Five Star Westerns are standard print, first editions from top Western writers. The majority are brand new manuscripts from the best contemporary writers; a few are serials from magazine publications of many years ago, and -- occasionally -- we find an unpublished manuscript from some of the classic Western writers of a bygone era.Five Star consistently brings you the best quality writing the genre has to offer. Five Star Western authors have won numerous awards including the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award, Levi Strauss' Golden Saddleman Award, the Spur Award from Western Writers of America and many regional awards as well.The Western genre is not dead! The Western story is the American story. There's a morality and a certain nobility in Westerns, not consistently found in other genres. Westerns are much more than guns and horses. Strong characters and a strong sense of place and time characterize all our Five Star Western titles.Five Star publishes the best Westerns available today by the top writers of both the present and past. All are published in our durable library edition hardcover format. Actual covers may be different from those shown.

In Maverick County, he was the law When Caitlyn Barnes unexpectedly shows up at his ranch, Texas marshal Harlan McKinney has no idea his ex-lover is trailing a heaping pile of danger. The death threats against the investigative journalist are just the tip of the iceberg. Soon Caitlyn and Harlan are on the run out of Maverick County. Enmeshed in a web of escalating violence, they know their only hope of surviving is to trust each other. But Harlan doesn't know if he can trust himself—and the feelings Caitlyn is awakening. With the noose tightening, tracked by a killer who's always one step ahead, Harlan is blindsided by an explosive secret from the past—and a passion that's even more dangerous.…

Lawman: A Companion to the Classic TV Western Series, the first book to focus fully on this show, re-familiarizes veteran viewers and introduces new fans to this exceptional television western and its three-dimensional leads.

Lawlessness in Texas did not end with the close of the cowboy era. It just evolved, swapping horses and pistols for cars and semiautomatics. From Patrolman "Newt" Stewart, killed by a group of servicemen in February 1900, to Whitesboro chief of police William Thomas "Will" Miller, run down by a vehicle in the line of duty in 1940, Ron DeLord and Cliff Caldwell present a comprehensive chronicle of the brave--and some not so brave--peace officers who laid down their lives in the service of the State of Texas in the first half of the twentieth century.

Thomas Bruce White, law officer, son of Robert Emmet and Margaret (Campbell) White, was born at Oak Hill, Texas, on March 6, 1881. He attended public schools and, for two years, Southwestern University in Georgetown. He began his career with Company A of the Texas Rangersqv at Colorado City and married Bessie Patterson on October 17, 1909. From 1909 to 1917 he worked as special agent for the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads at Amarillo, San Antonio, and El Paso. While in El Paso he became an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he was soon promoted and placed in charge of the Houston office. He was one of the first FBI inspectors, with responsibility for inspecting the bureau's offices in all southern and western states. When crimes against Oklahoma's Osage Indians kept increasing, White was moved to Oklahoma City, where he solved the difficult case "of the Osage Indian murders." Afterward, the officials of the United States Bureau of Prisons persuaded him to transfer to that organization. The Whites and their two sons moved into the warden's residence of Leavenworth prison on October 1, 1926. For five years he ran the prison. In 1931 he was seriously wounded by gunfire in an escape attempt. When he recovered, officials of the bureau decided he should be given a less demanding assignment and transferred him to La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, near El Paso, Texas. This institution was opened under his wardenship on April 29, 1932. White inaugurated programs that made La Tuna very well known, including, for instance, the growing and harvesting of food crops by inmates. On March 6, 1951, when White reached the mandatory civil service retirement age of seventy, he accepted a six-year appointment to the Board of Pardons and Paroles. In tendering the appointment, Chief Justice John E. Hickman said he had never seen better recommendations than those presented on White's behalf. Shortly before his death White stated, "I began by catching criminals and sending them to prison. Then I spent twenty-five years taking care of them while they were serving their time. Finally, I spent the last six years of my career deciding when they should be released. I had come the full circle." White was a devout Baptist. He died in El Paso on December 21, 1971.--Texas State Historical Association.

