Suppose that, instead, he was found close to death at the scene of the defeat and was brought to trial for his actions. With a masterful blend of fact and fiction, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer tells us what might have happened at that trial as it brings to life the most exciting period in the history of the American West.

    ARMY OUTPOST AND A YOUNG WOMAN'S TERRIFYING PASSAGE ACROSS THE AMERICAN FRONTIER. Set in 1871 in the unforgiving wasteland of the Arizona Territory, Shavetail is the story of Private Ned Thorne, a seventeen-year-old boy from Connecticut who has lied about his age to join the Army. On the run from a shameful past, Ned is desperate to prove his worth -- to his superiors, to his family, and most of all, to himself. Young and troubled, Ned is as green and stubborn as a "shavetail," the soldiers' term for a dangerous, untrained mule. To endure in this world, Ned must not only follow the orders of the camp's captain, Robert Franklin,but also submit to the cruel manipulations of Obediah Brickner, the camp's mule driver. Both Franklin and Brickner have been damaged by their long military service, both consider themselves able to survive the dangers of the desert -- floods, scorpions, snakes, and Indians -- and both imperil Ned. Yet there are other characters, all richly drawn, who also confront Ned: half-wit soldiers, embattled Indians hidden in cliffs, a devious and philosophical peddler, and the fleshy whores who materialize in the desert as soon as the paymaster has left camp and dance with drunken soldiers around a fire late into the night. After a band of Apaches attack a nearby ranch, killing two men and kidnapping a young woman, Ned's lieutenant -- a man seeking atonement for his own mistakes -- leads Ned and the rest of his patrol on a near-suicidal mission through rugged mountains and into Mexico in hopes of saving the woman's life. It is unlikely any can survive this folly, and those who do will be changed forever. Meticulously researched and vividly told, Shavetail renders a time when the United States was still an expanding empire, its western edge bloody with the deaths of soldiers, settlers, and Indians. In language both spare and brilliant, Cobb brings readers this lost American landscape, untouched by highways or electricity and without the comforts of civilization. Shavetail also marks the return of a great American literary voice. Cobb's first and only other novel, Crazy Heart, was published in 1987 to great acclaim and was edited by the legendary editor Ted Solotaroff. Cobb is also a former student of Donald Barthelme, who described Crazy Heart as "a bitter, witty psychological profile of genius." Brutal and deft, laced with both violence and desire, Shavetail plunges into the deepest human urges even as it marks the ground where men either survive or perish.

     Abilene, 1871. Fifteen-year-old Will Merritt is fiercely protective of the cattle trade that made his father’s fortune. Idolizing the cowboys who flood the streets each summer, Will and his friends are drawn to Abilene’s exotic Texastown district—a powderkeg of saloons and brothels so notorious that the mayor has hired the West’s most famous gunman, Wild Bill Hickok, to police its streets. Yet even with Hickok as marshal, Abilene boils with deep divisions. The townsfolk resent the immigrant settlers whose new farms are slicing up the rangeland. And no one is more intolerant than Will’s best friend, Jasper, who delights in tormenting any farmer he encounters. But Will finds himself torn when he meets the beautiful and beguiling Anna, whose dignity and determination test his deepest beliefs. With the scaffolding of his life beginning to wobble, Will realizes that his flamboyant father, J.T. Merritt, has a secret, something hidden far out in the remote prairie. When J.T. makes his stunning secret public, everything Abilene believes about its future is challenged, and the Merritts become outcasts. And all the while, Will and the town are rushing toward an extraordinary tragedy involving Marshal Hickok. An event that will seal Will and Anna in a lifelong romance.- Winner of the Western Writers Of America 2013 Spur Award- Winner of the Western Fictioneers 2013 Peacemaker Award for Best Western First Novel- Winner of the 2012 Forward National Literature Award for historical fiction.- Winner of the 2013 Kansas Notable Book Award from the Center for the Book/State Library of Kansas

    There’s no doubt in her mind that if given another chance, she can make a success of homesteading. She will not fail this time. People scoff, saying ranching is too much of a job for a lone woman to undertake. But Rose is no ordinary woman. She may be petite, stylish, and beautiful, but she is also strong and driven. Every aspect of ranching brings joy to her heart. Then why is she here in Wise River, Montana, taking orders from a mean-spirited school board and attempting something she has no clue how to do? Teaching? Jesse Rivers carries his own baggage on his wide shoulders. He’s been called home by a dying stepmother to take over the Rocking R Ranch and the care of a belligerent and wounded brother. A rugged, lanky cowboy, Jesse is also demanding, surly, and afraid to love. No, he can’t love. What if he has buried inside him the same volatile anger as his father, resulting in brutality by strong fists or a whip? Then Jesse meets Rose. Strong willed, outspoken, determined, and oh-so-desirable.

