Western Mystery

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.

Fifteenth-century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can't?

This third volume of Louis L'Amour's collected stories is a thrilling tribute to the unique spirit of our frontier heritage and proves again the enduring popularity of America's favorite storyteller.

Louis L'Amour's tales of adventure cannot be surpassed for sheer storytelling excitement, and they stand as a testament to his legendary appeal. Here are timeless tales of danger and daring, wanderlust and heroism, filled with ordinary men and women facing often insurmountable challenges with courage, dignity, honor, and heart.

Rancher Mack Murphy has been buying up land in Southwest Colorado, threatening those who won’t sell, including Junior, the uncle of ex-sheriff Bud Shumway. Bud agrees to visit his uncle to help defuse things, never suspecting he would get caught right smack in the middle of Mack’s murder. And it becomes the toughest case Bud’s ever had to solve, as almost everyone is a suspect. Set in the Paradox Valley, a beautiful and remote area with a wooly Wild West history, this mystery will have you laughing, scared to death, and wondering when the mysterious Wild Man will strike again.

Jack “Rabbit” Fields knew a good thing when he saw it, whether it was a sound horse, a sure bet, or a pretty sage hen. When it came to locking horns with any curly wolves he ran into along the trail, he tended to shoot first - a notion that had saved his hide more times than he could count. But that was before he came to Deadwood. Now, someone is stealing freshly dead bodies right out of their graves, and Rabbit and his amigos are on the hunt to figure out who. And more important, why?

Almena Guillory, better known as the Grizzly Queen of the West, has plenty to recommend her for the noose, but US Marshal Apostle Richardson enforces the law, he doesn't decide it. When a posse tries to lynch Almena ahead of her trial, Apostle refuses their form of expedited justice - and receives a bullet for his trouble. Before escaping, however, Almena unexpectedly saves his life by absorbing his wound through the use of dangerous flesh magic.

An unputdownable three-mystery box set of suspenseful thrillers set in 1970s Wyoming, from USA Today best-selling author Pamela Fagan Hutchins.

Black Wind, Arizona is torn apart with prejudice and hatred, fueled by the greed of a ruthless town boss and his hired guns. A nearby colony of Chinese immigrants, the hapless victims of violence, turn to Clint Adams for help. A lovely Oriental enchantress persuades him to join her people and to share her bedroll. So the Gunsmith will train the Chinese laborers in the art of western warfare, until he discovers he has his own score to settle with the wild town.

After her double-crossing, thieving husband disappears, Geneva Carrington Beck and her puppy—the only thing the no-account left behind—recruit Montana outfitter Calhoun St. Pierre to track him down. But their mountain mission takes a dangerous turn when criminals searching for the missing man make his bride a target…and a widow. Now a reluctant hero has to partner with and protect the renegade wife.

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy US marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations when he was shot and seriously injured. Now, 15 years later, employed as a deputy for Judge Roy Bean in Texas, Cole receives a personal summons from Judge Parker to appear in his court within 30 days. Cole isn't inclined to go, but he knows whatever's on Judge Parker's mind is serious and decides he has to go.

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.

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.

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.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje's visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison—or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating. Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

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.

The gruesome corpse of a young woman is found beside a long Montana highway called the Hi-Line. Her jaw and teeth are missing, and she is impossible to identify. Full of anger and without a clue, Du Pre begins to hunt the countryside for her murderer. As more dismembered corpses - all young women - are discovered, the small ranching community goes into shock.

Something is rotten in the Fort Belknap Reservation. Life has always been tough on this barren stretch just south of the Canadian border, but now the children are dying. While playing his fiddle in a reservation bar, part-time deputy Gabriel Du Pré meets an accordionist who suspects that the children’s health defects and low test scores are connected to the nearby Persephone mine.

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.