Science Fiction Western

In the years after the American Civil War, the West is wild, and the East is run by the robber barons battling each other for power and money. The range is untamed and blood-soaked, and the cities are dazzling tributes to culture and questionable scientific development. Outlaws roam free on the frontiers, and crooked lawmen and Pinkertons compete with lawless bounty hunters for the prices on their heads. Tess Mercury and her posse are the best damn bounty hunters in the West.

The world is ending...or so it seems for junior tennis champion Ele O’Neill. How can she face life in a Montana ghost town after Seattle? No tennis courts, no friends, and she’s stuck in a falling-down old theatre with a rotten little brother and parents who are acting like aliens. And something’s hiding in Ele’s room, watching her every move, but no one will listen to her. Steven Douglas is a 19-year-old cowboy with one little problem - he’s been dead for over 150 years. He’s supposed to protect the weird O’Neill family from unimaginable evil lurking in the theatre....

Jessica Mayfield is presented with that very dilemma when conducting research to add a new adventure for her day trip business lands her squarely in 1890 Arizona. She lost her husband in the war overseas and proceeded to pour herself into building her day tour company with no interest in finding love again. She never expected to find herself staring into the sky blue eyes of a real live cowboy.

Once the world was beautiful and full of people. Cities filled the landscape and buildings reached the sky. But now, after The Wandering, very few portions of the old world remain, and more of the surviving fragments of a glorious past disappear every day.

Colt Hawkridge is an indentured servant living the life of a drake wrangler at Drake Iron Ranch on the farthest edge of civilization. It’s a good life, but it’s not his own. More than anything Colt craves his freedom. And now he just might have it...if he can survive. A runaway drake leads him to discovering dangers and opportunities lurking under the mountains he’s named for. The goblin plague has outrun the advance of civilization and a horde is gathering with the intent to attack the settlements.

US Marshal Mason Sadler has a great hustle going on with the vivacious and lovely Belle Dubois, the madam of the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. She keeps the outlaws occupied until he conveniently shows up to arrest them after which she and Mason split the reward.

Zane Grey's tale shines like the gold in this story. He deftly combines the contemporary history of the border uprising between the United States and Mexico with a fast-moving adventure tale. The prologue describes the finding of gold and the sad plight of the prospectors who discovered it. They will the treasure to the story's heroine. Dick Gale, an eastern college football star, and not much else, teams up with an old friend to rescue the girl and make a man of himself.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts - mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war - and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains west with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Considered by many critics to be the very best Zane Grey Western, The U. P. Trail narrates the story of William Neale, a young engineer working for the Union Pacific railway. He must contend with Indians, bandits, badlands, and bad weather to get the train to the destination. And in the midst of all this, the love of his life is kidnapped! The railroads were expanding to link the nation, with the celebrated golden spike marking the spot in Utah where the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific would meet.

The bank is eroding. The barriers are thinning. And time is running out. The hourglass door has closed behind Dante, sending him back in time to hunt down Zo, Tony, and V. Although giving him up was the hardest test she ever faced, Abby knows that Dante is the only one who can stop the others from destroying time itself. But almost immediately, things start to change, and Abby’s worst fears are realized when Zo begins targeting her past specifically.

Written first as a series of stories in the late 19th century and published later as the quintessential Western novel in the early years of the 20th century, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister contains elements of breathtaking adventure, courage, grit, conflict, humor, and heartfelt emotions that continue to resonate in the 21st century.

Whirlwind, the twin brother of Stone, disappears during a raid into northeastern New Spain. So Stone brings together Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Gataka warriors to go after his missing brother - but there are many things between earth and sky that oppose his quest.

He was known as “the crazy one.” And Leda Stowe could see why after finding the stunning half-naked warrior in her lion’s pen - unarmed and completely unafraid. Though he could somehow soothe the temperamental beast, nothing could calm the desire that sparked through her body at his touch. She wished they could hide away together on her island forever, but the world thrummed with danger. Before Leda could claim Hunter for herself, they would have to join the other Immortals to face the greatest trial yet: The Gathering.

Cambridge professor and renowned historian Anthony Pagden covers a vast subject in a compact package with Peoples and Empires. This wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating work examines the origins and history of the West with terse, efficient prose. With a captivating narration by Robert O'Keefe, listeners will find this work enjoyable and utterly absorbing.

I'm sure you've heard of Calamity Jane, but this is not a novel about Calamity Jane. At least not the Jane you may have heard about. Calamity Jane is part of the legends of the Wild West, but long before she scouted with Custer or "Wild Bill" Hickok, she was a 15-year-old girl with a fiery temper. Violence and tragedy turn young Jane's world upside down and soon she finds herself riding with an alien gunslinger — the Green Man — through a landscape of revenge and betrayal.

Now married, Paul McAllister and Anna Jaramillo McAllister, continue building their fledgling Estancia into the refuge they’ve dreamed of. Where family, friends, and employees can live a life safe from the violence of daily life in the wilderness of the New Mexico Territory. Surrounded by high desert mountains, roving hostile Indians, and bushwhackers, Paul and Anna struggle to overcome devious plots, far and near, as well as the mysterious villains behind those plots.

The age of plenty is dead. Wars and rumors of wars - from economic collapse to cult driven genocide. Flesh eating cannibals were blamed but no one really knew the truth, no one really wanted to know the truth. Where there was once life and hope there is now only suffrage, where the remnants; struggle onward, attempting to squeeze something of worth from a dying world. Every decade brings a new war, new battles and conflicts from newly formed factions - ideologies that were previously unknown.

Desa Kincaid has spent the last 10 years in pursuit of a man whose experiments have killed over a dozen people. Blessed with the power to transform ordinary objects into devastating weapons, she journeys through trading ports, backwater towns, forests, deserts, and the haunted remains of a dead city. But can she stop her enemy before he unleashes something terrible on the world?

Compelling and dramatic, this Western has intelligent zombies, corrupt lawmen, sociopaths, evil, and outlaws, taking you on a gripping listen with black oil, seduction, power, and dark horror. The West has never been this wild, deadly, or sexy.

It's 1877 and Russians forces occupy the Pacific Northwest. They are advancing into California. New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable. The one man who can help has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts. A healer and a former sheriff lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor attempts to unleash the power of the lightning wolves.