Western Mystery

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.

Ron Hansen has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his rich writing and poetic style. Atticus begins in the vein of a contemporary western. As it unfolds, it includes an intriguing murder mystery and a dramatic parable of the prodigal son. For years, prosperous Colorado rancher Atticus Cody has tried to understand his rootless son, Scott, who is now living a marginal life in Mexico.

He came from the American South, a gentleman by breeding, a dentist by training, a gambler by vocation. But as Dr. John H. Holliday, a man fleeing his tragic past, drifted across the West, living among some of the roughest men on the frontier, word spread quickly he never walked away from a fight, and he never drew too late.Now, from Dodge City to Denver and Cheyenne, from boomtown to sinkholes, "Doc" Holliday was driven by the demons of his past, a skilled gambler and a seasoned mankiller....

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?

A lost and frightened horse plods down the National Mall, startling the crowd. When Gabriel Du Pré spots the confused animal, the connection is immediate, for neither of these creatures belongs in the sweltering heat of a DC summer. Du Pré, a Métis Indian from the wilds of Montana, calms the horse and leads it to the nearest policeman. Du Pré is in Washington to play his people’s music for a Smithsonian festival, but after leading the horse to safety, he encounters a murder instead.

When he’s not risking life and limb on the back of a bronc, local rodeo star Ken Jensen runs a private investigation firm in his small Utah town. With the help of his friend and fellow investigator Dallas Welch, Ken has wrangled cattle thieves and dodged bullets. But none of that prepares him for his latest case. When a mysterious phone call from a frantic young man sends Ken and Dallas leaping into action, they find an injured rodeo performer named Herbie whose run of bad luck has turned sinister.

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.

From the best-selling novelist of the American West, comes a novel of romance, danger, and life along the trail.

When ex-sheriff Bud Shumway and his wife, Wilma Jean, decide to vacation in a scenic Colorado town near Aspen, they never guess they’ll soon be immersed in solving the murder of a famous country-western singer. And even though Bud’s bumbling replacement, Sheriff Howie, is far away in the small town of Green River, Utah, he still manages to play havoc with everyone’s peace of mind when his sheriff’s vehicle is stolen and he finds out he’s on the wanted list of Utah’s FBI.

Ride into a world where Sherlock Holmes meets the Wild West. Saddle up for adventure with the eccentric cowboy detectives, Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer, as they embark on a thrilling journey to establish their dream detective agency in the Wild West. In this action-packed collection of five stories, join the brothers as they navigate disastrous homecoming trips, strange newspaper feuds, supernatural kidnappings, deadly Christmas celebrations, and a high-stakes conspiracy threatening to tarnish their budding careers.

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.

Crime-solving cowboys Gus "Old Red" and Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer are wandering around San Francisco when they stumble onto another mystery to be solved: the death of their acquaintance Dr. Chan. It turns out that no one wants this mystery solved, but that doesn't stop the brothers from riling up the locals with their heavy-handed investigations.

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.

Card-player-extraordinaire Poker Alice knows when hold 'em, when to fold 'em, and when to team up with master gunman Newt "Widowmaker" Jones. She's betting on Jones to protect her - and her money - on a treasure hunt in the California desert. Legend has it that a shipwreck is buried in the Salton sands. Some say it's a Spanish galleon that got stuck when the sea ran dry. Other says it's a Chinese junk full of pearls or a Viking ship filled with Aztec treasure. Either way, a lot of very mean and dangerously violent folks would kill to find it.

It is 1917, in that sliver of borderland that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest, handsome, intelligent); Cob (short, heavyset, a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest, thin, ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in Southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula.

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.

In Athens, a Boeing 737 noses into the gate, and its crew is suddenly confronted by Greek officials waiting to arrest one of its passengers, a beloved ex-President of the United States, John Harris. Captain Craig Dayton, believing Harris' life is in danger, stages a daring escape by backing the jet away from the gate without clearance and taking off down a vacant runway.

For four generations, the Messmers have raised cattle in the rough country of eastern Montana. When the current owners die in a motor home accident, they leave the ranch to their son - an ominous development for everyone in the area, both human and bovine. Larry Messmer left Toussaint in the 1980s, when he got in trouble for bludgeoning a horse to death, and Gabriel Du Pré hoped he would never come back. Larry announces his return by having his ranch hands kill every weak cow on the property.

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.

From the best-selling author of Riders of the Purple Sage, comes another classic Western tale. In the spirit and glory of a classic Western, and published exactly as the author originally intended, Knights of the Range, is one of Zane Grey's swiftest and most exciting novels.