Five unique short fiction stories of adventures in the old west. Break from today's politics and move back a hundred years during a commute or lunch. Experience a life threatening gunfight at sundown twisting in a surprising conclusion. Jim Kern turned away from Curley, then spun around saying, " Missed your chance Curley; you coulda shot me in the back!" Army Scout Jay Morris, woke up with a gun in his face hearing a screaming woman say, " You're not the man I married! Who the hell are you ?" the beginning of trouble? Then Jake's "Will you marry me?" Answer, "Of all the idiotic and lame brained people I've ever met Mister you are the worst. You don't just roll off a rock pile and propose to some girl you've never met!" And the stage hold up, " Damnit! You hard of hearin? I said, I need a woman! One of them girls in there." The Jakala story, Jeanie screamed, " Oh God! Joe look here!" and with shaking hands, a one ounce gold Ferdinand. All enjoyable reads even for me the author.

How far would you go to fix the mistakes you've made and regain the trust you lost? For Jade Jessup, the answer is 2,448 miles. Once one of Chicago's significant financial advisors, Jade lost her credibility when her fiancé (and coworker) stole millions of dollars from their clients in a Ponzi scheme. Now she's agreed to help one of them--an aging 1960s Hollywood starlet named Berenice "Benny" Alderidge--seek financial restoration. Jade sets off along Route 66 with Benny and her handsome adult foster son, Bridger, who is filming a documentary retracing the 1956 trip that started the love story between Benny and her recently deceased husband, Paul. Listening to Benny recount her story draws Jade into memories of her own darker association with Route 66, when she was kidnapped as a child by a man the media labeled a monster--but she remembers only as daddy. Together, all three of these pilgrims will learn about family, forgiveness, and what it means to live free of the past. But not before Jade faces a second staggering betrayal that changes everything.

The Reaper Virus has raged across the globe, leaving over one billion people dead. After an EMP brought Earth's technological age to its knees, the superpowers have entered a race to rearm, leading to new tensions between the East and West. Tensions that those responsible for the virus hope to exploit to deadly effect. Unwillingly thrown into the fight once again, Adam and Sam find themselves in a deadly fight against evil. Against the one responsible for The Reaper. The fate of the human race on Earth is about to be decided once and for all.

The idea for Shoot-out at Jasper Creek came from a story circulated in my grandmothers neighborhood when I was a child. As the story goes, a thirty-something mystery man who had, somehow, lost a good deal of his face, walked around the back roads of the area at night, talking to himself and his dog. His looks were shocking. His face and neck were bright red with waves of scaly scar tissue buckling it in all directions. His looks frightened children to the point that they were afraid to wander away from their yards without their mother or father. Some said that if he caught children alone he beat them with his flashlight. Of course it never really happened. Although the man was never actually seen by any of the local residents, the folk tale persisted. It is not difficult to imagine that many tales had sprung up about how the mans injuries came about. For some unexplained reason, one man thought he had been a former pirate. One of the tales often repeated was that he was homosexual and his lover had accused him of being untrue and had shot him, maiming him for life. I have no idea how that story came about, or whether there was even a grain of truth to it. Actually, I doubt that the man ever existed. Novels come about for various reasons. The tales have haunted my thoughts through the years. It was time to bring the mystery man to life. Shoot-out At Jasper Creek is my version of the story. Im a lover of Western lore, and I live in the West, so I decided to put the story in context by placing it in the country I know the best with realistic western characters and their local speech habits. Novels come about for various reasons. Shoot-out At Jasper Creek is my way of explaining the folk tale about my grandmothers mystery neighbor who, whether he actually existed in the real world or not, was very real to a community of folks who had a lot of questions, but none of the answers. I dont have them either, but I found myself plotting.

He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western explores the construction and representation of masculinity in low-budget western movies made from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These films contained some of the mid-twentieth-century’s most familiar names, especially for youngsters: cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. The first serious study of a body of films that was central to the youth of two generations, He Was Some Kind of a Man combines the author’s childhood fascination with this genre with an interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of the films influence on modern views of masculinity. McGillis argues that the masculinity offered by these films is less one-dimensional than it is plural, perhaps contrary to expectations. Their deeply conservative values are edged with transgressive desire, and they construct a male figure who does not fit into binary categories, such as insider/outsider or masculine/feminine. Particularly relevant is the author’s discussion of George W. Bush as a cowboy and how his aspirations to cowboy ideals continue to shape American policy. This engagingly written book will appeal to the general reader interested in film, westerns, and contemporary culture as well as to scholars in film studies, gender studies, children’s literature, and auto/biography.

