Mystery Western Historical Fiction

Here is the kind of authentically detailed epic novel that has become Louis L’Amour’s hallmark. It is the compelling story of US Air Force major Joe Mack, a man born out of time. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness.

The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation.

Authors of over 200 books combined, William W. and J.A. Johnstone write action-packed tales of Western life. In Rampage of the Mountain Man, a job offer to deliver 3,000 head of cattle sounds like just the payday Smoke Jensen needs. But when an angry Cheyenne warrior attacks him and his comrades, Smoke discovers that he's not the only one looking to cash in.

From the best-selling author of Riders of the Purple Sage, comes another classic Western tale. In the spirit and glory of a classic Western, and published exactly as the author originally intended, Knights of the Range, is one of Zane Grey's swiftest and most exciting novels.

A wagon train winding through the remote reaches of the Rocky Mountain high country can attract plenty of scavengers - some of them human - like Vic Bedell and his gang of cutthroats. All he wants is the women, who can be traded for gold mine supplies...or used for whatever else he has in mind. But he didn't count on Preacher leading that train.

Crime-solving cowboys Gus "Old Red" and Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer are wandering around San Francisco when they stumble onto another mystery to be solved: the death of their acquaintance Dr. Chan. It turns out that no one wants this mystery solved, but that doesn't stop the brothers from riling up the locals with their heavy-handed investigations.

William Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid", killed his first man when he was 12. By the time he was 21 he had, by his own reckoning, slain 19 more. In the intervening years, he had become "Billy the Kid", bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje traces Billy's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country.

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail 26-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.

Big Max Higgins ran the outlaw town of Hell's Creek up in the north Montana Rockies...and he decided to include the nearby town of Barlow in his cutthroat operation. What he didn't know was that Smoke Jensen was there with his wife, visiting relatives. It didn't take Smoke long to rout out the lot of them with angry fists and blazing guns...but Smoke didn't count on Big Max doing something as daring, desperate, and stupid as kidnapping his wife - and demanding the town of Barlow itself as ransom.

This third volume of Louis L'Amour's collected stories is a thrilling tribute to the unique spirit of our frontier heritage and proves again the enduring popularity of America's favorite storyteller.

Carl Webster, the hot kid of the marshals service, is polite, respects his elders, and can shoot a man driving away in an Essex at 400 yards. Carl works out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, federal courthouse during the 1930s, the period of America's most notorious bank robbers: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson...those guys.

If widowed town seamstress Nell Armstrong has to make one more pair of boring chaps for the cowboys in her tiny Wyoming town, she might lose her mind. So meeting Brand Nolte, a widower father struggling to raise three girls, seems like her dream come true. Brand has no idea how to dress the girls, and Nell finally has a chance to both create beautiful dresses and teach the girls to sew. But Nell is much more than a seamstress.

Trueman Rock is a daring young cowboy and rider. Six years ago he had to leave the cowtown of Wagontongue because of a history of gunfights and run-ins with bad hombres. Since then, he's become a man who only uses his gun when he needs to, on rustlers and crooks. Now, he's returning to his hometown. But things have changed. The town and its people aren't what they used to be. He expects to find some of his enemies there to welcome him, but instead finds they're all dead. In their place is the Preston family.

In 1848, Dooley Monahan, son of struggling Iowa pioneers, went off to 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. It starts with a family slaughtered by Apaches, a dog smarter than most humans Dooley knows, and a girl with a wounded soul.

It is 1917, in that sliver of borderland that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest, handsome, intelligent); Cob (short, heavyset, a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest, thin, ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in Southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula.

Louis L'Amour's tales of adventure cannot be surpassed for sheer storytelling excitement, and they stand as a testament to his legendary appeal. Here are timeless tales of danger and daring, wanderlust and heroism, filled with ordinary men and women facing often insurmountable challenges with courage, dignity, honor, and heart.

Robber baron Clifton Satterlee is in greedy pursuit of a coveted piece of land in the New Mexico Territory. He plans to wrest the timber-rich hills from the Tua Pueblo and then populate the town with his own subservient labor force. Many will suffer as his thirst for blood equals his lust for wealth and power. But Saterlee has overlooked one mighty obstacle - the iron justice and deadly aim of the legendary mountain man Smoke Jensen. In triumph blood will be spilled....

In the best-selling novels of William W. Johnstone, mountain man Smoke Jensen is a legend. Now, Johnstone presents the adventures of Smoke's long-lost brother Luke, who was reported killed during the Civil War. The war is over and Luke is very much alive, his soul forged by the violence he witnessed on the battlefields. His job is now tracking down the worst outlaws - by any means necessary.

Charley Sunday, a sensible, sober-minded Texas grandfather, imparts the American Cowboy legacy to his only grandchild as he and several of his grizzled cronies concoct a 1,000-mile longhorn cattle drive across 21st Century America. Four leathery cowboys, one insightful Indian, two strong-willed women, a two-gun oddball, a dog, and a little boy make an unlikely team as they trek from Colorado to Texas, continually running up against the forces of corruption.

Western Missouri. Former army scout Jack Gregory returns from battle to a homestead in ruins. A wanted man with no place to go, he chooses an even deadlier career - as a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. Under a new name, Jack serves bravely in the Seventh Cavalry. But when Custer’s disastrous leadership ends in devastating slaughter, Jack sets off to forge his own destiny. Winning a small ranch in a card game, he hopes to settle down and live a peaceful life.