Harry Morse - gunfighter, manhunter, sleuth - was among the West's most famous lawmen. Elected sheriff of Alameda County, California, in 1864, he went on to become San Francisco's foremost private detective. His career spanned five decades. In this biography, John Boessenecker brings Morse's now-forgotten story to light, chronicling not only the lawman's remarkable adventures but also the turbulent times in which he lived. Armed only with raw courage and a Colt revolver, Morse squared off against a small army of desperadoes and beat them at their own game. He shot to death the notorious bandidos Narato Ponce and Juan Soto, outgunned the vicious Narciso Bojorques, and pursued the Tiburcio Vasquez gang for two months in one of the West's longest and most tenacious manhunts. Later, Morse captured Black Bart, America's greatest stagecoach robber. Fortunately, Harry Morse loved to tell of his feats. Drawing on Morse's diaries, memoirs, and correspondence, Boessenecker weaves the lawman's colorful accounts into his narrative. Rare photographs of outlaws and lawmen and of the sites of Morse's exploits further enliven the story. A significant contribution to both western history and the history of law enforcement, Lawman is also an in-depth treatment of Hispanic crime and its causes, immigration, racial prejudice, and police brutality - issues with which California, and the nation, still grapple today.

Biography of the man who killed Billy the Kid, this thorough and well-written analysis deals effectively with almost every question that has been raised about the controversial life and death of Pat Garrett.

Evoking Krakauer's Into the Wild, Dan Schultz tells the extraordinary true story of desperado survivalists, a brutal murder, and vigilante justice set against the harsh backdrop of the Colorado wilderness On a sunny May morning in 1998 in Cortez, Colorado, three desperados in a stolen truck opened fire on the town cop, shooting him twenty times; then they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and disappeared into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. Self-trained survivalists, the outlaws eluded the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet and a pursuit force that represented more than seventy-five local, state, and federal police agencies with dozens of swat teams, U.S. Army Special Forces, and more than five hundred officers from across the country. Dead Run is the first in-depth account of this sensational case, replete with overbearing local sheriffs, Native American trackers, posses on horseback, suspicion of vigilante justice and police cover-ups, and the blunders of the nation's most exalted crime-fighters pursuing outlaws into territory in which only they could survive.

When San Antonio FBI agent Garon Grier buys a ranch in Jacobsville, Texas, the strong, silent loner is hoping to mend some broken family fences. He's not looking for love. Grace Carver grew up in this quiet Texas town, but because of her troubled youth, she's never married—hadn't even thought about it…until Garon. These unlikely allies are brought together by the most difficult case of Garon's career: hunting an escaped child predator whose former victims are all dead. All except one. Now a desperate lawman and the woman who is the lone survivor of a madman's twisted rampage have one chance to put the past to rest….

New Mexico rancher and lawman Dee (Daniel R.) Harkey describes himself as having “been shot at more times than any man in the world not engaged in war.” Mean as Hell, originally published in 1948 when Harkey was 83, is his detailed, witty autobiography about his youth in San Saba County of west Texas, where in 1882 he learned from his brother Joe, the sheriff, to “be damned sure you don’t get killed, but don’t kill anybody unless you have to” and his adult life in Eddy County after moving to Karlsbad (then Eddy) in 1890. Harkey served as a New Mexico peace officer from 1893 until 1911. Among the many cattle rustlers, train robbers, and other outlaws he confronted were Jim Miller, whom Harkey fingers as Pat Garrett’s real killer, and the Dalton Gang. Harkey observes that, in 1948, “cattle stealing has gone out of fashion. We’ve gotten civilized. Instead..., we now have statesman who practice nepotism, pad the public payrolls and graft as much as they think they can get away with (in an honorable way, of course) just like the folks back east.” Readers interested in many aspects of the territorial and outlaw West will enjoy Dee Harkey’s lively stories.