Showing results for "The Dark" in Westerns

In Ride the Dark Trail, Louis L’Amour tells the story of Logan Sackett, a cynical drifter who changes his ways to help a widow keep her land. Logan Sackett is wild and rootless, riding west in search of easy living. Then he meets Emily Talon, a fiery old widow who is even wilder than he is...

Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.

Stephen King's The Gunslinger meets Breaking Bad in Laura Bickle's novel Dark Alchemy. Some secrets are better left buried … Geologist Petra Dee arrives in Wyoming seeking clues to her father's disappearance years ago. What she finds instead is Temperance, a dying western town with a gold rush...

When Gaylord Riley walked away from the Coburn gang, he had money and a dream. He worked hard and built a cabin, gathered a herd of cattle, and fell in love with Marie Shattuck. But when he is confronted with false accusations of rustling and murder, Riley is forced to defend his new law-abiding...

1890. Lieutenant Gabriel Stokes of the British Army left behind the horrors of war in Afghanistan for a role in the Metropolitan Police. Though he rose quickly through the ranks, the squalid violence of London’s East End proved just as dark and oppressive as the battlefield. With his life falling apart, and longing for peace and meaning, Gabriel leaves the grime of London behind and heads for the wilderness and wide open spaces of the American West.

One of America's greatest Western storytellers, Elmer Kelton has been voted the greatest Western writers of all time by the Western Writers of America. Dark Thicket is one of his many classic tales of the history of his home state of Texas. Young Owen Danforth rides home to Texas as a wounded Confederate soldier, at a time when his home state is as savagely divided as his nation. As a grievously wounded America staggers toward the inevitable end of the Civil War, secessionist "home guards" and staunch Union loyalists fight their own bloody battles on a more local scale.

Trouble follows horse trader Will Summers as soon as he sets foot in Dark Horses, Mexico. A party of men is intent on hanging Summers, believing him to be a horse thief, but not before they take him to their boss - Ansil Swann, the very man Summers is delivering four horses to. Will is saved from the hangman's noose when the men are waylaid by Ansil's beautiful wife, Bailey. Only Bailey has an agenda of her own, one that lands Will right in the middle of a deadly shootout.

The bear seems harmless—at first. Just a lost and confused grizzly poking around Big Rock. Then the killings begin. A horse wrangler is mangled. A rancher mauled. Then a bartender in the heart of town is found clawed to a bloody pulp. Now every man in Big Rock is taking up arms to hunt down the beast before it strikes again—which worries the local sheriff. He’s afraid this amateur hunting party could turn into a mass funeral real fast. So he asks Smoke Jensen to help keep everyone calm and contain the panic. Unfortunately, it’s too late. The panic is out of control. And the hunt is on.

Smoke Jensen is mighty proud of his son Louis for finishing law school. But he can’t help being a little disappointed that Louis isn’t returning to the Sugarloaf Ranch. Instead, he’s setting up his own law practice in nearby Big Rock—a career choice that turns out to be every bit as dangerous as fending off cattle rustlers. The boy’s first case lands him smack in the middle of a heated dispute between two riled-up ranchers over water rights. If Louis can’t settle them down, the whole thing could blow up into a bloody range war.

The bear seems harmless—at first. Just a lost and confused grizzly poking around Big Rock. Then the killings begin. A horse wrangler is mangled. A rancher mauled. Then a bartender in the heart of town is found clawed to a bloody pulp. Now every man in Big Rock is taking up arms to hunt down the beast before it strikes again—which worries the local sheriff. He’s afraid this amateur hunting party could turn into a mass funeral real fast. So he asks Smoke Jensen to help keep everyone calm and contain the panic. Unfortunately, it’s too late. The panic is out of control. And the hunt is on . . .

At long last, US Marshal Aaron Mackey and Deputy Billy Sunday will see crime baron James Grant and his kill-crazy cronies stand trial for the suffering they unleashed on the people of Dover Station. As Montana Territory's statehood is approaching, murdering devils like Grant can no longer be tolerated in positions of political power. Or can they? Montana's capital of Helena follows its own set of laws - laws that not only set Grant free, but give peacekeeping authority to a sadistic murdering gunslinger like Colonel Warren Bell, Mackey's commanding officer during the war.

For twenty-five years, the case of the McGraw twins kidnapping has remained unsolved. As the eldest son, Cull oversees the McGraw horse ranch, wary of prying eyes. So when true-crime writer Nikki St. James comes forward with new information, Cull can't believe his father invites her onto the compound. His family has suffered enough - he's not about to let St. James snoop and ruin them completely. But Nikki finds the eldest McGraw's protectiveness as endearing as it is aggravating.

From his isolated homestead nestled deep in the plains country of Wyoming, author John D. Nesbitt writes taut Westerns that reveal his expertise in local history and his knowledge of the cowboy's trade. Devon Frost just wanted some time for himself, sketching the local architecture in a tiny town called Tinaja. But he's soon caught up in a flurry of accusations and lies surrounding the murder of the suitor of a ranch owner's daughter.

Smoke Jensen is mighty proud of his son Louis for finishing law school. But he can't help being a little disappointed that Louis isn't returning to the Sugarloaf Ranch. Instead, he's setting up his own law practice in nearby Big Rock - a career choice that turns out to be every bit as dangerous as fending off cattle rustlers. The boy's first case lands him smack in the middle of a heated dispute between two riled-up ranchers over water rights. The whole thing could blow up into a bloody range war. Then a scheming con man shows up in town to stir up trouble - and ends up dead.

A rash of deadly train robberies has the chief investor of Dover Station feeling itchier than a quick draw without a target. And he wants Sheriff Aaron Mackey to scratch that itch with every bullet his battered badge authorizes him to shoot. When Mackey and his backup gun down four kill-crazy bandits, they uncover a plot cooked up by respected citizens of Dover Station - someone who can pull enough strings to replace Mackey with a disgraced marshal from Texas.

Kate Fox has just defeated her ex-husband in the race for Grand County sheriff, but there’s no time for celebration. Instead, she’s called to the railroad tracks just outside of town. The train engineer is dead. His conductor is in shock. And Kate’s gut is telling her this is much more than just a horrific accident. The victim's widow is behaving oddly. The neighbor’s story doesn’t add up. The victim had recently made several enemies - and they all have motive for murder.

There are a million ways to die in the great state of Texas. And on the lawless streets of New Hope, the odds are even worse. Once the home of Comanche, the region has been up for grabs since the settlers drove off the natives. Now it’s a magnet for settlers looking for cheap land, merchants looking to exploit its resources—and outlaws looking for a place to hide in between robbing and killing.

In the wake of a nasty divorce, Lacey Bradford heads for Wyoming where she's sure her old friend will take her in. But her high school pal Chase Caldwell is no longer the gangly boy who would follow her anywhere. For one thing, he's now incredibly buff and handsome, but that's not all that's changed.... Chase has been through tough times and is less than thrilled to see the girl who once broke his heart. But try as he might to resist her, while Lacey's putting her life back together, he's finding new ways to be part of it.

Collecting the two first stories in the Dark Prairie Universe, Dark Prairie and Use Yer Brains tells the tales of two western Nebraska lawmen, from two different ages, and how they go about keeping the peace in Platte City. Some bad things crawl outta the ground, while others are brewed up in the local saloon and descend like a bolt of lightning. Whether it's the 1800s or the late 1900s, keep yer wits about ye, and yer six-shooter handy.

Larry Scott is branded an outlaw, framed for murder and accused of cattle rustling. It would seem the only course open to Scott to prove his innocence is to find those really guilty. But that objective is unlikely in the extreme, after he is arrested, charged, and jailed.