Western Thriller

Clint Belmet's parents were killed in a Comanche raid when he was young, but that hasn't stopped him from taking a job leading freight caravans on the old Santa Fe Trail, from Saint Louis, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico - a route that goes right through Comanche territory. Here is the raw, primitive West of the early pioneers, great caravans of freighters rumbling across the deadly prairies, risking attack by Comanche.

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.

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.

Lucas Holt thought he'd be happy in Las Vegas with his family. He's glad to be with people who love him, but it turns out that he's too close to the life he had before he was convicted and sent to prison. He's watched his four best friends overcome their pasts, and he knows the best way to accomplish that is to stay far away from the activities that led to incarceration.

Ruby Jane never thought she'd meet the man of her dreams while running from the police in Russia. That he'd steal her heart on a train to Siberia. But loving a former CIA officer comes with a price...a life of danger. A life of high stakes. A life where he simply disappears....

Rancher Ty Farraday's hunt for stray cattle takes a turn for the worse when he discovers a shallow grave and the body of wealthy Alton Winstead, the owner of the Double-Cross Ranch. Ty's first frantic thoughts are of Winstead's widow, Sue-Ellen, who picked Alton over him. Unfortunately, she chose poorly. Alton masterminded a crime and left his helpers to swing for it. Hungry for revenge, the murderous headcases have overrun the Double-Cross and are holding Sue-Ellen prisoner.

Appaloosa, the hometown of Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, continues to prosper, but with prosperity comes a slew of new trouble: carpetbaggers, gamblers, migrants, peddlers, drifters, thieves, and whores, all boiling in a cauldron of excess and greed. And there's a new menace in town: a wealthy, handsome easterner - and the owner of Appaloosa's new casino - Boston Bill Black.

Two backcountry skiers find the body of a young woman embedded in the ice of a remote mountain creek. All through the night, police work with arc lights and chain saws to dig her out. But identification doesn't take as long. Abbie Cooper is wanted for murder and acts of eco-terrorism, and her picture is on law-enforcement computers all across America. But just how did she die? And what was the trail of events that led this joyous, golden child of a loving family so tragically astray?

In this first collection of short pieces, including two novella-length works, since his western anthology Tonto Woman, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterization, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name.

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.

Even at 17 years old, Carson Ryan knows enough about cow herding to realize the crew he's with is about the worst ever. They're taking the long way around to the Montana prairies, and they're seriously undermanned. While rounding up strays, Ryan hears gunshots ring across the range. Suspecting an Indian attack, he gallops straight into a US Army raid instead. The outfit he's with is nothing but a bunch of murdering cattle rustlers, and the law thinks he's one of them. Tied up, thrown in jail, and tried by a court that's more interested in hanging a man than learning the truth, Carson has only two options: escape or die trying.

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.

After an altercation with his superiors in Harlan County, Kentucky, Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens is offered two choices. He can either retire or finish his career on the fugitive task force in the crime-ridden precincts of Detroit. Acting on a tip, Raylan and his new partner Deputy Marshal Bobby Torres arrest Jose Rindo, a destructive and violent criminal. Rindo is also being pursued by the FBI who arrive shortly after he is in custody. Raylan bumps heads with a beautiful FBI agent named Nora Sanchez, who wants Rindo for the murder of a one of their own.

Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What's clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead. For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt.

Sheriff Martha Ettinger reunites with once-again lover and sometime private detective Sean Stranahan to investigate the death of a woman who was stranded in a spring snowstorm. When a fly wallet is found in a pannier on the saddle of the woman's horse, the leather engraved with the initials EH, Stranahan shows the wallet to Patrick Willoughby, the president of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. Only a few days before, Willoughby was approached by a man selling fishing gear that had belonged to a famous outdoorsman and writer.

Nick hadn't planned on being the prodigal son. But when his father dies and leaves half of Silver Buckle, the Noble family ranch, to Nick's former best friend, he must return home to face those he left behind - and to make sure that the Silver Buckle stays in the Noble family.

For Patience Sinclair, leaving the ivy-covered halls of Boston for the wide, open spaces of Texas means a chance to stop looking over her shoulder at every turn. Traveling incognito with the Triple C Rodeo is just what she needs to free her from a past that continues to haunt her. But she can't avoid the undeniable presence of Dallas Kingman. The champion rider has a way of letting her know he's watching her every move that makes her feel wild and reckless.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.

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.