Western Crime Thrillers

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are 32 of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous, to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.

Big secrets run deep. Former FBI agent Jack McBride took the job as chief of police for Stillwater, Texas, to start a new life with his teenage son, Ethan, away from the suspicions that surrounded his wife's disappearance a year earlier. With a low crime rate and a five-man police force, he expected it to be a nice, easy gig; hot checks, traffic violations, some drugs, occasional domestic disturbances, and petty theft. Instead, within a week he is investigating a staged murder-suicide.

Sinead - who is both resilient and vulnerable, insightful and insecure - spends her days supporting her ailing mother and appeasing Emerson, the man who owns her house and the diner where she works. She wants nothing more than to leave the town her own dark history is bound up in, but Emerson asserts his power over her, thwarting her progress at every turn. One day, Tobias, a mysterious rambler from the east coast, walks into the diner, and Sinead makes the impulsive decision to invite him into her life and home.

First published in 1935, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Traven's most famous and enduring work, the dark, savagely ironic, and riveting story of three down-and-out Americans hunting for gold in Sonora.

Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that's just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it. Aside from the occasional drunken brawl or minor disturbance out on the reservation, he hasn't had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years. That is, until mid-October, 1914, when the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. Teenager Charity Axthelm goes missing, Reba Purvis' housekeeper is poisoned with cyanide Reba is sure was meant for her, and Lucas' gut tells him that this is only the beginning.

Married life for Tap and Pepper isn't turning out quite the way they planned. The ranch is gone and they've moved to Cheyenne where Tap finds himself a job as acting marshal in a town that has little regard for the law. And it's not a pretty sight!

As changes in Wyoming banking law bring an influx of crypto entrepreneurs to small-town Custer, attorney Sam Johnstone doesn’t think much of the new arrivals. But when a shocking crime throws him straight into the epicenter of the digital world, there’s no turning back. The death of crypto exchange magnate Max Kovalenko shatters the community, sparking local outrage and a long list of suspects. With many betrayed partners, jealous competitors, and bitter family members left in his wake, Max has stepped on plenty of toes since his arrival, and finding his killer is no easy task.

Reeling from the news dropped on his desk days earlier, Sheriff Elven Hallie is left questioning everyone and everything in his life. But when a former deputy is burned to death, Elven must push aside the turmoil in his personal life to catch the killer. As if that wasn’t enough, new faces from the Starcher clan enter his county with vengeance in their eyes for Corbin’s death. Paranoid, angry, and directionless, Elven must lean on those closest to him to bring a ruthless murderer to justice. But that’s easier said than done when it’s those closest to him who he trusts the least.

When Eleanor Wooley's best friend Rette suddenly disappears, Eleanor abandons her job as a crime reporter for the Gold Strike Tribune in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and sets off in desperate pursuit. What begins as a search and rescue operation quickly becomes an obsession and a personal quest for truth. Spurred by gut instinct, Eleanor scours Northeastern Nevada during the worst heat wave in recorded history. Obscure signs appear-an intruder's dire warning, a casino's mysterious graffiti, a random sighting of a killer on the run.

There are rules in the West no matter what era you were born in, and it's up to lawman Ty Dawson to make sure they're followed in the valley he calls home. The people living on this unforgiving land keep to themselves and are wary of the modern world's encroachment into their quiet lives. So it's not without some suspicion that Dawson confronts a newcomer to the region: a record producer who has built a music studio in an isolated compound.

With her ex-husband, Ted, working nearby in an adjoining county, Kate Fox is eager to prove she’s the better sheriff. But when the less-than-popular ex-foreman of a local ranch is found dead, Kate gets the opportunity she’s been looking for. As it turns out, the case hits a little too close to home. The dead man’s body is discovered in a truck that belongs to Kate’s brother Jeremy - and he's missing. Evidence left at the crime scene leads Ted to suspect the ranch’s new foreman, but Kate isn’t convinced he’s responsible for the crime.

Clinching is the technique used to bend a driven horseshoe nail to hold the shoe to a hoof. Rainy Dale is The Clincher, a 20-something high school-dropout turned farrier (horseshoer) who is haunted by a secret she carries. Estranged from her California D-list actress momma and her ranch hand Texas daddy, she tracked down her childhood horse in small-town Oregon - a land full of cowboys and their horses - then stayed to build a life with her tools, steel, and forge. She’s sleeping in a garage and trying not to fall for her landlord, the hapless and hopeful chef, Guy.

After fastball phenom Prospero Stark's baseball career craters in a Mexican jail, he retreats to a trailer park in the scorching Arizona desert. He lives in peaceful anonymity with a collection of colorful outcasts until someone leaves his former catcher's severed hand on his doorstep. Beautiful, hard-living reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, who keeps a .380 Colt and a bottle of Chivas in her car, joins Stark to help him uncover his friend's fate, a dangerous pursuit that pits them against a ruthless gang of drug-dealing killers.

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.

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.

Jason Crow, double amputee and Vietnam War vet, has good reason to dislike the retired officer who bad-mouthed Jason's father and his African American business partner. But when Bartholomew calls late one night with a mysterious request that Jason come by his house, then turns up dead, Jason has to set his feelings aside. Clyde Burker, his old police nemesis and now head of the homicide division, doesn't want Jason meddling in yet another murder investigation, but Jason won't stay on the sidelines when Burker points a finger at Jason's own loved ones.

It's been six weeks since Jack McBride's life went to hell: The resolution of his first case as chief sparked a county-wide drug war, his brother Eddie rode into town with a pocket full of cocaine and trouble on his mind, his estranged wife returned from her one-year sabbatical determined to win him back, and Ellie Martin ended their brief affair.

He's riding straight into danger. Wrangler Angus Savage has come to Wyoming to help Jinx McCallahan get her cattle to high country. He's signed on for the dangerous drive, eager to reconnect with the woman he knew when they were kids. Now in the wilderness the no-nonsense cowboy and the strong-willed rancher must navigate the trail's many hazards - like her treacherous ex who wants her back...or dead. Contains mature themes.

Small-town boys Caleb and Jake Boyd spend their days splitting logs and barely scraping by in the badlands of New Mexico. Caleb, a decorated war hero, wants to put his fighting days behind him, find a decent job, and start a quiet life with his new fiancée. But Jake is always dreaming bigger than he should, and when he stumbles across a large crop of marijuana hidden in the wilderness, he thinks he has finally hit the jackpot.

Heller is caught up in a dangerous crossfire as he cozies up to the local "coyote," a slimeball that takes desperate Mexicans across the river in the dead of night for a heavy fee and then sets them up to be robbed, beaten, and even raped by bandidos. The frightened prey are powerless, nobody cares, except Heller, and that ole mountain boy knows more than one way to skin a coyote.