Showing results for "Compton" in Literature & Fiction

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he's desperate for money—it's not easy to find steady, safe work when you can't provide references, you can't stay in one place for long, and you're paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.

1983. The US nuclear submarine USS Roanoke embarks on a classified spy mission into Soviet waters. Their goal: to find evidence of a new, faster, and deadlier Soviet submarine that could tip the balance of the Cold War. But the Roanoke crew isn't alone. Something is on board with them. Something cunning and malevolent. Trapped in enemy territory and hunted by Soviet submarines, tensions escalate and crew members turn on each other. When the lights go out and horror fills the corridors, it will take everything the crew has to survive the menace.

Round about the second anniversary of the start of World War 1, Roger Waterlow is still stuck ashore in charge of the ramshackle British naval intelligence effort in a sweltering notionally "neutral" country in South-eastern Europe. As rumor follows rumor and the situation becomes daily more confused, Waterlow and his organisation learn of three couriers trying to carry correspondence to Berlin—correspondence that might give the Entente powers vital insights into German intentions for the region, if only they can be intercepted and their papers seized....

In the middle of the First World War, and sweltering in the heat of a nominally neutral country in South-eastern Europe, disillusioned Naval Intelligence officer Roger Waterlow seeks to make sense of scraps of information gathered by his agents, in the face of indifference or outright hostility from most of his colleagues at the British Legation. But when word reaches him that a German officer visiting from Berlin for talks with the country’s pro-German king is to be picked up by submarine, violating the country’s ‘neutrality,’ he sees the chance to finally make a real difference in the war…

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

Mississippi charmer Abner Mason is a professional gambler and a regular on the Delta Jack, a luxurious riverboat. But luck hasn't exactly been going Mason's way. After a disastrous loss at the tables, he owes an impossible debt to the most powerful man on the ship: mysterious, ruthless Cam Greeley. And Greeley's willing to do whatever it takes to get his fortune back - even threaten Mason's life. Now Mason has a single night to raise all the funds to pay off his debt by completing whatever ominous jobs Greeley has waiting for him. He just has to make it through alive....

A woman lies dead, shot and bleeding. Behind her body stands a large old manor house, her house, and now her son's. She ran the rural estate as a minor fiefdom, all had to subjugate themselves to her will, or they were put out of their homes and ejected from the community. Lady Compton was hated, nobody mourned her passing, but her murder brought suspicion and dismay to the closely allied village, and it brought the police into their midst.

Alaska, 1989. In a world where Alaska is still a Russian possession, charter captain Grigorivich Plesnett has a stained past - as a major in the Czar's Troika Guard, he was cashiered for disobeying a direct order. Now, 10 years later, Grig charters out to a cossack and discovers his past has not only caught up with him but is about to violently change his future, and the future of all nine of the nations of North America as well. Spanning Alaska from the Southeastern Inside Passage to the frozen Yukon, this is an epic tale of one man's journey of redemption and courage.

A man gets into a car that can take him anywhere he can imagine—including the past, into the worst mistake of his life, a memory he does not want to relive, cannot escape, and is even more afraid to alter. A seemingly harmless, forgettable film about “alien hand syndrome” inspires a wave of self-harm among viewers—and even stranger things among those who become obsessed with it.

Big Charlie Chilton knows better than to lose his temper, but when a loudmouth threatens to expose his long-buried secrets, he can't help but teach the man a lesson about being quiet. Unfortunately it turns out the man was about to make an important supply run for the town's marshal, and Marshal Watt knows just enough about Shotgun Charlie's past to draft him into service in his stead.

Frontier life is hard enough without having kids to worry about - especially for a widower like Paul Meakes. Still, he's settled where he is and resolved to stay in the small Colorado town his son and daughter call home. So when his daughter is hit by a seemingly poisoned arrow during an Indian raid, Paul is determined to track down the Comanche villains who hurt his little girl - and bring them to justice with the help of Indian hunter Hank Adley, a hired gun who's got business of his own with the tribe.

Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever. When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive. Johnny Compton, critically acclaimed author of The Spite House and master of dread, takes you on a terrifying race of one woman against the hordes of hell.

Dane Kramer looks forward to the day when his sprawling Oklahoma cattle ranch will truly be his - no strings attached. With only one more bank payment to make and a buyer in Omaha ready to pay top dollar for a herd of Herefords, he should finally have the banker, Earl Throckmorton, off his back. But Earl has a plan to keep the ranch for himself, and if he has his way, Dane's herd will never make it across the Omaha Trail - and Dane won't make it home alive.

It's 1943, and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean Islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world. Morale is at rock bottom. George Campbell needs a wee dram to give him the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor and, of course, the landlord at the inn are all having a very thin time of it. There's no conversation, no jollity, no fun - until a shipwreck off the coast brings a piece of extraordinary good fortune....

When Lieutenant Gerald Yamato of the Republic of California Air Force bailed out of his doomed fighter he had no idea he would land in a culture that would forever change his life. The Dene thought they had won their independence and the war was over. Suddenly they face an advancing Russian army from one direction, a merciless band of mercenaries from another, as well as the remnants of a defeated, angry, Russian army between the Dene and the rest of their people.

In West Texas, Lucius Stark is regarded as a no-good killer with nothing to say in his favor. But when Stark goes tender for a woman he's hired to kill, he's shot in the back and left with a burning desire for revenge.

A deeply divided nation. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands.... That was America in 1881. All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and 30 bullets later, three officers were wounded, and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Years ago Marshal Asher Thrall had shot mad-dog killer Ben Sharkey. And Sharkey has just repaid the favor in spades. With a bullet still in his chest, Ash knows he's a walking dead man. But he's going to make sure Sharkey is one step ahead of him.

The grit and glory that became a trademark of Ralph Compton’s best-selling Westerns is on full display in this thrilling tale. Here Deputy U.S. Marshal Augustus Crane rides to Rawhide Flat to collect accused robber Judah Walsh for a trial in Virginia City. But Crane gets more trouble than he bargained for when the townsfolk decide Walsh can’t leave unless he reveals where he hid the loot.

The only riches Texans has left after the Civil War were five million maverick longhorns and the brains, brawn and boldness to drive them north to where the money was. Now, Ralph Compton brings this violent and magnificent time to life in an extraordinary epic series based on the history-blazing...