Western Crime

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.

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.

Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book explores the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Using "reckoning" in the widest possible sense to evoke how the consequences of violence have expanded almost infinitely through time. Fulbrook exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded responsibility.

In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son, Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered plains. Twelve-year-old Caleb nurses his mother back to health, cleaning her wounds and keeping her fed, before they leave their home to seek retribution on the men who committed this heinous crime.

On April 3, 1961, 38-year-old former vocalist Ella Mae Cooley was beaten to death in her home in Willow Springs, an unincorporated area located in Kern County, California. The cruelty of the crime was shocking to local residents in the normally idyllic community. A greater shock was that the murder was committed by the victim's 50-year-old husband, Donnell Clyde Cooley, a well-known big-band leader, musician, actor, host of a television variety show, and businessman. See how this tragic story of celebrity, suspicion, and homicidal rage unfolds in the historical crime of passion.

Woodson Fulk rides with Abigail Friedan's posse once again, this time to rescue a kidnapped young woman. They soon discover that their quarry has been taken to the town of Devil's Gate, which is inhabited entirely by outlaws of many different gangs, all engaged in a tenuous truce to keep the peace.

Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad. Battered and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge.

There'd been several killings in Melville. Unusual killings, no witnesses, no clues, and no suspects. Sheriff Jim Bonner was having a time trying to narrow his search down. He had no idea where to look, or what he might be looking for. The murder was so gruesome, so unexpected, neither him nor his deputy, Smitty Younger, knew where to start looking. Whoever was doing this to his peaceful town was clever and covered his tracks. So Jim set about setting a trap for the villain.

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.

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.

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.

The old Apache renegade Soldado Viejo is hiding out in Mexico, and the Arizona Department Adjutant has selected two men to hunt him down. One -- Dave Flynn -- knows war, the land, and the nature of his prey. The other is a kid lieutenant named Bowers. But there's a different kind of war happening in Soyopa. And if Flynn and his young associate choose the wrong allies -- and the wrong enemy -- they won't be getting out alive.

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.

Following his crimes in Bruisewater and the murder of his brother-in-law, Woodson Fulk travels with the mysterious Asher to the town of Barrenwood in the Wyoming territory. There, he meets Abigail Friedan and her posse of bounty hunters. They agree not to turn in Fulk, in exchange for his help hunting down outlaws more terrible than himself, and bringing them to justice.

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.

Railroad worker Woodson Fulk wants nothing more than to keep his head down, do his job, and live out his days in peace. However, when his sister comes to him covered in bruises that her husband gave her, Fulk’s rage drives him to murder the wife-beater. With his brother-in-law’s blood on his hands, Fulk goes on the run, looking for a place that he can lay low and wait out the law. He soon finds an old shepherd and his grandson who are being harassed by local cattlemen. Fulk offers to scare off the ruffians in exchange for room and board.

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.

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.

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.