Fiction Literature Dramatized

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is...different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight.

Three days before Christmas, Matt Jensen is traveling the Denver and Pacific railway when an avalanche slams down onto the train, trapping it in desolate Trout Creek Pass. But it wasn’t an act of nature that caused the accident; it was a gang of outlaws attempting to rescue their leader, who is being taken to Red Cliff to be hanged. As Smoke Jensen and Duff MacCallister frantically try to make their way to the scene, Matt struggles to save the survivors, among them a young woman with a dark past, a merchant seaman turned rancher, and a senator with his very ill young daughter.

In 1848, Dooley Monahan, son of struggling Iowa pioneers, went off 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.

For years, like millions of other Americans, John Thomas Rourke had planned for what seemed inevitable — the destruction of civilization. There were various possible causes: global economic collapse, some uncontrollable pestilence, a world famine — or nuclear war. And the rumbling signaling the coming of Total War was becoming increasingly strong as Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority, made his last desperate gambit to save his estranged wife and two children before the button was pressed.

The war between the States has ended. Now, driven from Texas by carpetbaggers, former CSA Colonel Shamus O'Brien sets off for a new frontier - New Mexico. Here, where land is cheap, bandits shoot to kill, and rustlers rule the night, it takes more than one man to run a ranch. So he offers a partnership to his eldest son, Jacob, with equal shares going to his sons Sam, Patrick, and Shawn. Together, the brother's O'Brien will defend their homestead, the Dromore, in this violent, lawless land...and when necessary, administer their own brand of frontier justice.

For Chet Byrnes, building a ranching empire means adding new land, hiring good men, finding water, and trying new breeds of cattle. But outlaws and Tuscon's idle rich want to take it all away - and Arizona just may be too lawless to stop it. So while the Byrnes family expands its reach, Chet must do his job hunting down outlaws on either side of the border.

Led by a charismatic fool, a group of pioneers are crossing Apache territory, blind to the danger around them. The Loner would ignore the passing pilgrims if it weren’t for a beautiful woman. Then, when he turns his back, the Apaches strike. The night is lit with an unholy fire. Mutilated bodies are left behind. And four women are taken prisoner across the Rio Grande....

For a posse chasing a murderous band of outlaws, a quiet kid with a lightning fast gun is good company. And when the outlaws turn around and attack the posse, The Loner doesn’t have a choice: he’s now caught up in a running gun battle across West Texas. The Loner knows the men he’s fighting are bad to the bone - led by a merciless killer named Warren Latch. But what about the guys on his side?

Sometimes when a man’s luck turns, it turns hard. Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are experienced drifters, but now the two trail pards are down to their last dime. So they accept the best job they can get, serving as deputies in a boomtown called Mankiller. Their boss is a drunken sheriff named Biscuits O'Brien, who would rather drink than work. Their tin stars are mighty pretty, but the job starts to get serious quickly, and soon the newly-minted lawmen are standing between a cunning clan of killers and the town's desperate citizens.

Chet Byrnes has built a ranching empire from the ground up. And he’s defended it with his sweat, blood, and a ragtag band of ranch-hand fighters. Now a beautiful young Spanish widow comes into Chet’s life, just as he starts off in search of a lost cattle drive. The search leads into the eye of a sprawling, violent storm. Chet and his men — and his seductive new woman — end up on a wild ride through Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, where authorities want to confiscate the beeves for trespassing.

Business is booming in Chirichua Junction, on the edge of a great northern river basin. But with cattlemen lined up against sheep men, the land has turned into a war zone and the town constable is a dirty as they come. Fresh from a violent confrontation with a fellow manhunter, Frank Morgan is called to Chirichua Junction by his old Civil War commander - and arrives just as an angry rancher is taking the law into this own hands. Suddenly, good men and bad are poised to kill.

In a town like Chugwater, Wyoming, you know who your friends are, who your enemies are, and who your kill-crazy maniacs are. For Duff MacCallister, the last category belongs to Johnny Taylor and his gang. Duff has wrestled with this polecat before, and knows that his bite is worse than his smell. But when Taylor's gang tries to rob a bank - and Duff manages to shoot one and arrest Taylor's brother - the outraged outlaw raises a stink straight out of hell.

Hank Fallon used to be one of the best deputy marshals in the country. Then, he got framed for a crime he didn't commit. Got sentenced to 10 years in a federal penitentiary. And got out early for saving the life of the captain of the guards during a riot. When Fallon is released, a private detective is waiting for him. He wants to put Hank behind bars again - but this time, as an undercover agent....

Humanity has been brought to the brink of extinction. Each night, the world is overrun by demons - bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting the surface for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive. A handful of Messengers brave the night to keep the lines of communication open between the increasingly isolated populace.

Two centuries after skydark, the oligarchy of the nine barons who have governed nuke-ravenged America endures - yet their control as plenipotentiaries of earth's first nonhuman inheritors rapidly diminishes. For as the myth that shrouds the planet's secret rulers is exposed by a handful of scientists and warriors dedicated to freeing humanity from the eternal yoke of slavery, the truth becomes more deadly....

Chick Bowdrie could have been an outlaw, but he rode a different trail. The Texas Rangers recruited Bowdrie to help pursue the most wanted men in the Southwest. And Bowdrie knew the terrain all too well: the dusty trails, bitter cattle feuds, the desperate killers, and the weather-beaten towns that could explode into chaos at the wrong word. The Rangers were called in to handle the tough cases, and Bowdrie was the toughest and smartest.

Two outlaw brothers have been leaving a blood-trail on their way to infamy on the western frontier. Until bounty hunter Luke Jensen catches one of the black-hearted Kroll brothers away from his gang. But while Luke is trying to get Mordecai Kroll from jail to justice, he's ambushed by the Kroll gang and taken prisoner. And that draws Luke's own brother Smoke Jensen into the fight, guns drawn....

They ride after sundown. Black robed figures with skulls for faces, terrorizing the town of Recoil like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the sheriff hopes to defeat this hellish band of outlaws, he'll need back-up. Enter Colonel Shamus O'Brien. The seasoned ranch hand and patriarch has fought off more than his share of horse thieves and marauders. But he's never seen anything like these ornery devils.

With danger dodging his heels at every turn, Private Investigator Zachary Nixon Johnson, while protecting Sexy Sprockets, a talentless redheaded teen media superstar, from terrorists, finds himself at the mercy of three psionic, superhuman dominatrices bent on world domination.

It's hard country, but the pioneers of Fury (Population 112) are banding together to make it a home. With barren lands, blinding dust storms, drought, hostile Indians and violent bands of cutthroat outlaws against them, death is never far away. It's enough to make Jason Fury, whose father the town was named after, ride out for San Francisco. But a fiery young redhead named Megan McDonald keeps him Arizona bound - and just in time.