Literary Fiction Western

Spring Warren breaks onto the literary scene with a remarkable debut novel. This often comic picaresque follows Edward Turrentine Bayard III, who deserts his upper-class family and moves to Nebraska. Soon he finds trouble - and a Pinkerton agent following his every move.

Autumn, 1837. Blazing onward from the eastern shores, to Missouri, the legendary wagon train sent by U.S. President Andrew Jackson has reached the last outpost of civilization. Now five hundred strong, these brave pioneers set a course across the great rolling plains toward the treacherous Rockies, hoping to stake a claim in the American West. Led by their new wagon master, “Whip” Holt, they must unite as a team if they are to survive, despite their vast differences.

When Jack McLaughlin drifted into Springwater, he carried little more with him than his bitter memories of the Civil War and the shattering secret of a promise betrayed in the heat of battle. Wounded soul-deep, and fearing the wrath of his own parents, Jack has hidden his identity and come to Springwater to see his mother and father from afar, even if he can't bear to face them. Taking odd jobs and keeping a low profile, Jack finds a safe haven at the town's new rooming house.

The year is 1910. Halley's Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the "Great White Hope", Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region's biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution.

The separate lives of these driven men and independent women from Europe and America are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West.

Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than 200 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J. B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J. B.'s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is headed for Yuma, escorting Harvey "Cisco" Lang to prison and Adele Simpson to safety. He knows full well of their shared romantic history, and even though Adele swears she's done with Cisco, Burrack is keeping a hard eye on her as well as on the outlaw. But his companions are the least of his worries. A ruthless cattle baron has put a five-thousand-dollar price on Burrack's head - and every low-life bounty hunter and bandit across the Painted Desert is looking to claim it…

Like father, like son. Arizona Territory Ranger Sam Burrack rides the border badlands to Iron Point hoping to capture Ozzie Cord, a mercenary who killed a sheriff back in Mesa Grande. Cord escaped jail once but won't get away this time.... But as Sam nears his prey, the trail of scalped bodies makes it clear that someone else has a vendetta.

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn't rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast - stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border - has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline.

In Denver, Colorado, Daryl Heatherly is a promising young artist, hoping to find the place she fits in. Back home in the country just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming - the real West - she's returning to the last place her family all lived together, to a life bordered only by sage and sky. And it's there she rubs up against J. W. Jarrett, a world champion rodeo cowboy and old-school Southern gentleman. Against her better judgment - not to mention that of her best friend, Shawna, and overprotective brother, Jace - Daryl forges ahead despite her own recent heartbreak.

Katie Lane flat-out knows what her listeners want: steamy romances, hot cowboys, and love that conquers all. Catch Me a Cowboy finds Shirlene Dalton in fine fettle. Married to the man of her dreams and living in the biggest mansion in Bramble, Texas, she couldn’t ask for anything more. But then her hubby passes on and she lands back in a run-down trailer right next door to the perfect antidote for heartache: ruggedly handsome cowboy Billy Wilkes.

Orphaned after the death of her mother, 18-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she’s met by a sunburnt, laconic cattle wrangler: her distant cousin, Ferris Pickett. Within days, Esther is perjuring herself at the county clerk’s office, swearing that she is 21 and ready for the rigors of homesteading. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin that shows daylight at the chinks, and Esther begins her new life on the small lake called Half-a-Mind.

In Bramble, Texas, Dusty is the law. That means no leniency for the gorgeous rebel whose highway antics almost got them both killed. The divorced lawman doesn't need another rich, pampered princess, even if Brianne has the lushest body and sweetest smile in the whole darn state. But even as Brianne proves that she lives to walk on the wild side, Dusty begins to wonder if maybe he has what it takes to tame her.

Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his 10th birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Indians, settlers, and blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

Ever since striking it big on a gemstone claim in the Wyoming mountains, Sam Babcock has known luck is on his side - except when it comes to the people he loves. When he forms a surprising connection with an alluring newcomer staying at his friend Wyatt's ranch, Sam starts to question everything he thought he knew. Needing time and space to heal, former daredevil Danny Traveler is camping out in a valley beyond Mustang Ridge Dude Ranch. She wants to take care of herself for once, and a sexy cowboy might be just the distraction she needs.

Recovering from a difficult divorce and having problems with her daughter, Shelby accepts a summer job cooking at a family-run dude ranch. She hopes the animals will be just what her daughter, Lizzie, needs. Little does she know that ranch life will work some healing magic on her, too.

Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

A rousing, suspenseful debut novel - True Grit meets Catch Me If You Can - based on the forgotten true story of a Robin Hood of the American frontier who pulls off the first successful kidnapping for ransom in US history. Once the most wanted man in America, Pat Crowe is a forgotten folk hero who captivated the nation as an outlaw for economic justice.