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.

    The worst that might happen is the Indians come after his scalp. But when he runs into the beautiful Rosemary, he finds himself pitted against ruthless enemies of every kind.Kidnappers, comancheros, and renegade Apaches are on his trail - and after his blood. But most implacable of all, there is the Sonoran Desert itself, where everything that grows either bites, stings or scratches.Murphy needs all his skill with a gun if he is to survive.

    Penniless and illiterate, yet fiercely independent, Rose begins a two-year odyssey to revisit the land of her childhood, a land she once traveled with her father, an itinerant robe trader among the Assiniboines and Blackfeet. But the old ways of the hunter and trapper are disappearing. European investors are flooding the bison ranges with vast herds of cattle, raising mansions and polo fields on ground once claimed by teepees and sod-roofed hunters' shacks. With an aging roan gelding named Albert as her closest friend, Rose finds herself a reluctant hero in an ageless battle, the face of an indigenous population, both native and white, as she stubbornly pushes back against the invading aristocracy. And hanging over her every decision is an alcoholic father, who hunts bison inside the newly formed Yellowstone National Park, selling the mounted heads and tanned robes to Eastern tourists even as his daughter makes her stand against the destruction of the land she loves"--

    SweazyA Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger NovelFrom the blood he spilled during the Civil War to his beloved wife, who died in childbirth, and his daughters, who were taken by the flu, ex-Texas Ranger Josiah Wolfe thought he had seen enough death for one lifetime. Now, with an infant son and a heart full of pain, he's rejoining the Rangers as part of the Frontier Battalion. But first, his captain needs him to escort Charlie Langdon to trial.Wolfe and Langdon had a long history together as both lawmen and soldiers—until Langdon's lust for blood and money made him an outlaw. Wolfe knows his old friend has to pay. But the ride to the hangman's noose isn't going to be easy. Langdon's friends aren't going to give him up without a fight. And Wolfe's killer instinct may be his only chance to see his son again...Praise for Larry D Sweazy"Combines the slam-bang action of a good Western with the sensitivity of style and depth of character that used to be the hallmark of literary fiction."—Loren D. Estleman, five-time Spur Award-winning author"Raw, wild, and all too human...a thundering testament to just how good the Western novel can be."—Johnny D. Boggs, Spur Award-winning author"A character-rich story about a Texas Ranger haunted by dark memories, on the hunt for a former comrade-in-arms turned killer."—Elmer Kelton, seven-time Spur Award-winning author"Ris[es] to the level of a classic."—Loren D. Estleman

     In the aftermath, Ethan Brody returns from the war to find everything he knows and loves reduced to nothing but ashes. Hell bent on revenge, he sets off to find the murderous gang, only to have them slip away. Losing his faith, he sets off on a life of bounty hunting, vowing to never again let justice go astray. "Alive" is no longer an option and in the process, the legend of the Rider is born. 1894: Oliver Kingston Dukes a man of remittance finds his way to the town of Adobe Wells, immediately becoming embroiled in the town's struggle with the wealthy and powerful Katy brothers. Enter the Rider, on the trail of the notorious bandit Hector Salazar. He joins Dukes and the townsfolk to take back the town once and for all, and perhaps...take back his own salvation.

    For more than eighty years it has been available only in a shorter, censored version, titled To the Last Man Finally readers can enjoy the full-length novel and experience the story and characters in all their glory.

    In the throes of the War Between the States, Rusty joins the Rangers and searches for the renegades who killed his adoptive father.In Badger Boy, the Rangers are disbanded and Rusty returns to his home on the Red River only to discover that the girl he loves has married another. In a time of personal turmoil as well as the post-war uphheaval in Texas, Rusty's childhood returns to haunt him as he rescues Andy Pickard, called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors.Andy and Rusty ride together in the newly reformed Rangers in The Way of the Coyote, in a time when Texas is overrun with outlaws, Confederate raiders, Ku Klux Klansmen, and marauding Comanches.

    Upon recovering he meets Captain Horatio Nelson, newly appointed to command of the Northern Leeward Islands squadron and the Royal Navy Dockyard at English Harbour in Antigua. Nelson's primary task is stamping out rampant American smuggling activity. But to succeed, Nelson needs information.Lieutenant Ross serves as a spy for Nelson against the smugglers, but they aren't his only foe. French and American spies supporting the smugglers are playing for far higher stakes, sowing the seeds of violent unrest. Lieutenant Ross is soon in the midst of desperate action and working with a beautiful slave woman to gain information as he struggles to stop to their plot.Dockyard Dog is the first novel in the Evan Ross series. Fans of Julian Stockwin, Dewey Lambdin, and Alexander Kent will enjoy reading this series.

    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?

