Western United States

Winsor Glanvil pays court to Louise Carney, heiress to a fortune, and she agrees to marry him. The marriage is opposed by big Jack Rutledge, a jealous rival and formidable foe, so Glanvil and Louise plan to be married in a sequestered valley by a local clergyman. Rutledge and his supporters, learning of the plan, arrive in the valley ahead of the two and seize Glanvil. Glanvil is beaten mercilessly and Rutledge disfigures him, destroying one side of his face with the cutting edge of a spur. Rutledge then rejoins his gang in the clergyman’s house.

hn Signal, fleeing from a murder charge in a fair fight, arrives in the mining town of Monument. Calling himself John Alias, he is made a deputy sheriff by Sheriff Peter Ogden, who puts Alias between two crooked factions and fails to give him any support.

After five years of virtual banishment because he sold out his small outfit to the Middle Arizona Cattle Company, giving it a foothold on the Mesa Grande range, violent-tempered Joe Bonnyman is summoned back to Lodgepole by his father when it appears that a cattle war between the syndicate and the various rangers is imminent. During his short stay in town, Joe has an unpleasant meeting with Ed Merrill, the brother of a girl Joe had once courted.

When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du Pre the man. The Metis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he's got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town. As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe's testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the interrogation program.

The Age of Atlantic Revolution was a defining moment in western history. Our understanding of rights, of what makes the individual an individual, of how to define a citizen versus a subject, of what states should or should not do, of how labor, politics, and trade would be organized, of the relationship between the church and the state, and of our attachment to the nation all derive from this period (c. 1750-1850).

Lew Sherry and Pete Lang accept an offer they simply can't resist. Oliver Wilton is willing to pay the cowboys $1,000 a day for ten days to protect him from danger that has him living in a state of terror. A seafaring man has arrived at the inn in town and has made no secret of the fact that he's come to settle a score with Wilton.

This is part of The Spanish Bit Saga.

When they mastered the ways of the "Elk Dog," the horse, the band prospered. Yet they knew the old traditional ways must not die. Owl's father had changed the lives of The People bringing the horse from his native Spain. Now the younger son of the legendary chief must make his own reputation by learning the way of the buffalo from an ancient medicine man.

The Civil War has beaten down Jeb Patton beyond the point of mere exhaustion. Only the precious memories of the girl he left behind sustains him as he fights on. He should have died countless times as he fought for Southern Cause and Jeb knows his luck is running mighty low. Fate catches up to him one night near a no-name town somewhere in war-torn Arkansas. Instead of waking up in the arms of an angel, he wakes up in a medical tent - his right leg gone.

The first arrow should have killed the buffalo. But the massive bull keeps charging, and Lost Eyes watches, helpless, as the young warrior known as Waiting Horse is gored to death. As punishment for this tragic accident, Lost Eyes is exiled from his small Blackfoot tribe on the edge of the Elkhorn Creek - cursed to spend his days wandering the plains, forever remembering the hunt that changed his life.

Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case. Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a metis mountain guide with too many secrets.

Before the outsider, now Chief Heads Off, brought the Elk Dogs (horses) to the People, their strategy had always been to flee or hide from their mortal enemies, the Head Splitters. Now the People live in peace, but the young warriors long for war.

Book Two continues the story of Civil War veteran Jeb Patton, now settled in the Rocky Mountains. Starting anew as a farmer in the wilderness is a difficult task and one that takes both gumption and lots of raw determination.

Don Pedro Garcia believes the drunken Captain Sanchez' claim that the Don's only son is still alive and living among the savages in New Spain's uncharted wilderness.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

When her society matron mother presents Caroline with a one-night stand date a week before her wedding, she's appalled. Even worse, the encounter will take place at the fantasy ranch resort operated by her high school lover, Javier Alvarado. Although determined to remain faithful to her fiancé, she's tempted and intrigued to see her first love again. It's not like she has to sleep with him. But one look and kiss later, she yearns for the man she walked away from so long ago.

Gabriel Du Pré’s aunt Pauline has burned through more than her share of husbands, so it’s no surprise when she shows up in Toussaint complaining that the latest one, Badger, has run off. Du Pré, the fiddler and sometimes deputy, agrees to go looking for her man and finds him shot, execution-style, in the wilds of the Montana countryside. A chat with his contacts at the FBI reveals that Badger, a small-time drug smuggler, had been working for them since his last arrest. Pauline’s husband was bait, but the big fish got away.

After barely escaping nemesis Killer Boots in the tiny Arizona Territory town of Glorious, Cash McLendon is in desperate need of a safe haven somewhere - anywhere - on the frontier. Fleeing to Dodge City, he falls in with an intrepid band of buffalo hunters determined to head south to forbidden Indian Territory in the Texas Panhandle. In the company of such colorful Western legends as Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon, Cash helps establish a hunting camp known as Adobe Walls.

Cash McLendon, reluctant hero of the epic Indian battle at Adobe Walls, has journeyed to Mountain View in the Arizona Territory with one goal: to convince Gabrielle Tirrito that he's a changed man and win her back from schoolteacher Joe Saint. As they're about to depart by stage for their new life in San Francisco, Gabrielle is kidnapped by enforcer Killer Boots, who is working on orders from crooked St. Louis businessman Rupert Douglass.

In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe. Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil.