Literary Fiction Western

Raw frontier action is epitomized in Lee Porfilo. With a penchant for settling his problems with his fists, Porfilo is always in trouble. And trouble comes to stay when he beats a rich man's son. Now he has an enemy for life. Framed for murder and sentenced to the penitentiary, he is saved by Tex Cummins' small steel saw and heads for the mountains.

When Corporal Elijah Russell's superb horsemanship is revealed during a firefight in northern Iraq, the young Army Ranger is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. Elijah's task is to train the Green Berets - fiercely loyal to their enigmatic commander, Captain Wynne - to ride the horses they will use to execute this mission through treacherous mountain terrain. But as the team presses farther into enemy territory, the nature of their operation only becomes more mysterious, and Wynne's charismatic power takes on a darker cast.

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.

Eight-year-old Benjamin Franklin “B .F.” Windes decides to abandon home and trail his father’s path. Thus begins a trip of constant struggle with disease, severe weather, hardship, Indian attack, and death on his lone journey across much of what is now the United States. B. F. spends the next 11 years in gold rush towns in California - first as a barber, then as a physician’s assistant - before departing for the Caribbean at age 19, where he becomes a blockade runner during the American Civil War.

If a man beats you, you never let your anger show, never at the time. You wait until he least expects it, until nobody remembers that you were angry at all.... In 1860s Southern California, life on the Burn ranch has been peaceful for 15-year-old John Evert since the death of his father. But recently there have been violent raids on nearby properties, where it's not just cattle and horses that are taken but women, too. And when the white-painted men arrive at the Burn ranch on horses in the dead of night, John Evert is near-fatally injured, his beloved mother spirited away, and their house torched to the ground.

After 12 years, the headstrong Annabel McKeige is back in the frontier town of Parable, Nevada. Back to face the husband she left behind...the son she never saw grow to manhood...and the home where her heart broke when she lost a beloved daughter. But her intentions regarding their marriage are soon clear - even if her motives are not. Gabe McKeige loved Annabel too fiercely to let a chance like this slip away. So, Gabe sets out to woo Annabel the only way he knows.... Annabel is finding the man she once left is unbearably hard to resist....

When Slade Donovan, strong willed and eager for vengeance, shows up on her front porch, Mariah is not ready to hear his truths: Her father's farm, the only home she's ever known, was bought with stolen gold. With Slade ready to collect his father's rightful claim and force Mariah and her family out on the streets, Mariah must turn to God for guidance. Though Mr. Frederick Cooper, a local landowner, promises to answer her financial woes if she agrees to be his bride, Mariah finds herself drawn instead to the angry young man demanding her home.

At the heart of this exciting debut novel, set in Arizona and Idaho in the mid-1970s, is 15-year-old Loretta, who slips out of her bedroom every evening to meet her so-called gentile boyfriend. Her strict Mormon parents catch her returning one night, and promptly marry her off to Dean Harder, a devout yet materialistic fundamentalist who already has a wife and a brood of kids. The Harders relocate to his native Idaho, where Dean's teenage nephew Jason falls hard for Loretta.

Hardcharging army lieutenant Bickham Deth's only desire is to lead soldiers in combat. In the bloody winter of 2006, he expects to finally earn his baptism by fire on the streets of Kabul or Baghdad. Instead, he finds himself trapped in Oklahoma on funeral detail. Deth is honored to pay tribute to the veterans of Vietnam and World War II, but his patience is pushed to the breaking point by incompetent morticians, squabbling family members, and a mishap with the color of his socks that threatens to derail his entire military career.

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.

Eli Singer, a rancher and poet in remote Eastern Montana, sees his life upended when a long-buried corpse - which turns out to be a murder victim from Eli's childhood - erodes out of a hillside on his property. This discovery forces Eli to turn inward to revisit the tragic events in his past that led to a life-changing moment of violence, while at the same time he must reach outside himself toward Chloe, a literary agent from New York whom he is falling in love with.