Throughout the length and breadth of the sun-bleached cow town of Mescal, Arizona, seethes an undercurrent of suppressed excitement. In front of the town’s blacksmith shop a group of Mormon homesteaders gather about their potential leader, Webb Nichols, in grave discussion. In a lodge room the special meeting of the Magdalena Stockmen’s Association, comprising the big cow outfits of the county, has turned into a deluge of hot words and very pointed accusations. Is the long conflict between the homesteaders and the big outfits about to flare into violence again? For years this particular part of Arizona has been a rustler’s paradise. And as long as homesteaders like Webb Nichols and Shad Caney cover up for the rustlers, the notorious Steve Jennings among them, they’re asking for trouble from the big cattlemen. The Association decides to bring matters to a head by calling in Clay Roberts, a lone wolfer stock-detective with a reputation for getting results. “It don’t seem like one man could make much hell for us,’’ says Webb Nichols, but in that thought Webb, as he is soon to discover, couldn’t be more wrong. Clay Roberts has a couple of strikes on him from the beginning in Deputy Sheriff Dufors, a weak and embittered tool of the homesteaders, and in Webb and Shad, whose bitter, unreasoning feud is carried on by their children during school hours. These youthful hatreds make life miserable for the pretty new teacher, Eudora Stoddard, who is startled one day to find herself sheltering the head of the rustlers, Steve Jennings. From then on matters get tougher by the minute. Men who should be seeing eye to eye regard one another with cold hostility, the grisly episode at Parley Scott’s takes place, the rustlers move in on one of the big cowmen and Clay heads for the hills in deadly pursuit, only to find himself forced to save the life of the dangerous rustler he is hired to capture. And that is only the beginning of new trouble for the fearless stock-detective, the cattlemen, and pretty Eudora Stoddard, whom Clay had hoped to make his wife.

Wyatt Earp is more than a legend; he’s the embodiment of the American Wild West. It’s easy to reduce a man of such stature to mere stereotypes and iconoclasm, to leave out the women who inspired him, or to rely on the slander of those he defeated; but forgoing the myths, wordsmith Larry Beckett skirts the overwrought icon and gives us instead the aches, loves, and morals of the flesh-and-blood human. Wyatt Earp follows the famed lawman and his historic posse through the streets of Tombstone, in a natural five-act tragedy: the western zone, rise of the outlaws and hero, the showdown, fall of the outlaws and hero, the vendetta ride. In striking prose poetry that makes use of Earp’s own words, Beckett has mined newspapers, from Tombstone’s Epitaph to the San Francisco Examiner, Earp’s written testimonies, and biographer interviews to get to the humanity behind the folklore. Wyatt Earp was a man of his word, committed to the law, who faced his father, armed mobs, assassins, and, as his companion Doc Holliday says: he walked right in. But he also believed in peace and did all he could to avoid violence. Antithesis makes myths of American men, and as his friend Bat Masterson says: the story of Wyatt Earp is the story of the West.

While passing through Cherrywood Crossing, US Marshal Maxfield Knight is confronted by a gang of hired guns who tell him to ride the other way, or be shot down. With no choice but to ride into the high country, Knight soon learns he is being hunted by a man named Silas Manchester, but why, he has no idea. Determined to survive this dangerous game that he's been forced to play, Knight is destined to become the hunter rather than the hunted. Aided by a mountain man named Lacroix, Knight decides to bring the fight to Manchester and get answers. Meanwhile, Knight's partner, Deputy US Marshal Cole Tibbs, sets out looking for his missing friend. Tibbs will discover that he, like his friend, has also become part of a dangerous game that turns into a serenade of violence.

Gunslingers and greed make dangerous bedfellows in this hoof-pounding Western adventure from the USA Today bestselling author of Gunsight Crossing. Young Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves became blood brothers on the day the rancher’s son saved the warrior’s life, forging a bond no one could ever break. And as years passed, a legend grew of the Cheyenne and the white man who rode together—and who could jerk killing iron with the best of them . . . Gunsmoke and Gold In Dale, Colorado, any cowboy with good sense knows better than to step through the batwings of the Plowshare Saloon—and any sheep-herder crazy enough to belly up to the bar at the Red Dog is ordering the last taste of whiskey he’ll ever lift to his lips. The town of Dale is heading for an all-out war that will pit father against son, and brother against brother. Bodine and Two Wolves try to make both sides see reason, but that fails when a bunch of hired night riders start scouring the countryside and putting notches on their six-guns. The blood brothers soon figure the cause of the trouble goes a hell of a lot deeper than the grass everyone’s fighting over. A battle’s coming, and they’re about to be caught in the thick of it—and in a storm of red-hot lead . . . Praise for the novels of William W. Johnstone “[A] rousing, two-fisted saga of the growing American frontier.”—Publishers Weekly on Eyes of Eagles “There’s plenty of gunplay and fast-paced action.”—Curled Up with a Good Book on Dead Before Sundown

Asked to rescue a missing girl, a gunman finds trouble everywhere Celia lies in bed when the man comes through her window. He whispers instructions, and she follows him into the night. Has she been kidnapped, or did she go of her own accord? To Celia’s father, there is no question that his daughter has been abducted, and he offers $800 to anyone who will kill the man who took her. His first choice is Dan Featherskill, a mysterious drifter with no patience for the law but a deep respect for human life. Dan has killed before but is no assassin, and the offer of a bounty makes him sick. But there are men in this town who see murder as an opportunity. When the men sent out after Celia threaten the girl who Dan loves, he follows their trail into the foreboding Shadow Mountain. Trapped on the mountain by a deadly snowstorm, he will have to kill to survive.

"The entire field of film historians awaits the AFI volumes with eagerness."--Eileen Bowser, Museum of Modern Art Film Department Comments on previous volumes: "The source of last resort for finding socially valuable . . . films that received such scant attention that they seem 'lost' until discovered in the AFI Catalog."--Thomas Cripps "Endlessly absorbing as an excursion into cultural history and national memory."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.