Short Westerns

He began his life as a slave. During the Civil War he escaped and lived among the Indians in the Oklahoma Territories. He learned to ride, shoot and track prey from his adopted people. When the war ended, he was recruited as one of the first black marshals in the history of the west.

One of the most successful pulp magazines ever envisioned was Ranch Romances. Combining Wild West settings with the eternal struggle to snag a mate, it ran from the 1920s clear to the '70s. Naturally, other publishers jumped on the wagon train. Popular Publications did so in 1935 with Rangeland Romances.

This second volume of How the West Was Read, features eight original Western stories written specifically for audio and delivers more of the best of contemporary Western writing.

How the West was Read features eight original Western stories written specifically for audio. This collection is guaranteed to rope in fans of the Western genre. Featuring: "The Alchemist" by Loren D. Estleman, "Backtrack" by Ed Gorman, "Bareknuckler" by Fred Mean, "The Wish Book" by James Reasoner, "Mrs. Crawford's Odyssey" by Deborah Morgan, "Between the Mountains and the Sky" by L. J. Washburn, "Red Feather's Daughter" by W. W. Lee, and "A Tall Man Hangs from a Sort Rope" by Robert J. Randisi.

When the postman sees the letter addressed to Dave Coyle, he knows trouble is coming to Yellow Jacket and guns will soon be blazing. Coyle's face is plastered all over town on Wanted posters offering $7,000, dead or alive, but there's not a man in the territory fast enough to take him on. As word spreads that Coyle is to return, every man in town grabs a gun. But that won't be nearly enough.

Lawbreaker Webb Cousins is headed for a short trial and a long stretch in jail. A bounty hunter has him cuffed and covered, with no chance of escape. But when the prisoner and his captor ride into the town of Wagon Mound, death rides with them. In a flash of rifle fire and a spray of blood, Cousins finds himself shackled to a dead man—and unwittingly caught up in a murderous range war he wants nothing to do with. To ride away a free man will take more than breaking his bonds. He'll have to wage a one-man battle against two bitter enemies locked in a vicious cycle of vengeance and cruelty.

Town of Twenty Triggers opens this new trio of short novels by Les Savage Jr., marking their first appearance in book form. He was known only as the Joker, a portly, chuckling man with a bland smile, a poker face, and an amazing ability to make a deck of cards perform any trick he desired. His traveling companion is Emmet Pierce, a Texan fast with his gun. When this duo arrives in the small ranching town of Benton, the Joker is ready to take it over and claim it for his own.

The long-awaited sequel to Bonnie’s Got a Secret is here, and after hours of intense passion, Bonnie’s discovered she isn’t the only one with a secret. Odessa’s brought trouble to her door, but Bonnie will do anything to protect her Creole beauty, who’s more than willing to get on her hands and knees to thank her savior.

This Raging Bull Publishing box set contains 10 classic Western short stories by Robert Ervin Howard, including "A Gent from Bear Creek", "Apache Mountain War", "Cupid from Bear Creek", and many more.

The Luck of Roaring Camp is a collection of short stories from one of the most unusual of Western writers, in that he only spent 18 years of his life in America. First published in 1870, this new Raging Bull Edition contains the original text as well as background articles including: "Bret Harte - A Golden Age Poet" and "The American Gold Rush - California's 19th Century Success".

When a snowstorm pummels the western half of the country, three couples find once off-limits love just in time for Christmas. An unforgettable holiday anthology from best-selling authors Jennifer Ryan, Maisey Yates, and Lia Riley.

Collected here are 10 Western short stories by Richard S. Wheeler, the award-winning author who makes storytelling look easy. In "Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy", celebrated criminal Mugs Birdsong decides to found an academy that will instruct lawmen on the ways and means of lawlessness. "The Last Days of Dominic Prince" is the tragic tale of a cattle baron and his final conflict with the forces of political correctness. "Dead Weight" introduces us to a coffin maker who constructs a work of art.

Picket-Stake Hendry has spent thirty years roaming the Calico Mountains in search of gold. Finally, in a lonely little canyon far from civilization, he strikes the mother lode, and as soon as he gets home to register the claim, he'll be a millionaire. But before he can make it to Cosmos, a bandit attacks him. Cosmos sheriff Johnny Hendry prefers playing cards to fighting crime, and he's kept the peace in this rough-and-tumble western town by letting bandits do whatever they want. But when he hears that Pick, his adoptive father, has been murdered, he vows bloody vengeance.

Phil Evarts is dead, and the Hatchet Range is up for grabs. That's 70,000 acres of prime turf just waiting for the man rich enough to buy it . . . or the gunman crazy enough to kill for it. Every schemer in town has his eyes on Hatchet, and Bide Mariner leads the charge. An unscrupulous rancher who'll stop at nothing for cash, Mariner has the money and the guns to take whatever he wants. Only Will Ballard stands in his way—and that means Ballard is marked for death.

Imagine: a fantasy world, but not one based on medieval/Dark Ages European culture and myth, but rather on the tropes of the spaghetti Western and Chinese Wuxia. Add steampunk elements. Mix well.

The army wagon train carried rifles, ammunition, and a chestful of gold through Apache territory, where every white man was a target. With the soldiers rode a single stagecoach carrying the woman whom Chris Danning planned to marry. When the train passed through Karnes Canyon, an Apache raiding party stormed out of the shadows, and the creek ran red with blood. For 18 months now, Danning has searched for the Apache who attacked the wagon train and killed his fiancée. He’s also hunting the corrupt white man who sold the soldiers out.

After 10 years of hard fighting and harder living, Will Danning is coming home to Yellow Jacket. His arrival is anything but celebrated, however - the last time he cast a shadow here, he wasn’t exactly walking the straight and narrow. Danning has returned to buy the Pitchfork Ranch, where he used to work cattle that weren’t always legally his. For his neighbors, that’s cause for concern; Angus Case still remembers when his herds were ravaged. What’s more, Danning’s friends can’t understand why he’d want such a dried-up parcel of land.

Frank Christian and Morg Wheelon were going to build something great. After the two veteran cattle punchers saved up enough to start their own outfit, Frank was to ride down to Texas and buy whatever herd he could, then bring them up the Chisholm Trail through Indian country to the rich grasslands of the Cheyenne in Wyoming. Morg would be waiting with the grazing rights in hand. It was a risky plan, but Frank and Morg weren’t about to give up their dream.

If you love faith-filled tales of the West, overcoming stories of resilient love, and characters that embody the pioneering spirit, you will be swept away with The Widows of Wellness Creek Complete Box Set.

Bret Harte was an American short-story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. We offer now some samples of his diversity in a collection of his short stories: “The Outcasts of Poker Flats”, “Tennessee’s Partner”, “The Idyl of Red Gulch”, “Brown of Calaveras”, “Muck-A-Muck”, “The Ninety-Nine Guardsmen”, “Mr. Midshipman Breezy”, “The Legend of Monte Del Diablo”, and more.