Western Crime Fiction

Six months ago, Ellie was a newlywed, working the dry land in 1880s Texas. Then the desperados came. They raped her and killed her husband, leaving her for dead. But she hunted them down and, along the way, found an inner strength and relentless determination that no man can match. Ellie thought the killing was over, that she'd put her guns away for good to run a ranch that she'd inherited from a legendary Texas Ranger. She was wrong.

One murdered girl. One unknown killer. One legendary lawman. A lone man sits his horse atop a bluff near the southern Missouri border. There's a story in the country ahead of him. A dark tale of murdered girls and a killer not caught, of an old friend asking for help, and a letter from a frightened young mother that has arrived too late to save her daughter. A letter that now rests in this man's pocket.....

The year is 1910. Halley's Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the "Great White Hope", Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region's biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution.

Ranger Burrack and Federal Marshal Summers must battle Arizona regulator Morgan Waite and his band of vigilantes. When Burrack and Summers apprehend Cold Devil's saloon owner Jack Spain, Spain offers $10,000 to anyone who frees him. Getting wind of Spain's reward, Waite and his posse bushwhack the lawmen and leave them for dead in a terrifying landslide. But blazing gunfire will soon heat up the town of Cold Devil.

Jacob Enright's dead men stayed dead. But their memories did not. The nightmares persisted. They always did. Knowing it was a dream did nothing to lessen its horror. Gambling, drinking, whoring, and killing. It had become like second nature to the ex-lawman turned vigilante. Wanda Blackfoot had loved Jacob for as long as she could remember, but now Wanda didn't know who she was anymore, or more precisely, she didn't know what she was, without Jacob by her side acting as her touchstone.

Thad Taylor is no one's idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he's disapproved of by most - especially his father. But when his father doesn't return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he's far from ready for the ordeal. Because his father is already dead. He has fallen victim to the bloody Benders - a demented family who lures travelers into their cabin way station only to rob and brutally murder them.

One of Humboldt's well-known horse breeders is brutally murdered, then left to burn in his barn along with his prized stallions. A Jack Logan client has been accused of the murder and Carson has been called in to investigate. However, getting to the truth is proving to be a real challenge. It seems no one, not even the accused, is capable of telling the truth. Greed, lust, infidelity, half-truths, and the Memphis Mafia all seem to be involved - somehow. Sorting out the pieces and finding the real murderer will be a monumental task.

It’s early summer in Jackson, Wyoming. Former East Coast prosecutor Jake Trent, now a local fishing guide, is wading through a swift current of local politics, introspection, and tragedy. Three seemingly unrelated deaths have occurred in one day - unheard of in the scenic valley. A skier perishes in a freak late-season avalanche. A French couple is discovered mutilated on a remote trail in Grand Teton National Park - presumably by a bear.On the Snake River, Jake himself finds the body of an expensively attired tourist fisherman.

When Ruben Beeler finds a rancher friend shot to death and mutilated, he calls on Marshals Marion Daniels and Homer Poteet for help. That call begins a chase that takes the men from St. Joe into Kansas and down to Hell on the Border and the Fort Smith court of Hangin' Judge Issac Parker. In pursuit of the killers, the Marshals venture into the Oklahoma Territory, or "The Nations" as it was known at the time, following a path of bloodlust that began before the killing of Arkansas Bill Cole. Serial killers are nothing new, as the Marshals find out on the Cutthroat Trail.

Cass Darringer returns from hunting to find his partner murdered, three innocent men hanged, his mustangs stolen, and himself the target of vigilantes. He's saved by Texas Rafferty and her uncle, but ends up in a fiery showdown with ruthless killers.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is a predator lying in wait. He's undercover as an outlaw to infiltrate a pair of vicious border gangs and bring them down. This mission has already had its share of casualties, and if Burrack has his say, there will be more. A cloud of dust rises as four men ride toward the Twisted Hills. The only thing between them and certain death at the hands of the Apaches is Sam, who also wants those men dead.

John Stuart Tapscott, after service to the Confederacy and his home state of Virginia, heads westward to find a life that doesn't resemble a mockery of everything he's ever known. After brief stops, he finds himself an adopted member of a small band of Osage that have wandered to Texas. A series of events thereafter display the necessity to him of his leaving his new family and trekking further.

Railroaded to prison for killing a man who had just killed his wife and child, Sheriff Connor Slate is remanded to prison for life. The man he killed was the territory's second most powerful man's son. After five years of hell, Slate is partially pardoned by the new governor and the new chief justice of the territory's court system. They understand that the jury and the sentence was rigged against Slate five years ago and are out to set it straight, but only if he'll help them hunt down the wanted men in the territory before the vote on statehood in five years takes place.

The South Carolina backcountry is no place for a young girl to grow up in the 1760s, but 16 year-old Emily Stewart wouldn't have it any other way. She loves the settlement of 96 where her father Breck Stewart runs a tavern with his family, including Emily's embittered older brother, Donnan. But there's much to fear, too. Gangs of murderers, thieves, and robbers terrorize the country with impunity. Pleas to the government in Charlestown fall on deaf ears.

Heller is caught up in a dangerous crossfire as he cozies up to the local "coyote," a slimeball that takes desperate Mexicans across the river in the dead of night for a heavy fee and then sets them up to be robbed, beaten, and even raped by bandidos. The frightened prey are powerless, nobody cares, except Heller, and that ole mountain boy knows more than one way to skin a coyote.

Former Posadas County Sheriff Bill Gastner, now a New Mexico Livestock Inspector, is enjoying a day on Herb Torrances. But Bill soon finds himself ferrying a broken cowpuncher in the back of his SUV, headed out to meet an ambulance.

Edie Kiglatuk is working as a summer school teacher in the Canadian Arctic. When one of her female students is found dead in nearby Lake Turngaluk, Edie enlists the help of Sergeant Derek Palliser to pursue the case, promising the girl's Inuit family that they will uncover the truth. Meanwhile, lawyer Sonia Gutierrez investigates the toxicity of the lake and suspects that there might be a larger conspiracy involved.

There was only one female marshal in the Indian Nations under Judge Issac Parker...Deputy US Marshal F.M. Miller. She teams up with Bass Reeves in Bass and the Lady and goes undercover to stop a new gang of murdering rustlers. Bass has an arrest warrant for his own son...for murder.

Marvin was sitting on the hood of his car on the edge of town, watching the sun come up over the horizon. He closed his eyes and tried hard to remember the last time he felt even remotely human–or at least what would pass for human–but, as always, he came up empty.

The grand re-opening of the saloon was the biggest event the Gulch had seen in 20 years–the last biggest event in memory being the local Radio Shack carrying cell phones and the only used car dealership in the county now selling cars and trucks that weren't manufactured in the 1970s.