Western Thriller

1942 - Granbury, Texas. A 95-year-old man walks into a recruiting office with the crazy idea to enlist - and an even crazier story. He claims to be the one and only Jesse James, the infamous bank robber allegedly shot by Robert Ford 60 years earlier. Using another man’s corpse to collect the reward, Ford allowed James to slip away and start a new life. Changing his name to Dalton, Jesse worked as a cattle broker in Fort Worth and fathered a pair of twins named Bill and Frank.

Deputy Sheriff Nick Rogers found out small-town life meant adjusting to two things - gossips and Laney Cavanaugh. And neither was much help in solving a bridal shower murder. Some days it appeared like everyone in Whitehorse had a secret - including their new lawman. And falling for Laney wasn’t a good way to maintain a low profile. Nick might have been new to Whitehorse, but he wasn’t above getting his hands dirty.

With his wife cold in the ground and two young boys to feed, Wil Cutter turns to what he knows: violence. But a bounty is never just a bounty, and blood is never spilled in drops. Forced to ever more violent acts, he’ll have to ask himself: Is Hell too far to ride?

Texas Ranger Freddie Espinoza is center stage in pursuit of the drug-smuggling county sheriff. Freddie discovers an old friend—and DEA agent—has the sheriff in his crosshairs. Their former Army buddy, a Benedictine monk in his final days, is also on the case in a very unusual way.

It’s 1975, and cowboy Johnny Riles is a headcase. He’s depressed, he’s drunk, and he’s lonesome as hell. Left by his family to care for the ranch on his own, Johnny manages to keep the cattle alive while struggling to justify his own existence. Embittered by the success of his younger brother, Kitch, a professional basketball player, it is only thanks to a salt-dry sense of humor and a plentiful supply of whiskey that Johnny keeps himself aboveground.

In his introduction to the book, best-selling author Loren D. Estleman says "It's hard work being Deborah Morgan". A multiple award-winning author in both the mystery and Western arenas, Morgan has collected here in Junction a selection of stories guaranteed to show you why.

Forced to reassess her future, IT nerd and country girl Addie Kendall returns to her family's Wimmera farm. When she contacts her former school friend Harry Chandler with alarming news, they're compelled to unite to solve a criminal injustice. In pursuit of answers, they stumble upon a shocking find in the district's iconic Banyandah homestead, deserted since a family tragedy ten years ago.

A rare breed of bulldog and bloodhound, private detective Luke Starbuck has been hired to ferret out the Judas working for the Central Pacific—a mastermind behind a string of train robberies. The target: gold shipments from the Frisco mint. All Starbuck has to do is pass himself off as an outlaw and infiltrate the pack. But chumming up to a gang leader like Denny O'Brien means that Starbuck must follow him into the vice pits of the notorious Barbary Coast. Getting inside this hellhole of crime is easy if you make the right moves. Make the wrong ones, and getting out could be murder.

When Santa Claus enters a Texas bank just before Christmas in 1927, no one expects him to pull a gun. The fake white beard hides his identity from his neighbors while he and three others take everything. But their easy heist goes sideways fast when armed lawmen and citizens assemble to claim a new reward for dead bank robbers. Taking hostages, the gang forces a path through a frenzied and bloody shootout, setting the whole Lone Star state on their trail. One bandit dies in the getaway.

In Improbable Fortunes, Jeffrey Price takes us on a wild ride into Vanadium, a dusty, down-on-its-heels mining town in Southwest Colorado where it would be fair to assume that nothing has ever happened. But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, quite a lot has happened, starting with a suspicious mudslide that destroys the town's Main Street and a cowboy, Buster McCaffrey, arrested for the death of one of the richest men in America, Marvin Mallomar.

Slade needs a cure, but what he finds is a savior, in the latest paranormal romance from national best-selling author Sarah McCarty. Contains mature themes.

A band of kill-crazy outlaws smash the bank in Caliche Bend, New Mexico. And by the fine white powder that covers everything - even the dead - everyone knows The Snowman has struck again: for this notorious bank robber uses bags of flour to stabilize the nitroglycerin used in his dynamite blasts.

Between the Indian Nations and Texas lies an area on the south side of the Red River that was once the winter camp for the likes of the notorious guerrillas William Clarke Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and later, the James Gang - known as Delaware Bend.

There was only one female marshal in the Indian Nations under Judge Issac Parker...Deputy US Marshal F.M. Miller. She teams up with Bass Reeves in Bass and the Lady and goes undercover to stop a new gang of murdering rustlers. Bass has an arrest warrant for his own son...for murder.

In tiny Blacklin County, Texas, a curse is nothing more than a four-letter word hollered in a barroom or muttered in the heat. So Sheriff Dan Rhodes is more curious than concerned when he dutifully responds to a complaint of witchcraft. When Dr. Samuel Martin, the local dentist - and unpopular landlord - claims he's been hexed by a tenant, Rhodes does his best to smooth things out between the distressed D.D.S. and the would-be witch. But in two shakes of a black cat's tail, the good doctor disappears...and his wife turns up bludgeoned to death.

Best-selling author TJ Clementine thought she’d be safe with her sisters during the holidays. She was wrong. Dead wrong. Now her “biggest fan” has followed TJ to Whitehorse, Montana, with visions of murder in mind. The only person who can help TJ is ruggedly handsome loner Silas Walker - if she can trust him. Because this mountain man knows just how to hunt deadly shadows...and win.

When cowboy artist Willie Russell is murdered on the Branding Iron Ranch, Sheriff Charles Matthews faces a mystery that seems built on the bones of the past. Willie Russell leaves behind sketches that illustrate a century-old legend of a brutal outlaw, a beautiful young woman, and the lost Santiago Crucifix, a three-foot-tall cross of solid gold. With only the sketches, the footprints of Johnny Brentwood, and very little else, Charles focuses on the eerie links between past and present events. Were Willie's sketches the story of the past, or a portent of the future?

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.

In Lonesome Animals, Russell Strawl, a tormented former lawman, is called out of retirement to hunt a serial killer with a sense of the macabre who has been leaving elaborately carved bodies of Native Americans across three counties. As the pursuit ensues, Strawl’s own dark and violent history weaves itself into the hunt, shedding light on the remains of his broken family: one wife taken by the river, one by his own hand; an adopted Native American son who fancies himself a Catholic prophet; and a daughter, whose temerity and stoicism contrast against the romantic notions of how the west was won.

The gay 1890s aren't always. Gay that is. Sometimes life is dangerous, especially if you're next on someone's murder list. In 1896, there aren't many career choices for a young lady. China Bohannon has fled one bad situation, and is looking to start her life over as a strong, independent woman in the wild and woolly town of Spokane, Washington. Convincing Gratton Doyle to take her seriously as a bookkeeper is hard enough, and when it comes to working as an investigator in the Doyle & Howe Detective Agency, it's well - nigh impossible.