Literature Dramatized

In post-Civil War Texas, Andy Pickard, once known to his Comanche "family" as Badger Boy, is now in his mid-20s and riding with the Texas Rangers. While delivering a prisoner for trial, he becomes entangled in a feud between the Landon and Hopper families. Andy works to help Jayce Landon, while at the same time keeping the boy Scooter Tennyson from being pulled into a life of crime. Lives are at stake, loyalties tested, and the worst aspects of human nature are exposed, in Texas Vendetta.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a savage grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

Sally has traveled to the silver-mining town of Goth, Colorado to open a restaurant with a friend. That's where she crosses paths with five bank robbers in a hurry to strike it rich. With the local sheriff lying dead in a pool of blood, Sally fights for her life while a frontier surgeon tries to work a miracle. Burning with fury, armed with a gun and a badge, Smoke Jenson goes on the hunt - a posse of one against a gang of outlaws more dangerous than he can know.

Leaving their Pennsylvania home to forge a new life in the untamed Oregon Territory of 1845, the Colter family is ambushed by a kill crazy gang of cutthroats on the Oregon Trail. Fifteen-year-old Tim Colter manages to escape and hide — only to return and find his parents butchered, his sisters Nancy and Margaret missing, and one last killer waiting for his return.

He was raised by the mountain man called Preacher, and he was said to be the fastest gun alive. Until he hung up his gunbelts to raise a family. Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and a force of nature. But Lee Slater and his gang of low life desperadoes didn’t know that. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble for the retired gunslinger was Slater’s first mistake. Shooting Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally was his second.

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.

No one remembered when he’d come to the mountains - it seemed like Preacher had always been there. He’d seen a world of wonders in the unmapped mountains and forests of the vast North American frontier. In fact, he figured he wouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. But that was before Preacher traveled into the Ferris Range of Wyoming and discovered the city of Nova Roma....

They just wanted to get home for Christmas...but fate had other plans. It's December 1890. A Texas rancher named Big Jim Conyers has a deal with Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Forth Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed.

Outlaws had smashed his life, left his wife dying, and carried off his son. Now all Frank Morgan wants is to hang up his guns and settle down in peace. But all that changes when he rides into the middle of a Montana range war, where a valley has been ripped apart by hatred and fears...and where his legend proves to be as dangerous as his gun. The blood of innocent men, women, and children has been shed. On one side is a small army of ranchers; on the other a stubborn band of farming families.

Rusty Shannon has left the Rangers and feels the need to settle down. He has brought up Andy Pickard, once a captive of the Comanches, now in his 20s and eager to see more of the world. Rusty's dream of marrying Josie Monahan and living the life of a farmer seems like paradise, compared to the Civil War and the evils of Reconstruction. His dreams and plans, and the lives of the Monahans, are shattered by tragedy, and Rusty seeks revenge. By his side are Andy and an old friend from Ranger days, Len Tanner.

There are a million ways to die in the Rockies - and a million predators, natural or otherwise. But even a seasoned mountain dweller like Preacher is shocked by the latest horror lurking in the hills. Trappers are being hunted down like animals. Captured. Murdered. Mutilated. Their hearts carved out of their chests. Some of the victims were Preacher's friends. Now two others - Audie and Nighthawk - have gone missing. Preacher is determined to track them down before they end up on the chopping block. But nothing can prepare him for what's waiting at the end of the trail....

The gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana is the kind of backwater hole less famous for the folks that live there than the ones who die there - like Janey Jensen, Smoke Jensen's sister. Smoke never would have gone there if it hadn't been for her estate. But that isn't the only thing the Mountain Man's got to settle. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove. The man who owns Red Light - lock, stock and barrel - is six feet of trouble looking for somebody like Smoke to bring out the worst in him.

Smoke Jensen couldn't have cared less about a range war that had erupted in far-off Montana. But when his cousin Fae is stuck right in the middle of the hundred-gun showdown that's exploding in bullets and blood, he rides to intercede in the name of family. He's joined on his mission by the Moab Kid and legendary gunfighters Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.

They're hanging Bobby Lee Cabot in Cloverdale, Nevada on Friday. Or so they think. Thursday brings Smoke Jensen to town. In another life, Bobby Lee was almost kin to Smoke, and guilty or not, Smoke will blast Cloverdale sky high if that's what it takes to set his old friend free. By midnight, Smoke and Billy Ray are riding hell-for-leather out of Cloverdale, and into a war between cunning railroad robbers and the organization sworn to stop them. Bobby Lee was working for the railroads until he was betrayed. Now, both men are pursued by deadly enemies on either side of the law.

For the legendary mountain man Preacher, times are lean. Trapping is a thing of the past. Only a handful of men cling to the old ways, trading pelts to a market with little demand. Thus it is that Preacher, along with his old friends Three Sleeps Norris and Antoine Revier, grudgingly accepts a commission from the War Department to act as trail guide and scout for a regiment of Dragoons.

Kate Coldane has sweated blood for this saloon, and she won’t let it go down without a fight. Silas Atwood may be the richest rancher in Hudspeth County, but that doesn’t give him the right to push her around. When Atwood sends one of his goons to cause trouble at her watering hole, Kate’s son Rusty guns him down. It may have been self defense, but Atwood is the law, and that means Rusty has to run.

The last thing Jason Fury wants is to lead this wagon train west to California. Hell, he just wants to head back east, where a smart young man like himself has a real shot at a better life. But halfway across Oklahoma the wagon train is attacked by bloodthirsty Commanche and Jedediah Fury - the leader of the settlers and Jason’s father - is counted among the dead. Before he knows it, Jason’s leading the wagons into Arizona Territory, where the squabbling settlers decide to stop for good and start a town they’ll name Fury in honor of Jedediah.

On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Smoke Jensen: The Beginning follows the Jensen clan during these volatile years, from Civil War battles to border state raids to the kind of frontier justice achieved only by bullets and blood.

Clint Black ran the biggest cattle operation in Montana. His Circle 45 spread controlled the best water, the richest graze, and he had his own personal army of cutthroats. And he didn't like competition. Only a fool could fail to see trouble when Smoke Jensen brought 3,500 head up from Colorado to sell to Black's neighbor. When Clint's greed overcomes his common sense and he butchers Smoke's entire crew, Smoke will seek a vengeance never before seen in the wild west. Clint Black has a lesson to learn, and this lesson will cost him the most important thing of all: Blood.

When Big Max Huggins, the outlaw leader of a nearby cutthroat town, tries to impose his influence on Barlow, Smoke Jensen promptly sends the gang packing, but they retaliate by kidnapping his wife, and Smoke must save her as well as the town.