Literature Dramatized

Shaving his beard and posing as a farmer from Ohio, Preacher comes face-to-face with Shad Beaumont and insinuates himself into his organization — as Beaumont's own personal bodyguard. But before Preacher can take down the sadistic leader, innocents — and not-so-innocents — are drawn into Beaumont's intricate web and Preacher finds the stakes of the game have become alarmingly high.

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

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.

During a trip back east for a family reunion, Preacher learns that even the civilized Midwest can attract a motherlode of trouble...especially when a gang of local bully boys decide to pick a fight. Now wealthy landowner Elam Parks lies dead - and there's a $5,000 reward on the head of the man accused: the first mountain man. The fortune in blood money has dispatched a small army of bounty hunters after Preacher. Now, back in his once-peaceful homestead in the High Lonesome, as he sights down the barrel of his '33 Hall North breechloader, Preacher is ready for target practice.

The first attack occurs in the underwater caverns of the Bahamas. Two professional divers exploring the unknown. A monstrous flesh-ripping predator they never see coming. Now the attacks are coming closer and closer to shore. A sun-soaked playground for sea-loving tourists. A human feasting ground for whatever lurks beneath.

Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city's aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces - human and other - stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder. Today she is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillon's underbelly with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdershins herself.

A Comanche war party raids settlements and steals horses. A young warrior named Buffalo Caller kills a young couple, then abducts their red-haired little boy. The boy is rescued by a volunteer defender of the white settlers named Mike Shannon, who raises the boy as his own and calls him Rusty.

Ten years ago, the legendary mountain man Preacher taught a violent lesson to eastern bad man Ezra Pease when he ran the outlaw out of town. But Pease and his trail-scum are back - shooting up the Big Empty to nail Preacher’s hide to a tree. Preacher’s riding to teach Pease one final deadly lesson. But he may be too late - because Pease’s vicious dealings have fired up an all-out Indian War. Now, with hard-riding death on both sides, Preacher, along with his old friends Beartooth, Dupre and Nighthawk, are heading straight into lead-flying scalp-smashing hell!

It was a virgin land of vast horizons...a land of dreams and dust and blood, where men sought glory and hope died hard. But for Jamie Ian MacCallister, who'd grown to manhood among Indians and fought at the Alamo, war and wilderness were home...and survival was a way of life. From the battlegrounds of Texas to the Colorado Rockies and the goldfields of California, Jamie MacCallister was one of a handful of daring pioneers blazing trails in the American West.

The sun is setting on humanity. The night now belongs to voracious demons that prey upon a dwindling population forced to cower behind half-forgotten symbols of power. Legends tell of a Deliverer: a general who once bound all mankind into a single force that defeated the demons. But is the return of the Deliverer just another myth? Perhaps not. Out of the desert rides Ahmann Jardir, who has forged the desert tribes into a demon-killing army. He has proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer and he carries ancient weapons - a spear and a crown - that give credence to his claim.

Frank Morgan has drifted down to Idaho after a wild range war in Montana and his fame as a gunfighter is traveling fast and far ahead of him. With his face on the covers of newspapers and dozens of dime novels, he's got nowhere left to hide. And now It seems that gunning down a legend like Frank has become more than an obsession to some men — it's a high stakes sport.

Jamie Ian and Kate MacCallister are together now, buried side by side on a ridge overlooking the huge Colorado valley they had settled and the town they had founded. It’s up to their children now to carry on the MacCallister legacy. Falcon MacCallister is more than willing to take on that task. He’s the spitting image of his father, Jamie. He stands six foot three and is heavy with muscle. Just like his father, Falcon literally doesn’t know his own strength. And like his father, Falcon is quick on the shoot. Lightning quick.

Notes from the author: The following is a short story I wrote in the Elantris world back in January of 2006. There were always a few holes in Elantris where I decided not to include viewpoints or sections of explanation in the name of streamlining, particularly at the end. In the back of my mind, I knew what happened. This story talks about one of those holes; it is meant to be heard after you’ve finished the novel and takes place during the events of the climax.

When bizarre magical disappearances disrupt shows around the city, Esther receives a mysterious warning not to go on with her off-Broadway show. Desperate to stay on stage rather than resort to waiting tables, Esther turns to her new BFF, Dr. Maximillian Zadok, a 350-year-old mage whose day job is protecting New York from Evil. Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery without losing her job, Esther and Max team up with a conjuring cowboy, a banker with stage aspirations, and a flock of fearless drag queens.

She calls herself Calexa Rose Dunhill - names taken from the grim surroundings where she awoke, bruised and bloody, with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who left her for dead. She has made the cemetery her home, living in a crypt and avoiding human contact. But Calexa can’t hide from the dead - and because she can see spirits, they can’t hide from her. Then one night, Calexa spies a group of teenagers vandalizing a grave - and watches in horror as they commit murder.

They call him Preacher. And they call him when they need help. Now, a Mexican brother and sister have asked the legendary frontiersman to accompany them into the Sangre de Cristo mountains - to find a missing family fortune of gold and silver. In a land stained by cruelty and war, the Spanish treasure has drawn the interest of a treasure hunter with ruthless paid killers as his partners. And by the time Preacher finds the bounty, bullets have begun to fly. No gunfight will ever scare Preacher. But betr

The Sante Fe Trail stretches from the Mississippi River to New Mexico Territory through the West's most savage lands. That's why a wealthy trader hires the mountain man called Preacher to keep his trade goods safe. But then, a towering, seemingly supernatural grizzly bear attacks. Both outlaws and Comanches ambush the wagon train. And the travelers find themselves surrounded by predators of every shape and stripe. For Preacher, there is only one way to go - straight into the heart of danger, to blaze a killing trail of his own....

This latest installment in Johnstone's series about frontiersman Jamie MacCallister finds the former gunfighter, now 50, leading a serene life of retirement in Colorado even as his sons are fighting on both sides of the Civil War. Summoned to Washington, Jamie is offered the position of chief scout for the Union by Lincoln himself. But though the rugged Westerner loathes slavery, he loves states' rights more and, after a meeting with Robert E. Lee, he signs up with the Confederacy as commander of a guerrilla band.

In California, Frank Morgan nearly found a home. But now he’s pulled up stakes and hit the road again, aiming to reach the high desert of Arizona. For Frank, the plan changes when he steps into a saloon in a dusty boom town called Los Angeles. That’s where he learns that his nemesis, Val Dooley, has found a new business: the selling of young women into prostitution, with the victims as young as 12 years old and the survivors ending up drugged and beaten.

There were some who knew Smoke Jensen as a hero...and there were others who believed the dark side of the legend — that he was an outlaw who'd killed over 300 men. But when Smoke wakes up with a gut-wrenching headache in a New Mexico jail cell, he feels as helpless as a newly whelped cougar cub — with a lease on his life shorter than the blink of an eye.