Western Crime Thrillers

The final novel from Richard Wagamese, the best-selling and beloved author of Indian Horse and Medicine Walk, centres on an abused woman on the run who finds refuge on a farm owned by an Indigenous man with wounds of his own. A profoundly moving novel about the redemptive power of love, mercy, and compassion - and the land's ability to heal us.

They struck in a pack, in the dead of night. They had crept in like thieves, like the cowards they were...but it wasn't robbery they had in mind. It was something much darker. Smoke Jensen was buying cattle 100 miles away from his Colorado ranch when he got the news. Drawing two horses from the remuda, he saddled up, rode off...and didn't stop until he reached his wife's side. She had been shot three times, and lay close to death. Smoke Jensen knew the outlaws had come to kill him. He wouldn't give them a second chance. He was going after them. And he wasn't taking any prisoners.

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. Perley offers to escort the trio to their destination.

Deep in the heart of the Wyoming countryside, Sheriff of Absaroka County Walt Longmire is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. This crime brings up issues that go back to Walt’s grandfather’s time in Wyoming, as the revelations he learns about his grandfather come back to offer clues and motives for Walt’s investigation.

The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back. The bad news is that he's come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife - and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose grandson is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy. When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack have arrived.

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky coalmines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross three-hundred thousand dollars, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you - especially when it’s sold off piece-by-piece. So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them.

Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous turn-of-the-century East Texas can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a criminal who may believe wearing a dead man's clothes protects them both from death. With bounty hunter Shorty, a charismatic and cunning dwarf, and Eustace, a gravedigging son of an ex-slave, the heartbroken young Jack sets off on an epic quest to rescue his sister from the corrupt men who control much of the new territory.

Ed Edwards is in the used-car business, a business built on adjusted odometers, extra-fine print, and the belief that "buyers better beware". Burdened by an aging, alcoholic mother constantly on his case to do something worthier of his lighter skin tone and dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed is ready to get out of the game. When Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss at the eponymous dealership Smiling Dave's sends him to repossess a Cadillac, Ed finally gets the chance to escape his miserable life.

After hunting down a rogue spy as part of an elite CIA counterespionage unit, Garrett Kohl returns home to Texas in hopes of settling down and carving out a normal life. While learning the ropes of fatherhood, falling deeper in love with his high school crush, and rebuilding his wildfire ravaged cattle ranch, he is approached in secret by an engineer working at a nearby nuclear weapons plant, who is in desperate need of his help.

Texas Ranger Rory Yates protects his home state wearing a five-pointed silver badge and carrying a Sig Sauer. When a native woman disappears on the summer solstice, clues point to a cold case. Yates, a quick-draw champion, partners with expert archer Ava Cruz of the Tigua Tribal police. The investigation leads to the edges of Texas’s most unforgiving landscape, where the officers take dead aim with every shot in their arsenals.

Sinead - who is both resilient and vulnerable, insightful and insecure - spends her days supporting her ailing mother and appeasing Emerson, the man who owns her house and the diner where she works. She wants nothing more than to leave the town her own dark history is bound up in, but Emerson asserts his power over her, thwarting her progress at every turn. One day, Tobias, a mysterious rambler from the east coast, walks into the diner, and Sinead makes the impulsive decision to invite him into her life and home.

Jim Stegner has seen his share of violence and loss. Years ago he shot a man in a bar. His marriage disintegrated. He grieved the one thing he loved. In the wake of tragedy, Jim, a well-known expressionist painter, abandoned the art scene of Santa Fe to start fresh in the valleys of rural Colorado. Now he spends his days painting and fly-fishing, trying to find a way to live with the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him. He works with a lovely model. His paintings fetch excellent prices. But one afternoon, on a dirt road, Jim comes across a man beating a small horse, and a brutal encounter rips his quiet life wide open.

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.

Across the ranchlands and cities of his home state, Rory Yates's discipline and law-enforcement skills have carried him far: from local highway patrolman to the honorable rank of Texas Ranger. He arrives in his hometown to find a horrifying crime scene and a scathing accusation: he is named a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife, Anne, a devoted teacher whose only controversial act was ending her marriage to a Ranger. In search of the killer, Yates plunges into the inferno of the most twisted and violent minds he's ever encountered, vowing to never surrender.

After an altercation with his superiors in Harlan County, Kentucky, Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens is offered two choices. He can either retire or finish his career on the fugitive task force in the crime-ridden precincts of Detroit. Acting on a tip, Raylan and his new partner Deputy Marshal Bobby Torres arrest Jose Rindo, a destructive and violent criminal. Rindo is also being pursued by the FBI who arrive shortly after he is in custody. Raylan bumps heads with a beautiful FBI agent named Nora Sanchez, who wants Rindo for the murder of a one of their own.

Texas Ranger Rory Yates is not keen for hero status. But it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his newfound fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo, a municipality with two stoplights. And now, according to the chief of police, it has one too many Texas Rangers. Rio Lobo Detective Ariana Delgado is the one who requested Rory and the only person who believes a local councilwoman's seemingly accidental death is a murder. Then, Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets.

In this first collection of short pieces, including two novella-length works, since his western anthology Tonto Woman, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterization, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name.

As changes in Wyoming banking law bring an influx of crypto entrepreneurs to small-town Custer, attorney Sam Johnstone doesn’t think much of the new arrivals. But when a shocking crime throws him straight into the epicenter of the digital world, there’s no turning back. The death of crypto exchange magnate Max Kovalenko shatters the community, sparking local outrage and a long list of suspects. With many betrayed partners, jealous competitors, and bitter family members left in his wake, Max has stepped on plenty of toes since his arrival, and finding his killer is no easy task.

As a decorated undercover DEA special agent, Garrett Kohl has traveled the world - and fought in most of it - but it’s the High Plains of northwest Texas he calls home and dreams of returning to one day. Kohl is in the middle of an assignment in Afghanistan when his commander orders him back to Texas on a short mission expected to take a week at most. But Kohl is unsettled to discover that he’s moving from one kind of war to another.

Corey Bowen is an innocent man. Wrongly convicted, and imprisoned in the brutal labor camp at Five Shadows run by a sadistic embezzler willing to kill to keep his scheme running, Bowen is determined to break out or die trying. The trackers have already caught him once, dragged him back through the mesquite and rocks, and beat him bloody and near dead after his last attempt. But this time he'll have help - from a lady with murder on her mind and a debt to pay back.