“Why you’re no bigger than a twig,” she said with a condescending smile. "Yeah, but I can fight like the trunk of a redwood tree!" Audrey’s gaze traveled to the guns resting on Violet’s narrow hips. Her face curled up. “Why, you’ve got guns strapped to your hips like a man!” Violet gritted her teeth and forced a smile, resting a hand on one of the guns and held up the Bible she had tucked under her other arm. “I figured between the Good Book and the pistols, anyone wanting to mess with me was gonna meet their maker one way or the other!”

    Now, with some domestic skills and education under her belt, she is ready to leave Creede, Colorado for a fresh start. When she is given the chance to go to Sanctuary, Montana to open a library for the town, she jumps on it with arms wide open. Before she leaves she is challenged to open her heart to the possibility of love and marriage in her new town. Agreeing to be open she leaves never dreaming any man would want a former soiled dove. Jake Lockwood made a vow eight years ago after his second attempt to marry a mail-order-bride ended in failure. He was done seeking a bride. He’d wait for destiny to bring the right woman to him. When he meets the lovely yet broken Fiona Chauncey he knows she’s meant for him. But when his brother seems to object and a bride from his past arrives to force him to wed it looks like his dreams may once again crash around him. Can a woman with a secret past and a rancher with melding outsiders really get an honest chance at love and marriage? Will Jake listen to those around him and loose Fiona? Can Fiona trust that Jake is a man of his word and that his love is true? She isn’t sure she can. All she knows is this is supposed to be Fiona’s Fresh Start.

    This story was first published in The Endlands, in January 2011. Charlie is a man who follows the rules. He is a man who is never late. He is a man who always obeys.This is the most important day of Charlie's life, and he is running late. The short story is FREE for download on Barnes and Noble NOOK!

    Prepare to have your blood chilled by six tales of fear and phantasmagoria…The Silent Bell: A doctor’s invention to prevent people being accidentally buried alive backfires on him with horrific results.The Stonegate Manor Collection: Lord Feltham’s paintings are worth a fortune, but also conceal a gruesome tragedy that has yet more lives to claim.The Haunting of Reverend Carson: The charlatan Musgrave makes a living pretending to talk to the dead, until he discovers his new client’s demons are more than merely spiritual.The Last Waltz: Through that miracle of technology, the Zoopraxiscope, a lonely man’s long-lost love is brought back to life before his very eyes.The Speaking Tube: John Barker is consumed with hatred for his malicious father and torments him with voices from hell, unaware of how close to the abyss he is himself.The Ghost Train: Alone aboard an empty train running along a dead track, Godfrey witnesses the grotesque secret that is entombed beneath Paddington Station.Go deeper into David Haynes’s world of the macabre…

    But the town is so wrapped up in lies, deceit and greed that it's difficult for Flynn to know who's telling the truth. VISIT WWW.RAGINGBULLPUBLISHING.COM AND DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE WESTERN STARTER LIBRARY

    A fast-paced story of sacrifice, duty to honor, and Yankee ingenuity and well worth the time." - Amazon ReviewerThe power of a promise made and a promise kept is realized when Jeremiah Thompsett comes of age and accepts the responsibility of fulfilling his mentor's long-held dream. Raised by an escaped slave in the midst of the Arapaho nation in the Wind River mountains, he now must track down the slave catchers that killed his adopted father and stole their cache. The Vengeance Quest takes him and his companions through the mountains and across the nation to fulfill the promise of freeing the family of slaves held dear to his mentor and adopted father.Accompanied by Broken Shield and Laughing Waters, his Arapaho friend and his sister, the trek through the mountains and to Fort Union is fraught with hazard and ambush. It is here he is joined by Scratch, the crusty mountain man who joins him on his journey downriver and across country to find Ezekiel's family and to seek to free them.

    He thought he had left love behind. Fate is about to prove them wrong… There’s only one thing in Charlotte Martin’s mind regarding love: it destroys people in its passing and it will never be an option for her ever again...With the war-torn remnants of her hometown far behind her, Charlotte has found a new life for herself working as a cook at a boarding house and keeping to herself.Thomas Parchant, a retired Union soldier, wants nothing more than to get away from the memories of the past. Building a new life in his uncle’s ranch in Montana seems like the only way out for him and his mother. Until he sets his eyes on Charlotte...Caught in a game of hide and seek against all odds, sparkles of love start appearing between them even though none of them is ready to admit it.But the past cannot stay hidden for long and when Charlotte’s catches up with her own,there will be no one to save her but Thomas. Yet before he does, he will have to come face to face with his greatest of fears…and manage to survive it.

