Western Action

Born and bred in the Texas Pandhandle town of Comanche Crossing, William "Wild Bill" Longley gunned down a dozen of its men in cold blood before he got around to the sheriff and deputy - so he could take over the job himself. Then he found the perfect sidekick in a vicious career criminal named Booker Tate.

When a farmer's wife is murdered, an innocent man is accused: Patrick O'Brien. The book-loving brother had shared his love of literature with the woman, but her husband claims she spurned Pat's advances and that's why he killed her. Now it looks like Patrick will swing from the gallows - especially after his lawyer is targeted, too.

"Stay the hell out of Fort Worth." Those were the last words uttered by a dying man who was the boomtown's most recent sheriff. Rail-thin and half starved, desperate cowpuncher Jess Casey ignores the travel advice. Instead, Jess not only enters Fort Worth, he becomes the new sheriff, inheriting the body-riddled little slice of heaven called Hell's Half Acre, the wide-open, deadliest piece of real estate on the American frontier.

Captain Sean Mulkerin comes home from the sea to find his family home in jeopardy. After the death of his father, Sean’s determined mother, Eileen, took it upon herself to run the sprawling Rancho Malibu - until a fire destroyed her hard-earned profits. Now, on the edge of financial ruin, Eileen hopes Sean can help them find a way out. The rumor is that her late husband found gold in the wild and haunted California hills, but the only clue to its whereabouts lies with an ancient, enigmatic Indian.

Barnabus Pike is no gunfighter and not much of a street fighter. Eddie Holt is a black boxer in a white man's world. They've both taken their share of hard knocks. Now they're looking to survive a brutal winter in a remote Montana line shack, collect their pay, and settle down for good. Then they cross paths with a hardworking Irish immigrant and his beautiful, spirited sister, who've been burned off their land. It's a fight Pike and Holt don't want, don't need, and don't dare turn their backs on - especially when one of the perpetrators might be one of Pike's old friends.

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.

Garrett Cross is no stranger to traveling the outlands. He's been roaming for years, hunting down vampires and giving them exactly what they deserve: sharpened stakes and silver bullets. Now, he's come to Frontier Falls. It's a little settlement where humans and vampires have made peace. But if there's one thing Cross knows, it's vampires, and any deal they make is one just waiting to be broken.

The Clayborne brothers were a rough gang of street urchins - until they found an abandoned baby girl in a New York City alley, named her Mary Rose, and headed to Blue Belle, Montana, to raise her to be a lady. They became a family - held together by loyalty and love, if not blood - when suddenly a stranger threatened to tear them apart.

Lance Kilkenny's gun is believed to be the fastest in the West, but once the gunfight is over, he disappears. Most folks don't even know what he looks like. Some time back, Mort Davis saved Kilkenny's life after he was shot up. Now Davis needs Kilkenny's help. He has filed a claim on a water hole near Lost Creek in the live oak country.

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives - but one man held their futures hostage. Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford’s captives were the Travens’ sister and Dal’s tough-minded fiancée, Kate. Now Mac and Dal must take up arms once again and ride together against Ashford’s army.

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.

For thousands of years, the lonely canyon knew only wind and rain, wild animals, and an occasional native hunter. Then a trapper found a chunk of gold, and everything changed overnight. In six days, a town called Confusion appeared... and on the seventh it could disappear, consumed by the flames of lawlessness and violence. On one side are those who understand only brute force. On the other are men who want law and order but are ready to use a noose to achieve their ends.

Considine and Pete Runyon had once been friends, back in the days when both were cowhands. But when Runyon married the woman Considine loved, the two parted ways. Runyon settled down and became a sheriff. Considine took up robbing banks. Now Considine is planning a raid on the bank at Obaro, a plan that will pit him against Runyon...and lead to riches or suicide. The one thing he never counted on was meeting a strong, beautiful woman and her stubborn father, hell-bent on traveling alone through Apache territory to a new life.

In the 1870s, Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek "an original relation to nature," drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher's Crossing, a small Kansas town full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. One of these men regales Will with tales of the immense buffalo herds hidden away in the Colorado Rockies and convinces him to join an expedition to track them down.

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men - men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess.

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.

From one of the greatest storytellers of the American West comes a collection of short stories, including "Death West Bound", "Old Doc Yak", "It's Your Move", "And Proudly Die", "Survival", "Show Me the Way to Go Home", "Thicker Than Blood", "The Admiral", "Shanghai, Not Without Gestures", "The Man Who Stole Shakespeare", "The Dancing Kate", "Off the Mangrove Coast", "Glorious Glorious", "By the Ruins of El Walarieh", "Where There's Fighting", "The Cross and the Candle", "A Friend of the General", "Author's Tea", "Dead End Drift", and "Let Me Forget".

The accidental gunslinger Dooley Monahan has quit wandering and settled down to a farmer’s life. But when the itch for adventure gets too strong, he packs up and rides west. Along with his horse General Grant, and Blue, a dog who’s too smart for his own good, Dooley rides for the Black Hills to strike it rich in the gold fields of Colorado. But fate has other ideas.

As a young man, John Bannack worked hard on his brother's farm—until times got tough and his brother grew desperate. Desperate enough to rob a bank. Unfortunately, John's brother left a trail that led straight to the Bannack farm. When a posse showed up to make an arrest, John made a fateful decision: He confessed to his brother's crime. Sacrificed his freedom for the sake of his brother's family. And doomed himself to a hard, hellish life in a rat-hole state prison.

Tell Sackett had fought his share of Indians and managed to take something of value from his battles: a deep and abiding respect. But that respect is lost when Apache braves kidnap his nephew, forcing Tell to cross the border into the Sierra Madres to bring the boy back. What troubles Tell more, though, is the boy’s mother: Could she possibly be inventing a rescue mission to deliver her husband’s brother into an ambush?