Western Mystery

From New York Times best-selling author Joan Johnston comes a dazzling new Bitter Creek novel that features all of the passion and intrigue in Texas high society that her readers and listeners know and love, mixed with an explosive, spine- tingling tale of murder, wrongful imprisonment, and a woman who counts no cost too high to see a killer brought to justice.

Ten years after the events of Riders of the Purple Sage, John Shefford, a disillusioned preacher from Illinois travels to Arizona and takes refuge in a village controlled by polygamist Mormons hiding from the federal government.

Bold, breathtaking, and beautiful, the Australian outback calls to Lesley Holleck like no other site on the continent. The young firebrand soon realizes, however, that the untamed region could exact a brutal price from all who dare enter it. Disguised as a rowdy jackaroo with a special talent for taming horses, she earns the admiration and respect of the people who help her survive there and forever change her world, including Zachary Cooper, who longs to tame Lesley's wild heart.

In a secessionist rural state that has cut itself off completely from urban centres, where living is hardscrabble and poor but “free”, Brooke Holland runs a farm with her husband and two daughters. Their existence at the fringes of modern society is tenuous - they make barely enough from each harvest to keep going - yet Brooke cherishes the loving, peaceful life they have carved out for themselves. She has even begun to believe she is free from the violent history she has kept a secret from her family.

The life of a cowboy suits Thalis Christie just fine. A puncher for the Crescent H in Texas, he loves what he does and is damn good at it too. He doesn't even mind being away from his family - he's got good friends to keep him from getting too homesick. That is, until his folks write, imploring him to hunt down his brother, Myles, who's been shot while prospecting in the Black Hills. Thalis sets out to do his family duty and find his little brother - still alive, he hopes.

Two ranching families, the Blackthornes and the Creeds, are locked in a bitter century-old feud. In The Cowboy, Johnston brings to life a breathtaking love story between the Blackthornes' oldest son and the Creeds' beautiful daughter - a magnificent novel of passion, vengeance, and star-crossed love.

Ron and Jessica Stahl are a power couple from California, on a Christmas holiday in Colorado. When they stop for the afternoon in sleepy Lone Cone, they're charmed by the quaint tourist town. But the folksy hospitality will vanish as the sun drops behind the mountains. A winter storm is approaching, and the Stahls couldn’t have picked a worse night of the year to get snowed into this perfect little town with a dark, dark secret.

At the center of this searing fever-dream of a novel are two men - a killer awaiting trial and a troubled young deputy - sitting across fromeach other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: JohnGload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration; and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest.

Photographer Todd Ellison is engrossed in a photoshoot deep in Alberta’s dinosaur country when he stumbles upon human bones buried in the sand of a remote coulee. Not far away, while driving through the Alberta prairie, Amanda Doucette glimpses an abandoned farmhouse that reminds her of an old photograph hanging on her aunt’s wall. Who is the cocky young cowboy in the photo? Could it be connected to Amanda’s uncle, who went missing in Alberta 30 years ago?

Half-white, half-Cheyenne Yakima Henry has been ambushed and badly injured. Bleeding to death, he doesn't know who'll get to him first: the gunslingers or hungry wolves. Thankfully, comely widow Aubrey Coffin comes along and drags Yakima to safety. But as he heals, lawless desperados circle closer to finish the job they started by putting his innocent savior in the cross fire.

The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something...something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way.

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.

The first time the Donovan twins, Lucas and Jamie, saw a Canadian Northwest Mounted Police officer, they knew that's what they wanted to be when they grew up. Years later, Lucas Donovan, now a member of the force, is on a mission to bring a ruthless serial killer to justice. For years, Jack Emerson has eluded capture in the vast Canadian wilderness, but now Donovan has vowed that nothing on earth will stop him from seeing this man caught and punished. The oath is both personal and professional, since one of the men Emerson killed was Constable Jamie Donovan, Lucas' twin brother.

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.

In the Wild West, the heat of passion between Detective John West and Emily Adams is threatened by a sinister mystery. Sparks fly as they join forces to unravel the case on Adams Ranch, but a rival ranch owner casts a shadow of doubt and suspicion over their investigation. With danger lurking around every corner, can their love endure? Find out in "Rancher's Seduction," where hearts are tested and true love conquers all.

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.

Gabriel Du Pré, the old Montana fiddler at the center of Peter Bowen's atmospheric, engrossing series set in the dirty, dusty Montana that's rarely featured in travel brochures, has a knack for finding trouble. Or rather, trouble has a knack for finding him. There's a rumor going around that Du Pré and his old sorceror friend Benetsee have come across a parcel containing the lost journals of Lewis and Clark, and outsiders, drawn by the spirit of the legendary explorers, are beginning to invade Toussaint.

Lieutenant John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq and the son of Gabriel Du Pré's girlfriend, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Du Pré and Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. They locate him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze, but a sobering visit to a medicine man's sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery.

Crystal meth, brushfires, and a murderer on the loose threaten Du Pré’s tranquil Montana town. Drought has come to Toussaint, Montana, and appendicitis has stricken the Mtis Indian tracker and investigator Gabriel Du Pré. His appendix is bad enough, but what really hurts is being trapped in the hospital when he learns that Maddy Collins has been killed. As far as Du Pré knows, no one in town had cause to dislike the harmless old coot, much less bash her head in with a cast-iron hatchet. When the doctors release him, he goes looking for answers.

When Gabriel Du Pré's precocious granddaughter, Pallas, returns from her studies in Washington, D.C., the entire clan in Toussaint, Montana, is happy to see her. Except Du Pré, that is, because the crotchety old fiddlin' cowboy knows that where Pallas goes, trouble is likely to follow. A van full of praying, protesting fundamentalist Christians has arrived in Toussaint at just about the same time. A young soldier follows, just back from Iraq, missing a leg, an eye, and his grip on reality. Du Pré suspects that he's going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future.