Skye Fargo is caught between a gold rock and a hard case. Stranded in Utah by a sandstorm, Skye Fargo chances upon a remote cabin—the home of a lonely widow caught between two battling factions. Seems some hombre named Charlie Vrittan promised a passel of settlers shares in a gold mine if they’d build a town in his name. Once the labor was complete, he and his men kept the riches and paid the workers in hot lead. Now a war is brewing in the desert. Sheltered underground in abandoned mines, the people Vrittan cheated—called Dirt Breathers—prepare to give him and his Air Breathers the fight of their lives. But both sides have the Trailsman to reckon with. And if he has his way, the only thing anybody is going to be breathing is gunsmoke.

From automatons to zombies, many elements of fantasy and science fiction have been cross-pollinated with the Western movie genre. In its second edition, this encyclopedia of the Weird Western includes many new entries covering film, television, animation, novels, pulp fiction, short stories, comic books, graphic novels and video and role-playing games. Categories include Weird, Weird Menace, Science Fiction, Space, Steampunk and Romance Westerns.

Skye Fargo heats up a hellhound hideout! In the town of Helldorado, bullets buzz through the air like flies, and any two-bit bandit is welcomed with open arms—for a price. So when a shipment of army rifles is stolen, Skye Fargo knows just where to look for the ones who done it. But to get close to the culprits, he’s got to prove himself a dishonest man—and ride with them into places hotter than hell. And when a colonel’s daughter insists on tagging along, Skye may find out just how hot things can get.

Snow Mountain Passage is a powerful retelling of the most dramatic of our pioneer stories—the ordeal of the Donner Party, with its cast of young and old risking all, its imprisoning snows, its rumors of cannibalism. James Houston takes us inside this central American myth in a compelling new way that only a novelist can achieve. The people whose dreams, courage, terror, ingenuity, and fate we share are James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the Donner Party, and his wife and four children—in particular his eight-year-old daughter, Patty. From the moment we meet Reed—proud, headstrong, yet a devoted husband and father—traveling with his family in the "Palace Car," a huge, specially built covered wagon transporting the Reeds in grand style, the stage is set for trouble. And as they journey across the country, thrilling to new sights and new friends, coping with outbursts of conflict and constant danger, trouble comes. It comes in the fateful choice of a wrong route, which causes the group to arrive at the foot of the Sierra Nevada too late to cross into the promised land before the snows block the way. It comes in the sudden fight between Reed and a drover—a fight that exiles Reed from the others, sending him solo over the mountains ahead of the storms. We follow Reed during the next five months as he travels around northern California, trying desperately to find means and men to rescue his family. And through the amazingly imagined "Trail Notes" of Patty Reed, who recollects late in life her experiences as a child, we also follow the main group, progressively stranded and starving on the Nevada side of the Sierras. Snow Mountain Passage is an extraordinary tale of pride and redemption. What happens—who dies, who survives, and why—is brilliantly, grippingly told.

The Oregon Country! For a century that fabled place, lying somewhere beyond the Rocky Mountains at the farthest reaches of the continent galvanized the American people. Its riches, in furs, timber, fish, and fecund soil for farming, awakened the avarice of nations. Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States all vied for this trackless Eden of the pacific littoral, and not until the 1840s did the Americans claim it once and for all. In these pages are the explorations of the fierce Scots who scaled the mountains and mapped the rivers of the Oregon country before the time of Lewis and Clark; the imperial fiefdom created for profit and Britannia by the fur-trading ventures of the Hudson's Bay Company; John Jacob Astor's ill-fated experiment on the Columbia River; the mountain men who risked their lives in Indian country in pursuit of beaver furs; and the arrival of the missionaries and pioneers of the Oregon Trail. This is the Spur Award-winning story for best historical non-fiction, told by a distinguished chronicler of nineteenth century America. A story of the clashing of empires, coveting the matchless wealth of the Pacific Northwest-the story of The Oregon Country.

Smoke Jensen hires on to protect the railroad as a company lays track across North America through the vast Canadian Rockies, but an army of cross-border outlaws is intent on wreaking havoc on the tracks.