Western Fiction

In the late 1930s, 16-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing he begins an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat lightning - a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there".

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it". The two stories in this collection provide a good sample of the kinds of people he had in mind.

Duff MacCallister fled the Scottish Highlands for a new world in Wyoming Territory. Betrothed to a good woman, Duff has the bad luck to be standing in the Chugwater Bank when a violent robbery explodes around him. With one man dead by Duff's gun, and another under arrest, a team of bandits swarms outside of town. As witnesses, Duff, a banker, and a beautiful barmaid are whisked into the town's hotel for safe-keeping as the outlaws threaten the defenseless town with a bloodbath if their fellow bandit isn't set free. Except no MacCallister has ever run from trouble.

Framed for murder, Dewey "Mac" McKenzie is running for his life. Though Mac's never even made a pot of coffee, he talks his way onto a cattle drive heading west as a chuckwagon cook. Turns out he has a natural talent for turning salt pork and dried beans into culinary gold. He's as good with a pot and pan as he is with a gun, which comes in handy on a dangerous trail drive beset with rustlers, hostile Indians, ornery weather, and deadly stampedes. Mac can hold his own with any cowboy twice his age. At least until the real showdown begins . . .

I’m the only Dixon brother to step up when our family crumbled. When I took over the ranch, I lost everything, career included. My heart hadn’t been in it anyway. It couldn’t. A girl stole it a dozen years ago when she left, dreaming of a world outside our small town. Now she’s back. Different hair. New style. Kid clutching her hand. Wrecked by the man who put the ring on her finger. Not a trace of the Madison Black I knew.

When it was first published in 1979, this novel introduced inspirational fiction to people hungry for well-told stories based on Christian values. Since then, over a million copies have been sold, and it has been made into a popular Hallmark movie. Janette Oke has won the Christy Award, the Gold Medallion, and scores of other awards.

Young, beautiful, and idealistic, Tennessee Bennett longs to marry, but only for love. Unfortunately, her father intends to marry her off to the first wealthy man who will have her in order to pay his gambling debts. When his plan takes a murderous turn, Tennessee finds herself alone and penniless on the streets. Best friends James Carr and Jonah Wells have watched and wanted Tennessee for two years. Gentlemen to their bones, they have done the right thing, waiting for her to grow into a woman old enough to wake to their touch.

The stronger the alpha, the greater the danger. Moon madness could claim me any time now. I’ve looked all over the continent, gone to mating games, but I still haven’t found the she-wolf meant to be mine. I’ve already become too feral in bed. I’m not safe - not for random females. Especially not the one who just moved into the ranch next door. She’s way too tempting. And I’m way too dangerous. I have to stay away. I don’t dare get near her. Because I would die before I ever let anything harm the little human. Including me.

James Crowley met his mortal end in a hail of gunfire. Now, he finds himself in purgatory, serving the White Throne to avoid falling to hell. Not quite undead, though not alive either, the best he can hope for is to work off his servitude and fade away. His not-so-sacred duty as a Hand of God? Use his new abilities to hunt down demonic beings that have infiltrated the mortal realm. This time, the White Throne has sent him to the middle of nowhere: a Western town called Dead Acre with a saloon, a moldy church, and little else worth talking about. There isn’t even a sheriff.

Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.

Pursued by a Texas bounty hunter, Matthew returns to Fountain Creek, Colorado, to apologize to his brother for insulting his wife Annabelle and to share his Idaho homestead. Learning that his brother has left already, he answers an ad for someone to guide a widow to Idaho. But he's shocked to see the widow is Annabelle, a woman whose sordid past repulses him.

Some young ladies marry for money and social standing, a few lucky ones marry for love - but Tiffany Warren is marrying to end a feud. Honoring her mother’s promise, Tiffany reluctantly travels west to meet her estranged father and his enemy’s eldest son, rancher Hunter Callahan. Once the Warrens and the Callahans are united by marriage, both clans will stop squabbling over a disputed strip of land. In the chaos of a train robbery Tiffany seizes a golden opportunity. By assuming the identity of her father’s new housekeeper she can live with the father she never knew and assess his true character, as well as that of the neighboring cowboy to whom she is betrothed.

Audie Award, Literary Fiction, 2016. The story of Jack Crabbe, raised by both a white man and a Cheyenne chief. As a Cheyenne, Jack ate dog, had four wives, and saw his people butchered by General Custer's soldiers. As a white man, he participated in the slaughter of the buffalo and tangled with Wyatt Earp.

La vie de Catherine est à New York et la propriété dont elle a hérité est à Bridgewater, dans le Montana. En retournant dans la ville qu’elle visitait enfant, chaque été, des souvenirs enfouis depuis longtemps refont surface ainsi que son désir pour non pas un, mais deux, adolescents désormais devenus de vigoureux cow-boys. Les deux cousins Jack et Sam Kane. Heureusement pour elle, à Bridgewater, un cow-boy en cache toujours un autre.

Règle N°1 de la meute: Ne jamais rien révéler à un humain. J’ai enfreint cette règle le jour où j’ai rencontré la belle doctoresse. Je suis peut-être un champion de rodéo, mais un seul regard sur elle et j’ai perdu ma concentration. Le taureau m’a éjecté et m’a encorné, et maintenant la belle femelle est après moi. Quand j’ai guéri en quelques heures, elle a su que quelque chose clochait.

Annie Trimble lives in her own world. Shunned by the town for being a simpleton, Annie is kept close to home by her parents. She enjoys her freedom roaming the woods and befriending wild creatures. Frequently taunted by children and adults, Annie's world is shattered when one man takes the torment too far. Shocked by his brother's cruelty toward the girl, Alex Montgomery will do whatever it takes to make amends - even when it means marrying Annie. Soon Alex is charmed by her innocence and begins to realize that the beautiful young woman is not as slow-witted as everyone believes.

We want Kit Lancaster. We’ve wanted her for years. Both of us. Me and Donovan. It might not be normal for two guys to claim a woman together, but we live in Cutthroat, Montana, and we’ll do what we want. What could get in the way? Oh yeah, a little thing called murder. And since I’m the lead detective and Donovan’s the prosecutor, it might not be the smartest thing to bed the prime suspect. As if that would stop us!

On m’appelle peut-être Sir Loin de bœuf, mais quand je vois Kaitlyn pour la première fois, plantez une fourchette dans ma peau, je suis cuit? Mais je ne la revendiquerai pas seul. Jed Cassidy et moi partageons tout et cela l’inclut. Si l’adorable petite bibliothécaire n’est pas prête à être prise par deux champions du rodéo, alors nous devrons la dompter doucement et lentement. Elle est à nous. Nous la séduirons - corps et âme - et quand cela sera fait? Eh bien, disons juste que nous la chevaucherons avec ardeur.

Kylie Wilde fought in the Civil War dressed as a boy and now she's homesteading as a man. But she makes one lousy man! When land agent Aaron Masterson comes to inspect her claim, he immediately realizes she's a woman. She begs him not to tell, but can he in good conscience defraud the U.S. government, even if she really did serve in the war? Aaron is interested in the little spitfire from the moment her long hair falls from her cap, but when he tells her of his plan to stake his own claim, farther west and up in the mountains, she draws away.

At the height of California's Gold Rush, men left everything behind for the chance at striking it rich. Now, some 30 years after its peak, gold fever still entices adventurous Easterners like James Macklin Chance, a poor Pennsylvanian who is drawn to California by the dream of lasting wealth - a dream so powerful he'll stop at nothing to see it through.