Western Wars

Laura Elliston and William Kindle are on the run - from the army and from every miscreant in the West eager to claim the $500 bounty for Laura's capture as their own. But the danger isn't just from those pursuing them. Laura and Kindle both have demons of their own and pasts that won't stay dead. Exhausted, scared, scarred, and surrounded by enemies, neither realizes the greatest danger is yet to come.

At the dawn of the 19th century, the great powers of Western Europe treated the United States like a disobedient child. America's complaints were ignored, until President James Madison declared a second war on Great Britain. British forces would descend on the United States, but America rallied and survived. With stunning detail on land and naval battles, the role Native Americans played in the hostilities, and the larger backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, this is the story of the turning points of this strange conflict, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner".

The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco. The Gold Rush has ended; the Civil War threatens to tear apart the country. The bards of the moment are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft and seeking adventure; literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group.

In Dying to Learn, Michael Hunzeker develops a novel theory to explain how wartime militaries learn. He focuses on the Western Front, which witnessed three great-power armies struggle to cope with deadlock throughout the First World War. Through careful study of the British, French, and German experiences, the book provides a model that shows how a resolute focus on analysis, command, and training can help prepare modern militaries for adapting amidst high-intensity warfare in an age of revolutionary technological change.

1858, Fort Gibson, Indian Territory. 2nd Lieutenant Dobey Walls meets and bonds with veteran Corporal Jimmy Melton. As the Civil War begins, they leave to join the 8th Texas Cavalry in Houston, then take part in the first and the final charges of the Army of Tennessee. Between those events, they ride with Nathan Bedford Forrest, play an honorable role in the Fort Pillow Massacre, harass Sherman with Shannon's Raiders, and visit the second best brothel in Atlanta.

The bloody barbarism of the Civil War scarred Morgan’s soul as well as his body. He sent so many soldiers to Hell and almost joined them when he was struck by a bullet from the sniper known as the Arkansas Traveler. The only man to ever survive the notorious Rebel’s sharpshooting skills, Morgan finds himself back in the assassin’s sights. But the ex-Confederate isn’t the only one gunning for Morgan.

For 12 years he rode as an officer of the United States Army. For one year he served as an apprentice warrior of the Apaches. Torn between two loyalties, Nathanial Barrington prays he has found the peace he sought for so long. By the side of Clarissa, his star-crossed mate, he marks his stake as a rancher on land no one else dares claim, deep in Apache territory. But Barrington’s respite is short-lived. For the Apache nation is caught between the pincers of the bluecoats from the north and the Mexicans from the south.

The year 1858 dawns bloodred in the untamed Southwest, even as in the East the country moves towards civil war. Leadership of the most warlike Apache tribe has passed to the great warrior chief Cochise, who burns to avenge the poisoning of an Indian child. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is out to end Apache power with terror instead of treaties.

It is 1857. Under President James Buchanan, the battle lines for America’s coming conflagration are being violently drawn. As the burning questions of slavery scorches the nation, another savage war takes shape in the West. In the far-off New Mexico territory, blue-coated soldiers hurl a challenge against the implacable Mimbreno Apaches: surrender or die. And in the Indians’ ranks stands the brave called Sunny Bear - the powerful, blond-haired warrior and medicine man.

George Mergenthaler, the grandson of the inventor of the Linotype, was an only child, and at the time of his birth in 1920, became the sole male heir the family fortune. Tall, handsome, Ivy League educated, speaking fluent German and French, "Merg" as he was know to his friends, did what many in his generation did following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor: He enlisted in the Army.

The story of Texas Ranger Zack Branson continues when he is reassigned to El Paso, Texas. He collaborates with his cousin, US Marshal Cal Branson, to try to control the rustling and banditry on the border between the US and Mexico. Zack and Cal chase a group of Mexican bandits across the Rio Grande River, confront them in a cantina at a small pueblo, and get involved in a shootout. While Cal is honeymooning, Zack and El Paso County Sheriff White go after cattle rustlers that were busted out of jail. Who will walk away and who will die is uncertain until the last shot is fired.

Michael Allen had watched his father charm his way in and out of so many different kinds of trouble, he’d all but stopped counting. Unctuous, yet honorable, Buford Allen embodied the spirit and passions of the West. But this time something was wrong. Why was his father so set on buying a ranch in Warhorse, Montana, of all places? And what was in the tattered suitcase hidden under the hotel bed?

Eight-year-old Benjamin Franklin “B .F.” Windes decides to abandon home and trail his father’s path. Thus begins a trip of constant struggle with disease, severe weather, hardship, Indian attack, and death on his lone journey across much of what is now the United States. B. F. spends the next 11 years in gold rush towns in California - first as a barber, then as a physician’s assistant - before departing for the Caribbean at age 19, where he becomes a blockade runner during the American Civil War.

This novel is 2nd in a Trilogy about the 17-year-old activist and co-conspirator with John Brown at Harpers Ferry, his daughter Annie Hope Brown, who falls in love with her father's 1st-in-command and is having John Henry Kagi's baby. However, she has kept the pregnancy a secret, and is now clawing her way back to Kagi in the company of a man named Wesley Lane, secretly a Pinkerton Agent out to make a name for himself as the man who has killed her outlaw father to reap the reward of thousands as well as the fame.

Betty Zane is the story of the first settlers in the Ohio Valley, and their fight for survival during the Revolutionary war. The British have organized and incited the various eastern tribes to attack American 'Rebels' in this lesser known theater of the war.

Did you know George Armstrong Custer survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn and became a gunslinging knight - errant in the West - aided by a troupe of Chinese acrobats, cancan-dancing girls, a rebel-flag eye-patch-wearing Southern gambler, and a multilingual Crow Indian scout? H. W. Crocker's rollicking, witty, adventurous new novel Armstrong is an alternative history like you've never before heard.

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.

When General William T. Sherman commissions Ezra Justice to form a secret band of cavaliers who will help end the war between the North and South, his order may impact the West as well.

The abolitionist legacies of Orville Brown and his son, Spencer, live on in this historic and daring 19th-century account. Journeying apart from each other, but with similar passion, Orville and Spencer's stories span virtually every major abolitionist event: from the battles of Bleeding Kansas and the establishment of the free-soil movement to the river wars of Memphis, Vicksburg, and Shiloh. Listeners will follow Orville west as he strikes out for Kansas Territory to help ensure its entry as a free state.

It takes true grit to build a billion-dollar dynasty like the Ford family ranch. But when it comes to finding love, all it takes is one handsome cowboy to steal a woman's heart. She's riding solo. As one of the heirs to the River Ranch fortune, Mia Ford is practically Texas royalty. But that doesn't mean she's some pampered princess. She can saddle up and ride a horse as well as any man, even a hard-working cowboy like Sam Mendes. For years, she's harbored a crush on the strong, silent horseman. But how can she make a move when she's his boss?