young girl abandoned by her family who finds her way with an itinerant Jewish peddler. And "Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?" is the winner of the 1995 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction.

When a diabolical superfoe acquires a superlaser that uses hypercolor to control emotion, he throws the world into a kaleidoscope of deadly mood swings. CURE goes on red alert. And if things aren't black enough, a rival nation has seen the mind-blowing potential of beaming mood-altering color from satellites...and rendering entire nations defenseless.

Five centuries after nuclear war laid waste to the land, the future of humankind may rest with the fishes. John Rourke, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna and a band of Marines battle tyranny beneath the sea to defend liberty and justice under the stars.

His name is Jonas Lynch. A California gunman with a blood-soaked past, he arrives in Fury, Arizona, looking for redemption. Unfortunately, Lynch’s reputation precedes him and Marshal Jason Fury is none too thrilled about harboring a wanted criminal — even if Lynch seems like a decent man. One revenge-seeking enemy wants Lynch dead. Another reward-hungry bounty hunter wants him alive. And for the next few days, the town of Fury will be caught in the crossfire....

"Stay the hell out of Fort Worth." Those were the last words uttered by a dying man who was the boomtown's most recent sheriff. Rail-thin and half starved, desperate cowpuncher Jess Casey ignores the travel advice. Instead, Jess not only enters Fort Worth, he becomes the new sheriff, inheriting the body-riddled little slice of heaven called Hell's Half Acre, the wide-open, deadliest piece of real estate on the American frontier.

Fort Kearney, Nebraska is the gateway to the west for a new breed of pioneers. Civil War veterans and widows, card sharps and Indian agents, and drifters — they arrive every day hoping to forge their destiny. Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the US Calvary is assigned the unenviable task of securing a trio of forts in the dangerous Dakota Territory. At his command is a rising young officer Mark Reynolds and his spirited bride Rose, who longs for danger and excitement.

Jeston Nash bears a striking resemblance to his cousin Jesse Woodson James of Clay County Missouri. After killing a Yankee soldier in self-defense, Jeston meets his cousins, Jesse and Frank, and joins them to fight in Quantrill's guerilla forces. Later, after the war, he rides with the James-Younger gang as they invent their special brand of bank and train robbery. All the while, Jeston seeks vengeance against Daniel Zanone of the Free Kansas Militia - the man responsible for the death of his child.

In Massacre at Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American newcomers. Revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but his brother Joshua fears, since Joshua is in love with a Mexican girl. The story touches on the immortal battle of the Alamo but centers on the infamous Goliad massacre, and ultimately the decisive battle of San Jacinto, which made Texas an independent republic.

Caitlin Strong is a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, proud to wear the badge of her father and grandfather - until a deadly shoot-out along the Mexican border causes her to question her calling. Five years later, Caitlin is still trying to purge herself of guilt from the day that ended her Ranger career. But a shattering discovery will reopen old wounds, and Caitlin's renewed investigation into the truth behind the bloody desert firefight uncovers a terrifying plot that reaches into every home and threatens the very core of the country.

Werewolf by Max Brand in Western Story Magazine (12/18/26) involves just such an inward journey for Christopher Royal, who is convinced he is a coward and flees a confrontation with Harry Main, who is a gunfighter. There comes a time in this story - when Christopher encounters the aged Indian, the old wise man - that the terrain shimmers with the multiple affinities of meaning conjured by the unconscious, which Vergil once sought to capture within an image both awesome and sinister: numina magna deum [the great divine power of a god].

Mankind has ceded the night to the corelings, demons that rise up out of the ground each day at dusk, killing and destroying at will until dawn, when the sun banishes them back to the Core. As darkness falls, the world’s few surviving humans hide behind magical wards, praying the magic can see them through another night. As years pass, the distances between each tiny village seem longer and longer. It seems nothing can harm the corelings, or bring humanity back together.

The accidental gunslinger Dooley Monahan has quit wandering and settled down to a farmer’s life. But when the itch for adventure gets too strong, he packs up and rides west. Along with his horse General Grant, and Blue, a dog who’s too smart for his own good, Dooley rides for the Black Hills to strike it rich in the gold fields of Colorado. But fate has other ideas.

How does a kid who can barely ride a horse, and who’s better with his fists and a team of mules than a six-shooter, think he can track and kill the most notorious killer on the Plains? Simple: Cuno Massey's thirst for revenge runs deep. Deeper than his skills. But when Rolf Anderson and Sammy Spoon killed the young man’s step-mother and his father, nothing would stand in young Cuno’s way.