Western Mystery

Here is a time when the old west became new - the 1930s-50s - as Louis L'Amour witnessed it first-hand in Southern California before and after World War II. Many people think the age of gunmen, scheming land barons, murderous bad guys, and the determined men who stood up against them, went out with the end of the Old West around the 1890s. But, in L’Amour’s own time in the New West, there were far more bad men toting guns and making grabs for far more wealth and valuable land than in the fabled days of the Old West.

Territorial marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch figured things had finally settled down in Appaloosa when Boston Bill Black's murder charge was dropped. But all that changed when Augustus Noble Driggs was transferred to a stateside penitentiary just across the border from Mexico. Square-jawed, handsome, and built like a muscled thoroughbred stallion, Driggs manages to intimidate everyone inside the prison walls, including the upstart young warden.

When Kevin Kerney, deputy chief of the New Mexico State Police, inherits an unexpected windfall of 6,400 acres of high-county land, the last thing he wants to think about is work. But while visiting his new property, he comes across an ailing stray dog that leads him to the butchered bones of a murder victim near the rugged mountain of Hermit's Peak.

A killer blizzard has hit tiny Buffalo, Wyoming, where Dr. Patrick Flint is trapped inside the hospital with his family, trying to save the life of a prominent local citizen. An injured drifter shows up at the door, and Patrick takes him in. When the power and communications go out that night, people start dying, and the drifter is nowhere to be found. Patrick is caught between his duty to his patient, his loyalty to his family, and his fear for all of their lives. With the storm still raging, will there be any survivors left in the hospital when help finally arrives?

This James Lee Burke novel, featuring Son Holland - the great-grandfather of Burke's Billy Bob Holland - as he flees a Louisiana prison camp with a Native American woman and a fellow prisoner in tow, is now available in audio.

On assignment for the Bureau of Investigation in the summer of 1927, Trey Ramsey seeks information regarding the disappearances of young Sioux women from their reservations in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Meanwhile, young rancher Kate Connolly is at the right place at the right time to thwart an assassination attempt on the president of the United States, who has made the State Game Lodge in South Dakota his "Summer White House".

FBI agent Tyler Reed trusts only facts and evidence, until the day a beautiful blonde delivers a life-saving warning...based on nothing more than a vision. Five years later, the mysterious Morgan Standish has used her talents to help Tyler and the FBI bring down countless criminals. Still, Tyler knows next to nothing about her. She contacts him by phone - and by some sort of psychic connection he's not prepared to admit exists - but has not shown herself once. Until now.

USA Today best-selling author William W. Johnstone is a legend in the Western genre. In this 22nd Last Gunfighter novel, Frank Morgan and a handful of survivors are stranded in Western Canada. An old enemy of Frank’s has resurfaced, and with him a band of murderous Metis rebels armed with stolen U.S. Army Gatling guns. Now Frank and his ragtag bunch are the only thing standing between this dangerous foe and a bloodbath.

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.

Descended from a long line of fighters, lovers, and dreamers, the MacCallister clan are legends in their homeland of Scotland. But when Duff MacCallister came to America, it seems he brought the legend - and the war - along with him.... Here in America, life is full of surprises. Duff never expected to hear from his old friend Charles McGregor, his battalion commander from the Black Watch Regiment of Her Majesty's army. Turns out McGregor lives in New Mexico now. And he needs Duff's help.

The lives of five captives hang in the balance while their families gather the ransom. Two brothers, their family frantic to find their sons. A loner whose uncle doesn’t even know he’s missing. An Army brat whose family will never be able to raise enough money. And a cheerleader who can’t count on her stepdad, but knows her father will come through.

Trueman Rock is a daring young cowboy and rider. Six years ago he had to leave the cowtown of Wagontongue because of a history of gunfights and run-ins with bad hombres. Since then, he's become a man who only uses his gun when he needs to, on rustlers and crooks. Now, he's returning to his hometown. But things have changed. The town and its people aren't what they used to be. He expects to find some of his enemies there to welcome him, but instead finds they're all dead. In their place is the Preston family.

In West Texas Kill, the harsh lands between the Pecos River and the Rio Grande are ruled by renegade Texas Ranger Captain Hector Savage. Into this realm rides Ranger Dave Chance with a prisoner - a big-talking murderer - shackled to his side. An honest ranger, Sergeant Chance determines to deliver the locals from Savage’s bloody reign. But to succeed against such long odds, Chance must do the unthinkable - unshackle and arm his prisoner.

The present: His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself on the trail of that same cargo when skeletal remains are found near an excavation site in the Texas desert. She’s also dealing with the aftermath of a massacre that claimed the lives of all the workers at a intelligence company on her watch. These two cases are connected by a long buried secret, one that men have killed and died to protect. Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.

The Lovely Bones meets the wild, Wild West in this haunting tale inspired by a true story. Pregnant out of wedlock, 16-year-old Annie Moore is sent to live at a convent for fallen women. When the nuns take her baby, Annie escapes, determined to find a way to be reunited with her daughter. But few rights or opportunities are available to a woman in the 1860s, and after failing to find a respectable job, she resorts to prostitution in order to survive.

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.

Thanks to a new line, Duff MacCallister can transport his 250 Black Angus cattle herd with ease by Iron Horse instead of enduring a two-day traildrive. But the day after depositing $15,000 in his Cheyenne account, Duff learns that bank president Jeremy Brinks embezzled every cent - totalling $65,000 - and then, guilt-ridden, committed suicide. The widow Brinks doesn't believe her husband was a thief or that he killed himself. Duff agrees. And after getting an appointment as Territorial Marshal, he's aiming his barrel at putting every double-crossing lawman.

Former army scout Jack Gregory returns from battle to a homestead in ruins. A wanted man with no place to go, he chooses an even deadlier career - as a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. Under a new name, Jack serves bravely in the Seventh Cavalry. When Custer's disastrous leadership ends in devastating slaughter, Jack sets off to forge his own destiny. Winning a small ranch in a card game, he hopes to settle down and live a peaceful life.

Jon Talbot is a history professor who makes sense of the past by examining facts. He also knows how to speculate about the what-ifs. Jon’s doing both following the death of his wife, Pax. Driving home late from a volunteer assignment, she plunged off a mountain highway and died. The police find nothing suspicious about the facts: a deer in the road, a blown tire, a broken neck. But the what-ifs are leading Jon down a twisting trail of secrets. After five years of marriage, he is finally getting to know his wife.

In "Black List," the Amlingmeyer brothers ride into the Arizona Territory on a quest to unearth a buried secret, coveted by a ruthless cattle baron. Can Old Red's deductive skills, inspired by Sherlock Holmes, solve the mystery and protect them from the cattleman's hired guns? In "White Death," the Amlingmeyers investigate mysterious deaths at a tuberculosis sanitarium deep in the Colorado mountains. As they search for clues, a sinister figure lurks in the shadows.