Western Thriller

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.

With his epic novels of the Jensen family, William W. Johnstone has captured the pioneer spirit of America. Now he reveals the untold story of Smoke Jensen's long-lost brother Luke, thought to have been killed in the fiercest war in our nation's history. Smoke's Brother Luke: The Jensen Legend Continues...

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?

Traveling with his wife and infant daughter, Titus Bass heads north into Crow territory. But what should have been a joyous reunion with his wife’s people turns to tragedy when Bass’s family is kidnapped by the warring Blackfoot. A deadly outbreak of smallpox, brought west by the white man, threatens both Indian nations with annihilation. And another kind of epidemic—this one of greed—brought by two powerful, profit-hungry trading outfits will determine the fate not only of free trappers like Titus Bass—but also the destiny of the entire nation.

In Montana's Gravelly Range, paw prints and a single whisker discovered at a scene of horrific violence suggest a woman has been attacked and carried away by a mountain lion. Sheriff Martha Ettinger employs her fiancé, sometimes-detective Sean Stranahan, to put a name to the gnawed bones comprising all that is left of the body. The woman's is the first of several deaths that Sean suspects are not as easily explained as they appear.

The seventh novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series: Scarecrows are appearing in the cliffs above the Smith River in Montana, and state investigator Harold Little Feather is trying to discover the culprit leaving the hay figures in the cliffs, with signs painted that read "No Smith River Mine - Not on My Watch." The event is related to a copper mine project that threatens the river, but his investigation takes an ominous turn when a little girl claims that a scarecrow chased her in the night.

The first wagon train to Oregon country moves slowly across the Great Plains, reaching the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in early autumn. Led by wagon scout “Whip” Holt, the 500-strong community of courageous men, women, and children prepare for the bitter winter ahead. Among them are dreamers and drifters, foreigners and natives, friends and enemies. But it is a pair of strong-willed women who are Whip’s most unexpected allies.

Sheriff Jed Morgan thinks his life is about to get a lot quieter when he gets voted out of office in a bought-and-paid for election rigged by his family’s long-time nemesis Arnie Williams. But when the new railroad comes to town and Jed’s neighbors, the Crawfords at the Bar C ranch, have their water poisoned and Arnie Williams’ hands try to stampede their cattle, Jed begins to find that his lawman days were far from over.

The little town of No-Name, Colorado is jubilant when they strike gold there, until every no-account degenerate and desperado for hundreds of miles shows up on their doorstep. It's up to mountain Man Smoke Jensen and his over-the-hill companions to save the town's bacon, and do their best not to get killed in the process.

Autumn, 1837. Driving onward - against the worst of man and nature - a legendary caravan of men, women and children forge a new link in the wilderness trek from Independence, Missouri to the "Promised Land" beyond the Rockies. They are pioneering Americans from North and South - side-by-side with immigrants, a Black man and an Indian - waging a fierce daily battle for bare survival on an uncompromising journey to their private destinies and the fulfillment of America's greatest dream.

For Frank Morgan, a reunion with his estranged son brings back bittersweet memories of another time and place. Conrad Morgan is an Eastern businessman trying to build a railroad through an untamed corner of New Mexico Territory. Even though Frank has revenge-hungry killers on his trail, his kin needs him now. So with a gun-toting, hard-loving beauty named Rebel by their side, father and son ride straight into a pitched battle with hired killers and furious Apache warriors. It’s a firestorm more treacherous and evil than Frank Morgan has ever faced.

In C.J. Box's Badlands, the town of Grimstad used to be a place people came from but were never headed to. Now it’s the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals Grimstad’s new deputy sheriff Cassie Dewell has ever...

In the waning days of the Wild West, Texas rancher Charles Abner Sunday wants to leave a legacy of the Old West to his grandson Henry-Ellis. Sunday buys 300 head of Texas longhorn cattle and leads his grandson - along with a ragtag crew of cronies and misfits - on an old-fashioned cross-country cattle drive. As the drovers struggle to push their 300 charges across a swiftly changing American frontier, they butt heads with a Colorado meatpacker hell-bent on living in the wild, wild past.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.

In the wake of Fourth of July fireworks in Montana's Madison Valley, Hyalite County sheriff Martha Ettinger and Deputy Sheriff Harold Little Feather investigate a horrific scene at the Palisades cliffs, where a herd of bison have fallen to their deaths. Victims of blind panic caused by the pyrotechnics, or a ritualistic hunting practice dating back thousands of years? The person who would know is beyond asking, an Indian man found dead among the bison, his leg pierced by an arrow.

When Wyoming highway patrolman Rosey Wayman is transferred to the beautiful and imposing landscape of the Wind River Canyon, an area the troopers refer to as no-man's-land because of the lack of radio communication, she starts receiving "officer needs assistance" calls. The problem? They're coming from Bobby Womack, a legendary Arapaho patrolman who met a fiery death in the canyon almost a half century ago.

Caleb Cantrill still can't find where he hid the bandit's gold or his cavern of riches. The only thing it seems he can find is more and more of the monstrous blight he unleashed on the peaceful valley he now calls home. Adding to his troubles, his twenty-four-hour reprieve from the gang is up soon, and the bandits will be returning, looking for their gold, or his life is forfeit. Kitty Welch is swept up in a corrupt scheme which may result in her arrest and deportation back to Scotland. Though she wants to flee, there is something keeping her in the valley.

As changes in Wyoming banking law bring an influx of crypto entrepreneurs to small-town Custer, attorney Sam Johnstone doesn’t think much of the new arrivals. But when a shocking crime throws him straight into the epicenter of the digital world, there’s no turning back. The death of crypto exchange magnate Max Kovalenko shatters the community, sparking local outrage and a long list of suspects. With many betrayed partners, jealous competitors, and bitter family members left in his wake, Max has stepped on plenty of toes since his arrival, and finding his killer is no easy task.

In 1875, two young Sioux are lynched in Lockwood, Wyoming, by a makeshift posse for a crime they may or may not have committed. Ethan Ramsey knows he must act quickly to prevent a bloody retaliation from their Sioux tribe. Can he gain the trust of both the Sioux and the townspeople of Lockwood to allow enough time to unravel the mystery of the crime and ensure justice is fairly served?

Tom Pasmore, ten years old, survives a near-fatal accident. During his long recovery, he becomes obsessed with an unsolved murder and finds he has clues to solving it that he shouldn’t. Lamont von Heilitz has spent his life dealing with mysteries, until he wanted to know nothing more of the terror of life and the horror of death. When a new murder disrupts their world of wealth, power, and pleasure, the two must form an unlikely partnership to confront demons from the past and the dark secrets that still haunt the present.