    Eighteen-year-old Jenny is under no illusions—it’ll take a miracle to survive, much less thrive, in the unforgiving wilderness, particularly when twelve-year-old David fights her every attempt to prepare. Unexpected help arrives when John Beck—once a close friend of their father’s—arrives at their cabin. The tough-as-nails bounty hunter reluctantly agrees to stay through the winter. He owes it to his murdered friend to help Foster’s children build a working ranch, even if it’s the last thing he wants to do. Their uneasy alliance is fraught with hardships, danger, and back-breaking work that still doesn’t guarantee anyone will survive until spring. Especially with their father’s killer still on the loose.

    Chained to a tree, the man seems destined to hang for murder. In response to the boy's curiosity, Hawk Eyes shares his story of bad luck and misadventure. As if a master storyteller sitting comfortably by a campfire, Hawk Eyes relates near-death escapes, living with the Cherokee, gunfights, the death of friends and loved ones, and a quest for revenge. Ben can see vast landscapes painted from the words of the doomed man and feel the wild history of the West come alive. Will he have to watch Hawk Eyes die at the end of a rope?

     Captain John McClain finds himself on the wrong end of a shotgun when attempting to find his child. Heading west to find the mother of his son and the outlaw who shot him, John is forced to escort an enticing woman whose lifestyle goes against his moral standards, yet she calls to every part of him. Heading west to meet the dying father she never knew, and possibly starting a new life, Mae Hawkins didn’t expect the added complication of traveling with the one man she always loved. When they're joined along the road by a minister and his wife, things get beyond complicated for John and Mae who awaken to the lesson that sometimes differences are more imagined than real.

    The acclaimed author of Goldfield and Cashbox now recreates one of the pivotal events in Western American history--the great, gaudy, gold stampede to California in 1848-49--and weaves into this glittering backdrop the stories of two unlikely gold seekers.

    Louisa, the spirited eldest daughter of Herzig and Clara Steinbacher, has her whole life ahead of her. She is seventeen, and dreams of the "outside world" beyond her doorstep. But when Clara dies in childbirth, Louisa is suddenly thrust into adulthood-with the burden of her mother's responsibilities...and the care of her younger siblings. The only world she has ever known closes around her.Then Herzig, an elder in their strict Mennonite community, hires young, handsome Thomas to help on the farm. Thomas is hardworking, honest...and not of the Faith. But Louisa can't hide her growing feelings for him. Her choices set in motion a transformation she never expected. But at what cost?

    An authorized biography of the legendary marshal describes the Old West exploits and law enforcement career of Wyatt Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil, and Doc Holliday.

    The story of a family building a ranch in the rugged wilderness of post Civil War Montana, and of a young man seeking his family and his destiny. If you liked the movie OPEN RANGE or the TV shows BIG VALLEY and LANCER, or the novels of Louis L'Amour and Ralph Compton, then this might be for you.

    Now three of their best short novels are collected in a single volume. Zane Grey’s From Missouri has been restored from the author’s own manuscript and is appearing in paperback in its corrected form. Max Brand’s Over the Northern Border is a classic tale of stage coach robbery and relentless pursuit, also corrected and restored from the author’s original manuscript. Louis L’Amour’s Riders of the Dawn debuted in Giant Western magazine in 1951 and appears here in that original version, as L’Amour himself first intended it. Enjoy these three classic tales and experience the Western the way it was meant to be.

    Launching the Code of the West series, this is a tale of switched identities, the need for truth and an unexpected love, set in the Old West.

    The first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, carving a place as the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men-complicating his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is. But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone. Neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong-a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny. Intertwined with Eli's story are those of his son, Peter, a man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and JA, Eli's great-granddaughter, a woman who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world.Phillipp Meyer deftly explores how Eli's ruthlessness and steely pragmatism transform subsequent generations of McCulloughs. Love, honor, children are sacrificed in the name of ambition, as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Yet, like all empires, the McCoulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices.Harrowing, panoramic, and vividly drawn, The Son is a masterful achievement from a sublime young talent.

    William’s loyalty has worn thin over the years but he cannot break the ties with Galloway because times are hard and the house in which he lives belongs to him. Carrie Tanner grows up in the heart of a poor yet loving family, but as she becomes a young woman she becomes involved in the Suffragette movement. The times are changing – and quickly. Will this close-knit community be able to pull together or will it be torn apart?