From an award-winning bestselling author comes a classic, action-packed western novel surrounding the arrival of a stranger in a small Texas town after the Civil War—and the trouble that follows him. DEVIL IN DISGUISE? In the days after the Civil War, a solitary rider travelled the open frontier—but he wasn’t alone, for Death seemed to travel with him. Or maybe it was the Devil himself who gave him the lethal pistol shot that earned him the name “Death’s Acolyte.” And when the stranger with the scarred face, who calls himself Ken Casey, rode into the peaceful Texas town of Wardell, maybe peace—for his own ravaged soul—was all he wanted. But in Wardell, all hell is about to break loose. OR SAVIOR ON HORSEBACK? Awaiting a train shipment of gold, Angus Pugh and his army of outlaws, including notorious gunslinger Luke Draco, take the town hostage and kill a few innocent citizens as a lesson to any comers. Donning priestly vestments, Ken Casey, ordained man of the cloth, steps from the shadows to conduct the victims’ funeral rites—and that’s just his first revelation. For Casey can destroy souls as easily as he saves them, and earthly justice is delivered in gun smoke and blood.

A Texas sheriff joins forces with legendary desperado Cullen Baker in a fight against a land-grabbing baron in this historical Western adventure. Lawman Sam Heller is busy enough keeping the peace in Hangtree, Texas. But when he saves the life of a gunslinger on the trail from East Texas, the young man makes an audacious request—that Heller trek with him back across a desert held by brutal outlaws to save one more. Bill made the journey to Hangtree to get help for a friend—quick-draw artist Cullen Baker—who’s fighting to save the Torrent River from a robber baron. Baker’s old pal Johnny Cross has agreed to lend a bullet or two, and with Sam Heller at their side, the odds are even better. When the ammo’s loaded and the triggers are cocked, the Torrent will flow red with blood . . .

With blood and tears, Chet Byrnes built a life in Texas, only to have it shattered by an ill-fated cattle drive and two deadly family feuds. Spurned by the woman he loves, Chet sets off for new territory. The journey won't come cheap. Original.

Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero’s welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as “Lost Battalion Day” when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral history interviews of the “Lost Battalion” members. He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that a main factor in the battalion’s comparatively high survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comraderie of the Texans and their commitment to care for each other. This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II historians and interested general readers alike.

The latest from prose stylist and accomplished novelist Rod Davis exposes the dark underbelly and underground economies of God's country. A desperate call from heiress Elle Meridian shakes ex-Dallas TV anchor Jack Prine from his comfortable life in the Big Easy as he begins his long search for Meridian’s missing teenage daughter. Instead of the girl, Jack discovers the savaged bodies of drug dealers and embarks on a journey of relentless violence and lethal betrayal across the South. As an intricate web of deception, extortion, and murder unwinds, Prine finds himself at odds with neo-Nazis, the cartel, and the Dixie Mafia. Even if Prine can save Meridian’s child, can he justify the blood on his hands? Rod Davis expands the thrilling world of South, America in this Southern noir, rife with chaos, unexpected turns, and fascinating characters.

Chronicles the experiences Warren Jackson had while serving as a marine in France during World War I.

Four Hispanic college students drive through South Texas on a summer roadtrip. In the middle of nowhere they are stopped by a small town Sheriff who accuses them of being illegal immigrants. Little do they know, he is no sheriff and the town he delivers them to is unlike anything else. The town is hidden in the hills and mountains of Southwest Texas. There, the townspeople live by their own rules. When the Sheriff brings the group to town, the residents are more than happy to explore the depths of human suffering. Each of them goes through their own personal Hell as they are subjected to some of the most horrific experiences they never knew existed. They learn quickly they have arrived in Hell, Texas.

Includes material on Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, and Butch Cassiday.

The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

Annotation "The 1974 Fred Gomez Carrasco prison siege at Huntsville, TX.".