    CASE, AMAZON TOP 500  REVIEWS, CA. AN AMERICAN OUTLAWGilman James comes home from Iraq--the last of three childhood friends to return. His brothers-in-arms are mere shadows of their former selves--Gil, unmarked, determines to take care of them. But how far should a man go for the people he loves?Stepping across the line between right and wrong, Gil finds himself stranded in the Texan desert--as a bank heist he's planned goes horribly wrong. Pursued into the badlands by US Marshal John Whicher, a moment of violent reckoning is set in train.What makes an outlaw? Marshal John Whicher, veteran of the First Gulf War thinks he knows. But can natural justice ever outrank the law?AN AMERICAN KILL                                                                                                      'A classic series in the making... I found the first book in this series compulsive reading. This one is even more compulsive.'  AMAZON REVIEWS                                                            'Exceptional...'  ROD REYNOLDS, author, 'THE DARK INSIDE''Loved the first one, this one's even better. Best newcomer in ages, class...' Y.GUILLEMOT, AMAZON REVIEWSJohn Whicher is a US Marshal, not long out of training - barely twelve months back from serving in the Persian Gulf war. In south Texas, he's working his first case when a multiple shooting on the US / Mexico border leaves five non-documented aliens and one American dead.The county decides to limit any inquest - money's tight, deaths among illegals are notoriously hard to crack. But Whicher, new to law enforcement, is not about to let his first case slide.

    Recent unexpected gunplay has whittled his detective agency down to a single operative: a man named John Henry Cole. Cole is the only man left when a new assignment comes in from a former lover of Kelly’s, a woman operating an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. Three of the young women working for her have been murdered, and someone is trying to cover up their deaths.It’s a dangerous job, and Cole is advised that he must take every precaution—as if he needed such advice. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok was recently murdered at Deadwood, and Calamity Jane Canary and Doc Holliday are among Cole’s potential suspects. Add that to a corrupt constable and a bounty hunter who just happens to be an old enemy of Cole’s, and it’s clear there are many who will not welcome his arrival in Deadwood. Cole is a lonely man in a lonely profession, and finding a murderer in the wild mining camp could be less of a challenge than simply staying alive.Using real-life characters and settings from one of the most notorious times in the history of the Wild West, veteran author Bill Brooks spins another edge-of-your-seat thriller.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    In the first two books of the series, “Coyote Courage” and “Coyote Creek," readers are introduced to Brock Clemons and the small town of Dry Springs, where Brock meets a young boy named Huck, falls for a beautiful young woman named Sophie and faces a band of hardened outlaws. Brock decides to stay beyond the one night he had planned, and readers follow his adventures in town and journey in the aftermath of his visit to Dry Springs. Brock Clemons rides into the small town of Dry Springs simply looking for a place to grab a cigar and a good night’s sleep. Instead, he finds a town being strangled by a band of hardened outlaws, a young boy named Huck who is bravely facing challenges far beyond his years, and Sophie, a woman of captivating strength and beauty. Brock decides to stay beyond the one night he had planned, but will his intelligence, courage and unmatched skill with a gun be enough to save the town, help Huck and win Sophie’s heart?

    Thomas. Jess Williams is an ordinary young boy with a loving family growing up in Black Creek, Kansas. That all changes when he comes home and finds his family brutally murdered.Forced to become a man overnight, he vows to avenge his family's savage deaths. He begins to practice with his Pa's Colt .45 and then a stroke of destiny arrives when he discovers a new pistol and holster that mysteriously appears. Jess practices with it relentlessly until he becomes so quick that he is inbeatable on the draw.He leaves home transformed from a boy to a highly skilled shootist with no reason to live except to hunt down and kill each of the three men responsible for the murders. as he begins his journey, he does so with a pistol and holster that no one has ever seen before--and won't again for almost one-hundred years.

