Literature Dramatized

Baron Crabbe is dangerously high on legends of the Trader and rumors of a secret cache. He occupies a redoubt but the old tech remains unfathomable. His ace in the hole is Ryan Cawdor and his band. Prisoners at blasterpoint, they’ re ordered to use the matter-transfer units to secure the whereabouts of the imagined weapons stockpile. Ryan knows the truth — and it won’t help Crabbe.

Twelve years ago, newspaperman John Bryce saved an innocent man from the hangman's noose. That man was Matt Jensen. In gratitude, Matt gave Bryce four gold nuggets and told him, "If there's ever anything I can do, just let me know." Now, that day has come. As editor of the Fullerton Defender, Bryce has become the target of a powerful - and ruthless - English lord. A feared master duelist, his aim is fixed on the Dakota Territories.

Trapped in a remote cabin, surrounded by ruthless gunmen, Matt Jensen and his adoptive father Smoke Jensen join forces with their old friend, Preacher, in the greatest fight of their lives. A ruthless cattle baron has waged an all-out war against the peaceful native tribesmen who have become Preacher's friends. In a bloodthirsty bid for land, power, and wealth, the baron's drafted an army of professional killers to destroy the homesteaders - among them the Jensens are the only men brave enough to stand in his way.

Lady Cecelia is to mysteries what a pack of foxhounds is to a fox...and her interference brings her to disaster. But Captain Serrano isn't about to let her employer - and now her friend - be destroyed. With the help of Lady Cecelia's nephew and his friends, including Lord Thornbuckle's adventurous daughter, Heris plots a rescue, while trying to re-balance her own life and recover relationships with some of her former crew. In the process, she and Lady Cecelia bring down a government.

Esther Diamond's year gets off to a rocky start when NYPD's Detective Connor Lopez, who slept with her and then didn't call, shuts down the Little Italy restaurant where Esther works between acting jobs and gets her arrested. Once she's out of handcuffs, Esther takes a small role in a grad student's film project in Chinatown - where her friend, semi-retired hit man Lucky Battistuzzi, is hiding out in a Chinese-Italian mortuary.

Jon-Tom just wanted to go home. Trapped in a world where animals speak and magic is real, the American college student yearned for an ordinary dorm-room life. But here his music has magical power — even if he can’t control it — which may be able to save the world from the army of the Plated Folk, whose sinister queen plans on killing and eating every warm-blooded mammal she can get her pincers on and taking over their lands.

Conrad Browning had money, a manservant and a mission: to find his missing children and meet them for the first time. He's come as far as Denver, dodged a bullet from a beautiful assassin, and landed in a big buy-in poker tournament against a ruthless heavy-betting cattle baron with a plan of his own - to take this city slicker into the wilderness, and hunt him like an animal. But Rance McKinney doesn't know who he is facing. The son of legendary gunman Frank Morgan, Conrad goes by the moniker of the Loner.

A woman and an iron horse put Matt Jensen in the crosshairs of a man out to reap a fortune with a new railroad through Paiute land. First, Cyrus Longacre steals the land. Next, he frames Matt Jensen for the murder of a beautiful woman. The final step is to keep Matt’s father and grandfather far away from Nevada Territory.... Preacher and Smoke are otherwise engaged — until some hired killers get their attention. Suddenly, the elder Jensens have a hunch young Matt is in trouble and together they’re riding to Paiute country.

After his son gives him a pair of "X-ray" glasses as a gift, Martin Blackstone tries them on just for the hell of it - and all they do is give him a headache...until he sees things he can’t possibly be seeing. Glimpses of things on the other side of a wall or beneath someone’s clothing. He wants to believe it’s just his overactive imagination, but the “X-ray” specs actually work.

Once believed dead and gone, Daemons have found a way back into the world. But the only people who can withstand their assault are spread across the face of the Sfaera. Free at last from the influence of assassins and emperors alike, the psimancer Winter sails back to her hometown - only to find a new trouble stirring. Meanwhile, the heretic sisters Jane and Cinzia Oden are beset by supernatural attacks. And soon their allies, the vampire-girl Astrid and the former assassin Knot, must face the terrifying Black Matron.

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?

With Apaches on the prod, ex-cavalry sergeant Sean Keegan, bounty hunter Jed Breen, and ex-Texas Ranger Matt McCulloch take shelter in a West Texas way station — along with a hot-as-a-pistol female bound for the gallows, a spiteful newspaper editor, and a coward with $50,000 who promises them five grand if they’ll deliver his blood-soaked stash to his wife.

In the west, there’s always work for the kind of men willing to get their hands dirty — from rounding stray cattle to stringing barbed wire. Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are just such men. Now they’ve been hired for the one job they’ve never tried: wearing badges — in a little stain of a town called Whiskey Flats.

All parties converge on the capital city, Triah - Cinzia and the Odenites to establish their new religion and appeal against a charge of heresy; Knot and Astrid to find answers in the vampire girl's past; and Winter has come to conquer the city, at the head of a tiellan army. But Winter is still struggling with her addictions and anger; Knot's efforts to be reunited with her can only lead to disappointment. Cinzia cannot free herself from a terrible bargain. As the battle lines are drawn, the true nature of the goddess Canta, and the Odenites' final purpose, will soon be revealed....

The Ghost Finders answer a distress call from the private research center of one of the biggest drug companies in the world, where a team of police enforcement agents have vanished. They have no idea what they're facing — except a deadline that threatens to remove the entire building from existence if they fail to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Underpowered and overwhelmed, Kenton tries to hold the Sand Masters together as forces political and personal conspire against them. Now, in one final push, Kenton must tap the most dangerous depths of his own abilities to combat the enemies within his own guild and discover the truth behind the ambush that killed his father and almost destroyed the Sand Masters for good.

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.

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.

A prostitute. A virgin. A tomboy. A woman on the run. And a bank robber’s girlfriend. These five brides-to-be are ready to get hitched in San Angelo, Texas — and it’s Ace and Chance’s job to get them to the church on time. But this is no easy walk down the aisle. It’s one hard journey that could get them all killed....