Western Action Adventure

Using his father’s handwritten notes, journal entries, and correspondences, Beau L’Amour uncovers how and why many never-before-seen manuscripts were written - and speculates about the ways they might have ended. These selections celebrate L’Amour’s vision and virtuosity, including the first seven chapters of a powerful novel about the Trail of Tears, a chilling Western horror story, and a tale of the American Revolution featuring a character related to L’Amour’s well-known Sackett family.

To get fifty thousand dollars in gold across fifty miles of desert, the desperate band quickly learns how much they need each other - and how deep their greed and suspicion can run. At the end of the journey lie the waters of Baja and a new life in Mexico, but first they have to survive the savage heat, bounty-hunting Yaqui Indians, and the shifting, treacherous nature of both the desert sands and their own conflicting loyalties.

With a handful of murderous rogues, Captain Jed Foster has run off with four wagons containing new Springfield rifles, bayonets, and ammunition meant to resupply the troops at Fort Bowie in Arizona Territory. Foster plans to sell the weapons to the highest bidder, whether it's Apaches, Mexican revolutionaries, or Confederate veterans who still dream of destroying the Union. But that's the least of Foster's problems. His junior officer, Lieutenant Grat Holden, is coming after him...with the help of an ornery ex-sergeant known as "Hard Rock" Masterson and fiery guerrilla fighter Soledad.

Busted out of prison by an outlaw friend, Flintlock joins a hunt for a fortune - a golden bell hanging in a remote monastery. But between the smouldering ruin of his former jail cell and a treasure in the Arizona mountains there will be blood at a U.S. Army fort, a horrifying brush with Apache warriors, and a dozen bloody showdowns with the schemers, shootists, madmen, and lost women who find their way to Flintlock's side.

If there's anything better than coming home to Texas, it's getting paid to do it. For Scratch Morton and Bo Creel, always on the hunt for funds, the job is taking three vicious criminals from Arkansas to Tyler, Texas for trial. Little do they know that one of the criminals, the one that's a beautiful woman, is the most dangerous of all. Soon the journey home turns into a race for buried treasure, a shoot-out, and another double cross - until Scratch and Bo are making one last mad, bullet-sprayed dash through the land of their birth...or the land of their death....

This epic tale sweeps across continents and time, hovers over a key era in American history, and deftly realizes the humanity of a whole cast of characters. Told through flashbacks and alternating points of view, The Last Crossing is about redemption, about seeking and finding, about human feelings and strengths, about personal honor, and about that moment in life when we must decide to cross over and surrender to love.

Lance Kilkenny has a debt to pay, and he isn't about to let the friend who saved his life go down in a range war. But when Kilkenny tries to stop the fighting, he finds there's more at stake than land or wire. Whoever is stirring up trouble has big ideas for the Live Oak country - and an army of hired guns to back them up. Nita Riordan, the beautiful and fiery owner of the Apple Canyon Saloon, warns Lance that the mysterious man orchestrating the conflict wants him dead.

When Juan Cabrillo fails to capture the leader of Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartel and loses an Oregon crew member in the process, he’s determined to get revenge. Little does he know that the explosion he just narrowly escaped was merely the latest flash of violence from a machine of war that has existed for decades, dating from the bloodiest episode in Armenia’s history.

Ninety years ago the Toomey brothers, along with 25 other men and 4,000 head of cattle, vanished en route to Arizona. When writer and historian Dan Sheridan is invited to the missing brothers’ ranch by its current owner, he jumps at the chance. The visit fits right in with his plan to solve the century-old mystery - but it turns out that his host isn’t a fan of books, writers, or people who don’t mind their own business.

In a hail of thunder and gunfire, Jeston Nash fled a new Orleans billiards hall with a land deed in one hand, a blazing pistol in the other. He'd won his gamble with Quick Quintan Cordell fair and square. But in seconds, violence flared, Cordell lay dead, and Sheriff Pat Garret's voice still rang in Nash's ears...somewhere, someday, they would meet again....Jeston Nash learned about robbery from his cousin, Jesse James. But it was the wild outlaw Billy the Kid who taught him that even a wanted man is just a man. Nash catches up with the kid in a dusty town of drunken bottle-shooters.

When Dennis Dorgan is unexpectedly declared the loser in a boxing match against Kid Leary that he quite obviously won, he realizes something has gone amiss. The situation grows worse when his manager comes in and reveals that he has lost all his money and his ship because of the loss. When the crooked referee comes to Dorgan and tells him that the fight was fixed for a reason, Dorgan agrees to help him shake up the bad guy and straighten out the situation.

In Broken Bridle, Wyoming, Jeremiah Purdy, the town's tinhorn sheriff is a college kid who wants to become governor some day. But outlaw Darius Pike couldn't care less about anyone else's ambitions. With Pike holding Broken Bridle in a bloody grip of terror, Purdy sends a desperate cry for help - to Shawn O'Brien, town tamer. Shawn's mission: ride to Wyoming and pry Broken Bridle loose from Pike's reign of fear.

Rye Tyler was 12 when his father was killed in an Indian raid. Taken in by a mysterious stranger with a taste for books and an instinct for survival, Rye is schooled in the hard lessons of life in the West. But after killing a man, he is forced to leave his new home. He rides lonely mountain passes and works on dusty cattle drives until he finds a job breaking horses. Then he meets Liza Hetrick, and in her eyes he sees his future. After establishing himself as marshal of Alta, he returns, only to discover that Liza has been kidnapped.

Once every year, Perley Gates and his brothers lead the Triple-G crew on its annual cattle drive. It’s a treacherous journey along the Great Western Trail, with a herd of 2,000 cows on one side and many opportunities for trouble on the other. This year, trouble shows up in the form of a beautiful young woman, her little baby, and her bizarre traveling companion — a colorful old cuss who goes by the name of Possom Smith. They’re heading to a settlement called Butcher Bottom, and risking their necks to get there.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal, and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

Everyone was dead. Indian raiders massacred the entire wagon train. Only seven-year-old Hardy Collins and three-year-old Betty Sue Powell, managed to survive. With a knife, a faithful stallion, and the survival lessons his father taught him, Hardy must face the challenges of the open prairie as they head west in search of help. Using ingenuity and common sense, Hardy builds shelters, forages for food, and learns to care for Betty Sue. But their journey through this hostile wilderness is being tracked by even more hostile men.

Kate Lundy, owner of the Tumbling B, and Conn Dury, her foreman, told Tom the rules: men from the cattle drives are forbidden on the north side of town. People appreciated the money the cowboys spent but thought them too coarse to be near their homes. Enticed to come calling by Linda McDonald, daughter of one of the leading citizens, Tom Lundy broke the law and crossed the line. Later that night, he was dead. Outraged by her brother's murder, Kate vows to destroy the entire town.

One man finds himself torn between two cultures in this sweeping tale of frontier life in post–Civil War era Texas. In the years following the American War Between the States, the once vacated military presence in west Texas is on the rise to protect the waves of settlers moving into the region. Living peaceably with the Mescalero Apache, half-breed former military scout Holton Lang promotes the tentative harmony between the US cavalry and the Native American population.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.

"It' s a question of what you have to do, what you have to live with if you don't." Sheriff Walt Longmire is reading A Christmas Carol in his office on December 24th when he's interrupted by the ghost of Christmas past: a young woman with a hairline scar across her forehead and more than a few questions about Walt' s predecessor, Lucian Connally. Walt doesn' t recognize the mystery woman, but she seems to know him and claims to have something she must return to Connally.