    Here are twenty-three original tales—stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Orson Scott Card’s first “Alvin Maker” story in a decade, and an original adventure by Fred Van Lente, writer of Cowboys & Aliens. Other contributors include Tobias S. Buckell, David Farland, Alan Dean Foster, Jeffrey Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Rajan Khanna, Mike Resnick, Beth Revis, Fred Van Lente, Walter Jon Williams, Ben H. Winters, Christie Yant, and Charles Yu, with an introduction by editor John Joseph Adams.CONTENTS:01 - Joe R. Lansdale, The Red-Headed Dead02 - Ben H. Winters, The Old Slow Man and his Gold Gun from Space03 - David Farland, Hellfire on the High Frontier04 - Mike Resnick, The Hell-Bound Stagecoach05 - Seanan McGuire, Stingers and Strangers06 - Charles Yu, Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger07 - Alan Dean Foster, Holy Jingle08 - Beth Revis, The Man With No Heart09 - Alastair Reynolds, Wrecking Party10 - Hugh Howey, Hell from the East11 - Rajan Khanna, Second Hand12 - Orson Scott Card, Alvin and the Apple Tree13 - Elizabeth Bear, Madam Damnable's Sewing Circle14 - Tad Williams, Strong Medicine15 - Jonathan Maberry, Red Dreams16 - Kelley Armstrong, Bamboozled17 - Tobias S. Buckell, Sundown18 - Jeffrey Ford, La Madre del Oro19 - Ken Liu, What I Assume You Shall Assume20 - Laura Anne Gilman, The Devil's Jack21 - Walter Jon Williams, The Golden Age22 - Fred Van Lente, Neversleeps23 - Christie Yant, Dead Man's Hand

    She's missed out on love and romance and she's decided to take matters into her own hands. If love won't find her, then she will surely find love. Is becoming a Mail Order Bride a good idea or will she just find more disappointment? Meet Levi. He's the handsome ranch owner Lucy is headed to meet. There's just one little problem. She's a little overweight and she neglected to share this detail about herself. How will Levi handle this touchy issue when they finally meet? The beautiful, and equally determined Clara hits the quaint Nebraska town about the same time Lucy does and sparks fly. Who will win this cat fight? "Not What He Expected" is the first publication by Annie Boone. Pick it up and see if you like her short story style.

    Through thick and thin, good and bad, fire and rain, their friendship has only gotten stronger—so strong that nothing could possibly break their bond, a bond that, for Ray, has suddenly changed from simply friends to something stronger and deeper… Something that makes her dream of days and nights beside the man she loves, something that makes her wish she were more than just the shepherd’s daughter. Then Billy’s mail order bride arrives. Rebecca DuCastille is everything Ray is not: refined, well-mannered, and pretty as a porcelain tea cup. How can Ray possibly compete for Billy’s heart when his new bride is everything he could want in a proper wife? Can the shepherd’s daughter convince her childhood friend that their love for one another goes beyond friendship, or will Billy marry the pretty interloper and leave Ray out to pasture?

    President Grant appoints Judge Mobley Meadows to the Texas Federal Circuit Court and charges him with preventing the situation from getting out of hand. Davis quickly realizes that Mobley is a threat when he overturns the Governor’s land reappraisal decree, a source of graft for Davis’s supporters, and sends his personal assassin to get rid of Mobley. Mobley and his two deputy marshals, Edson Rabb, a handsome Cherokee Indian, and Jack Anthony Lopes, the illegitimate son of General Santa Ana and the English Lady Madeleine Smythe, are repeatedly attacked on their journey from Waco to Austin. They know Davis is behind the attacks, but they cannot make a case against him. Davis loses the election by a majority of two to one, but arranges for his personally appointed state Supreme Court to overturn the election on a technicality involving a single misplaced semi-colon in the new Texas constitution. He then refuses to leave office or to participate in a trial in Mobley’s court. Davis’s opponent, Richard Coke, does not accept this decision and with his supporters storms the state administrative building in Austin. Davis’s forces counterattack and manage to take back the first floor of the building. A standoff then prevails that can only be resolved by the action of President Grant. Mobley suggests a course of action to the president, that in the end works, but not without Mobley having to compromise his beliefs, his sense of honor, and everything he thinks he stands for.