    Fargo lives with a gun in his fist. Guns and killing are all he knows. And Fargo likes what he knows. Want to start a revolution? Want to stop one? Send for Fargo. Want to blow a bridge, stage a prison break, rob a bank? Fargo's your man. The Army taught Fargo how to kill with pistol, rifle, machine gun. He became an expert with knives, shotguns and women on his own time. Fargo hates the quiet life. He knows he's going to get it sooner or later. He hopes it won't be too much later because he wouldn't know how to be old and comfortable. So while it lasts, Fargo plans to grab the world by the throat and take what he wants. If the world doesn't like that, it can try to stop him ... if it can.

    Now he’s settled on the Texas coast, working a ranch as the partner of his old friend Tom Kittery—and finding himself in the middle of a feud between Kittery and a neighboring family. But the danger from outside is nothing compared to the threat within, as Duvarney suspects Kittery’s woman isn’t all she appears to be. Tap may have to go to war again. But this time will it be with his closest friend?The First Fast DrawEast Texas wasn’t much of a home for Cullen Baker. Few liked him, and some even tried to kill him. Yet after three years of wandering, he’s back to farm the land that is rightfully his. But Cullen’s neighbors have long memories, and his worst adversary has teamed up with a vicious outlaw. With enemies closing in on all sides and threatening the woman he loves, Cullen will have to be faster than lightning—and twice as deadly—just to survive.From the Paperback edition.

    Four years ago, his father had handed him a box containing both guns, completely disassembled, and told him he could have them, when and if he could put them back together. It took him a week, but he did it. He didn’t do it to please his father, whom he hated, nor his mother, whom he loved. He did it to prove to himself that he could, and as a result of hours of practice at the back of the property, he rarely missed with either gun, and he could draw and fire the pistol in a split second.

    Marshal Austin Harper is a wanted man. He is wanted in Robbers Roost for intercepting their raids at a stagecoach way station in New Mexico. He is wanted for saving a distressed Rachel Dennis. Now, Harper is facing not just one petty gang of robbers but an entire canyon of criminals operating in a highly organized fashion. Not that Harper is afraid. But his badly injured leg during his line of duty is a huge encumbrance. And time is running short. This nefarious bunch is terrorizing a lot of the southwest from a barren and well-fortified canyon in nearby No Man's Land. Together with his fiercely loyal American Indian friend Eagle, Harper leaps into action to put the marauders out of business permanently. Infiltrating Robbers Roost to take out the leader Wicked Bear is one solution to prevent more innocent lives from being lost. Harper’s daring move is backed by the U.S. Army, but threatened by sworn adversaries of the American government including renegade Indians, enemy Mexican nationals and Confederate soldiers not willing to give up on the Lost Cause. There will be bloodshed. How will the sun set at the canyon terrain of No Man’s Land? Will the sun rise again for Robbers Roost, or for Harper?

    a towering tale of dreams unfettered, of mustangs running free, and of young men riding hell-bent-for-leather into Indian country for no other reason than they were young, brave and wild.By 1900 the Old West was vanishing, but the man many called its fastest gun was still alive.  By then Car Brules had shut himself and his secrets away in a cabin on Colorado's Lone Cone Peak.  Only one person knew his real story, a boy of eleven who became his friend and heard his extraordinary tales in 1909.  The Scout is that unforgettable story, just as young Steven Cartwright heard it, just as Brules told it: hard and gritty, wry with a cowboy's humor, and true to the spirits of all those who loved the west--and died for it--from Custer to Crazy Horse.Many hard, hurting things had driven Cat Brules to become the man he was.  The death of his beloved Shoshone bride, Wild Rose, was one of them.  Months after Brules lost her--brutally and far too soon--Wild Rose still came to him in his dreams.  With a void in his heart and a reckless spirit, Brules signed on as a Scout for General George Crook, whose cavalry was headed into the Badlands. Then, the U.S. Army still didn't know that there were fifteen thousand Sioux and Cheyenne in those Wyoming foothills, and under chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, every one of them was willing to fight to the death to live free.Brules's account of the violence that ensued, told with eyewitness immediacy and chilling authenticity, is one of courage and shame as he rides the trail toward the Little Big Horn and the battles that followed.  Seeing for himself the dying of a way of life, Brules tells a searing truth about America's history: the betrayal of Custer to the Sioux, the hunting of Geronimo, and the U.S. Army's cruel pursuit of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce.  And here too are the women who loved Brules: White Antelope, the gentle Indian maiden who wanted what Brules felt he could never give again--and Melisande, the saucy Mormon girl who might be too much for even Cat Brules to handle.Debunking the myths of the Old West and the romanticism of movies, renowned Western writer Harry Combs creates a vision at once more complex, magnificent and genuine--from the make of the rifle to the caliber of the bullet that cut Custer down.  A novel unmatched in excitement and adventure, The Scout lets you smell the cordite, feel a man's hard need for a woman, and discover that the real flesh and blood inhabitants of those legendary days were tougher, bolder and more fascinating than we ever dared to imagine.

    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.