Literary Fiction Western

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.

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.

Everyone thinks Lacey DeMille is the next thing to royalty, a society girl with beauty, brains and money—but sexy Texas bad boy Devlin Marlowe knows better. Twenty years after being exiled in disgrace for daring to want her, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks has sweet revenge in his grasp...for only he knows that her whole life is built on a lie. And revenge may be more costly than either of them can imagine.

Brilliant and driven cardiac surgeon Diana Morgan’s whole life centers around her career, now threatened by an injury that may prove insurmountable. She is desperate enough to accept a forced sabbatical to the Davis Mountains of West Texas, where she meets Rafael Sandoval, a former Special Forces medic who understands exactly how it feels to have the life you planned taken from you. After losing his men and nearly losing his life, Rafe has returned home and found a measure of peace combining his Western medical training with the curanderismo or folk healing traditions of his Latino heritage.

Hollywood's hot playboy stuntman Randall Mackey replaced the adrenaline rush of his career in the SEAL Teams with another life courting danger, but that existence is jeopardized by injury. The sexy bad boy of Sweetgrass Springs returns to the town where his teenage exploits made him a legend, only to find that his buddy's tomboy little sister has grown up in very interesting ways. If he thinks, however, that gifted horse trainer Rissa Gallagher will simply fall into his arms and help him dodge dealing with a haunting past and a future that looks grim, Mackey might want to think again.

Gifted pastry chef Spike Ridley knows most everything about cooking, but the recipe for home has eluded her. Have mixer will travel has been her motto, and now she has lost the one person who’d loved her from childhood. When she crashes into famed quarterback Tate Ransom, life takes an abrupt turn. Tate has suffered a deep personal loss of his own, and coupled with a career-threatening injury, the ground beneath him is shifting. Forced into a road trip toward uncertain futures, the snarky sprite and celebrity jock get glimpses beneath the other’s veneer, and what they find surprises them.

Texas rancher Case Marshall is driving a truck instead of his hell-raiser Harley after a crooked partner nearly bankrupts his Flying M Ranch. New Orleans socialite Samantha St. Claire never dreamed she'd be on the run from the mob--or that she'd find her white knight at a truck stop. Their worlds couldn't be less compatible or their attraction more high-octane…but there are dangers and shocking secrets to battle before they can dream of a future together.

Franny Morgan is a small-town café owner with an insatiable need to rescue lost souls the way she couldn't hang onto her two sisters after their parents died. Now she's involved in a letter-writing campaign to save the small dusty town where she winds up. Nathan Russell is a down-on-his-luck carpenter who shows up on her doorstep, willing to trade work on her rundown building for food and a roof—not because the wealthy investor needs either but because he's determined to fulfill the obligations his brother abandoned.

Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob Liam Sullivan has escaped the paparazzi and celebrity gossips after a sensational tragedy, reexamining his high-flying lifestyle and his priorities. In disguise, traveling through the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, he encounters a rail-thin, starving woman who has lost everything but the dilapidated cabin where she once lived with her grandmother in happier days. Raina Donovan is determined to make her stand there, but winter is coming, and Liam cannot desert her until he can make her safe, however much she tries to make him leave.

FBI agent Alex Sandoval has never forgiven himself for not protecting a young girl from seeing her mother murdered during his first hostage negotiation twelve years ago. Now Jade Butler is a cop herself, assigned to a prestigious multi-agency task force hunting for the killer of several young girls in Austin, Texas—and Alex is the agent in charge of the case. They never met all those years ago, but Jade recognizes his voice as the one she still hears in her dreams, the voice that has comforted her through many a terrifying flashback.

Vanessa Porter's brilliant career as a hotelier goes up in flames after a scandal, and she pours herself into rehabbing an old mansion to become a boutique hotel, doing much of the work herself because her funds are running out. Hotshot adventure photographer Dane Sullivan's career is grounded after a near-death fall, and he's no longer sure he wants the life of death-defying risk that energized him for so long. While he's recovering and assessing his options, his kid sister Jilly volunteers him to help her friend Vanessa with handyman skills he and his brothers learned from their dad.

Detective Sean Fitzgerald is hot on the trail of a man who is key to breaking a human trafficking ring, but he needs a way to get close without arousing suspicion. His opportunity comes in the form of film star Annabelle Quinn, who's in town and in need of a bodyguard. Her best friend is his top suspect, and he can use the connection to break his case. But when Annabelle comes mean so much more than a means to an end for Sean, his objectivity is in danger, and he's painfully aware that the lies between them could doom any hope for a future for them.

In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried. Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world.

In Lonesome Animals, Russell Strawl, a tormented former lawman, is called out of retirement to hunt a serial killer with a sense of the macabre who has been leaving elaborately carved bodies of Native Americans across three counties. As the pursuit ensues, Strawl’s own dark and violent history weaves itself into the hunt, shedding light on the remains of his broken family: one wife taken by the river, one by his own hand; an adopted Native American son who fancies himself a Catholic prophet; and a daughter, whose temerity and stoicism contrast against the romantic notions of how the west was won.

When Andrew Apperley visits his brother David in the East, he brings along an unexpected companion. Andrew's giant wolf dog, Comanche, is so wild that he has to be chained up for the safety of others. However, when the Apperley brothers come across a man drowning in the East River, Comanche breaks loose from his chains and swims to the man's rescue.

A questo autore dall'inconfondibile vena pessimista e cruda, dall'originale scrittura raffinata e apparentemente naturale, tratta dal linguaggio parlato, ma piena di intrusioni e slanci d'autore, appartiene una serie di romanzi dimenticati, a metà tra il romanzo criminale e il western. A questo filone, quasi sfociante nel dramma antirazzista, che allora furoreggiava in certo cinema e in certo teatro americano alla Tennessee Williams, appartiene "Rossa".

The small plains town of Ingleside, Nebraska, is populated by down-on-their-luck ranchers and new money, ghosts and seers, drugs and greed, the haves and the have-nots. Lives ripple through each other to surprising effect, though the connections fluctuate between divisive gulfs and the most intimate closeness. At the center of this novel is the story of Teensy and his daughter, Luann, who face the loss of their land even as they mourn the death of Luann’s mother.

Set against the sweeping panorama of Arizona circa 1880, this work has many of the surface trappings of a standard western. However, from the first shocking realization that the line between good and evil is being overstepped, the author then begins to dismantle the American cowboy myth.

Small-town boys Caleb and Jake Boyd spend their days splitting logs and barely scraping by in the badlands of New Mexico. Caleb, a decorated war hero, wants to put his fighting days behind him, find a decent job, and start a quiet life with his new fiancée. But Jake is always dreaming bigger than he should, and when he stumbles across a large crop of marijuana hidden in the wilderness, he thinks he has finally hit the jackpot.

The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something...something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way.