Western Crime Thrillers

Dover Station, Montana, is no place for a lawman. A sheriff's badge ain't worth a nickel here - unless you've got the bullets to back it up. When he signed up to be sheriff of this dirty little boomtown, Aaron Mackey knew he was asking for trouble. Once, when Mackey was the US marshal for the whole Montana Territory, he swore no job could get any harder. But that was before he took down a few of the bank-robbing Hancock gang in Dover Station - and incurred the wrath of the gang's maniacal matriarch, Mad Nellie Hancock.

Reeling from the news dropped on his desk days earlier, Sheriff Elven Hallie is left questioning everyone and everything in his life. But when a former deputy is burned to death, Elven must push aside the turmoil in his personal life to catch the killer. As if that wasn’t enough, new faces from the Starcher clan enter his county with vengeance in their eyes for Corbin’s death. Paranoid, angry, and directionless, Elven must lean on those closest to him to bring a ruthless murderer to justice. But that’s easier said than done when it’s those closest to him who he trusts the least.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison—or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating. Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America's greatest cities, some of Louis L'Amour's most compelling fiction was set in his own time. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gangsters and beauties, private investigators and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend.

Zac discovers that certain vigilantes are controlled by corrupt federal officials. He aims to bring them in, but the price for justice may be terribly steep this time.

Before he set down his pen, seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton—the Western Writers of America’s “Best Western Writer of All Time”—cut 50 notches on his gunbelt of classics. In this final novel of the Texas Rangers, a young lawman finds his mettle put to the test while bringing justice to a remote settlement. To stop a series of baffling killings and thefts, newly married ranger Andy Pickard is dispatched to a central Texas community where locals are quick to pin the crimes on two feuding cattlemen.

Special Agent Tucker Snow knows there's big money roaming the fields under the wide Texas sky—and the cattle rustlers committing large-scale thefts on remote ranches know it, too. But when a prominent local rancher dies unexpectedly and his property is quietly sold to an unknown buyer, Tucker suspects there's something more sinister going on in his jurisdiction than the usual steal-and-resell racket. Still raw after the tragic death of his wife and young daughter, the lawman can't bear the thought of more innocent lives destroyed by people whose greed poisons everything around them.

Carl Webster, the hot kid of the marshals service, is polite, respects his elders, and can shoot a man driving away in an Essex at 400 yards. Carl works out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, federal courthouse during the 1930s, the period of America's most notorious bank robbers: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson...those guys.

With her ex-husband, Ted, working nearby in an adjoining county, Kate Fox is eager to prove she’s the better sheriff. But when the less-than-popular ex-foreman of a local ranch is found dead, Kate gets the opportunity she’s been looking for. As it turns out, the case hits a little too close to home. The dead man’s body is discovered in a truck that belongs to Kate’s brother Jeremy - and he's missing. Evidence left at the crime scene leads Ted to suspect the ranch’s new foreman, but Kate isn’t convinced he’s responsible for the crime.

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.

It was meant to be a harmless stag-night prank. A few hours later, four of his best friends are dead, and Michael Harrison has disappeared. With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Grace - a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife - is contacted by Michael's beautiful, distraught fiancée, Ashley Harper. Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then, he has a lot to gain - more than anyone realizes.

Movie star Mary Marvell consults with Hercule Poirot after receiving threatening letters that warn her to return her diamond, the famous "Western Star", to its rightful owner. But who does own the diamond, and is it even the genuine article?

In the wake of Fourth of July fireworks in Montana's Madison Valley, Hyalite County sheriff Martha Ettinger and Deputy Sheriff Harold Little Feather investigate a horrific scene at the Palisades cliffs, where a herd of bison have fallen to their deaths. Victims of blind panic caused by the pyrotechnics, or a ritualistic hunting practice dating back thousands of years? The person who would know is beyond asking, an Indian man found dead among the bison, his leg pierced by an arrow.

After fastball phenom Prospero Stark's baseball career craters in a Mexican jail, he retreats to a trailer park in the scorching Arizona desert. He lives in peaceful anonymity with a collection of colorful outcasts until someone leaves his former catcher's severed hand on his doorstep. Beautiful, hard-living reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, who keeps a .380 Colt and a bottle of Chivas in her car, joins Stark to help him uncover his friend's fate, a dangerous pursuit that pits them against a ruthless gang of drug-dealing killers.

Louis L'Amour's world is built on those dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest collection of stories set on the American frontier. These selections include "The Nester and the Piute"; "Big Man"; "Waltz Him Around Again"; "Shadow"; "Barney Takes a Hand"; "When a Texan Takes Over"; and "No Trouble for the Cactus Kid".

It's April, but there's still snow on the Montana mountains the day a member of the Madison River Liar and Fly Tiers club finds a Santa hat in the chimney of his rented cabin. With the flue clogged, and desperate to make a fire, he climbs up to the roof only to find the body of a teenage girl wedged into the chimney.

Wolves howl as a riderless horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing woman, Nanika Martinelli, is better known as the Fly Fishing Venus, a red-haired river guide who lures clients the way dry flies draw trout. As Sheriff Martha Ettinger follows hoof tracks in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under the temptress' spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, a kill that' s been claimed by a wolf pack. An accident? If not, is the killer human or animal?

Hopalong Cassidy, the iconic western cowboy hero conceived by Clarence Mulford, was immortalized in a highly popular film series starring William Boyd from 1935-1948. A tough-talking and violent character in print, Hopalong Cassidy was remade into a clean-cut screen hero who roamed the West with his sidekicks and fought villains who took advantage of the weak. Here Cassidy is drawn as Mulford originally conceived; rough-and-tumble, foul-mouthed, and thriving on brawls and gunplay.

Posadas County, sitting along New Mexico's southern border, has enjoyed a surge in visitors, jobs, and prosperity since rancher Miles Waddell used much of his inherited half billion to create an internationally renowned astronomy complex atop Torrance Mesa. Passion, not profit, drives Waddell. Yet benefits include a narrow-gauge train linking the village of Posadas to NightZone. But a ripple of unease is felt across the county with the arrival of developer - no, speculator - Kyle Thompson.