One of the most important yet overlooked of Hollywood auteurs, Budd Boetticher was responsible for a number of classic films, including his famous 'Ranown' series of westerns starring Randolph Scott. With influential figures like Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood acknowledging Boetticher's influence, and with growing academic interest in his work, Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer present a vital collection of essays on the director's long career, from a range of international scholars. Looking at celebrated films like Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) and Comanche Station (1960), as well as at lesser-known works like Escape in the Fog (1945) and Behind Locked Doors (1948), this book also addresses Boetticher's influential television work on the James Garner series Maverick, and Boetticher's continuing aesthetic influence on contemporary TV classics like Breaking Bad.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Tempest and Make Me Love You brings her “mastery of historical romance” (Entertainment Weekly) to 1880s Montana where passions and gold fever run high as an American heiress turns to a rugged mountain man to help her locate her father’s fortune. After a social whirlwind in London, Violet Mitchell is summoned back to Philadelphia only to discover her family living on the edge of financial ruin while their father seeks new wealth in Montana’s gold fields. With the family’s home and social standing at risk, Violet makes a drastic decision. Meanwhile, Montana rancher Morgan Callahan rode away from his family’s cattle farm to make his own fortune. Now as he finishes exploiting a mother lode of silver, a young woman claiming to be his late partner’s daughter turns up wanting to be taken to her father’s mine. Suspecting that the pretty schemer works for the mining outfit that is trying to steal his land, he has no qualms about snatching her and holding her at his camp where she can do no harm. But he underestimated the new thorn in his side. Determined to claim what rightfully belongs to her family, Violet summons up the courage and grit to cope with the hazards and discomforts of an untamed land and the disturbingly masculine stranger who holds her fate in his hands. But an error of judgment brings down a hailstorm of danger that upends her plans and deepens her bond to a man who may turn out to be all she desires. With her signature “strong characters, humor, interesting plots—and, of course—romance” (The Cincinnati Enquirer), Johanna Lindsey crafts another irresistible and adventurous love story.

Sergeant Jack Crossman's second adventure finds him still in the heat of battle in the Crimea. Having survived a dangerous covert mission in The Devil's Own the man known to his comrades as 'Fancy Jack' now faces new horrors at the Battle of Balaclava. In the confusion of the conflict Jack witnesses the carnage during the hopeless and tragic charge of the Light Brigade when more than six hundred British cavalry troops charged Russian gun emplacements, mistakenly following orders that, as they were passed down the chain of command, had been misinterpreted. Kilworth's rousing narrative of courage on the field and his vivid descriptions of the horrifying realities of the Crimean campaign are related with verve and meticulous historical detail, in the spirit of the great military adventures.

When a legendary old gunslinger finally meets his Maker in some godforsaken West Texas town, Stringer heads to the scene for what he thinks is a routine story. But when he gets to Comanche Woe, it turns out he's landed in the middle of a dust storm of trouble. It's open season on wanted men. A wily varmint called Buckskin Jack Blair has crowned himself marshal. And murderous vigilantes and bounty hunters are crawling out of the woodwork. When the bullets start flying, Stringer can't tell the outlaws from the lawmen, but he had better keep both eyes open and his shooting hand ready if he wants to live to tell this tale.

American expat Scott Nolan has recently moved to Ireland and enjoys a flourishing career as a doctor, a rising media profile as a persuasive campaigner against drug abuse, and is very much in love with Laura, his beautiful new wife. But one wintry Dublin morning, Scott's life is changed forever when a team of contract killers attempts a daring double ambush. Their target: Ireland's antidrug government minister and his medical spokesman, Dr. Scott Nolan. The attack goes horribly wrong, and in the bloodbath that follows, Laura is killed by a bullet meant for Nolan. Fueled by grief and revenge, and desperate to claim back his life and find the killers, Scott enters into an uneasy alliance with his wife's brother, police detective Mark Higgins. Together they embark on a highly controversial international covert mission to slowly and systematically infiltrate the drug scene and track down the assassin. Using secret U.S. army interrogation compounds and breaking almost every law in the land, the duo finally close in on their target . . . . This nail biting, heart-pounding blockbuster weaves a tale from the back streets of Dublin to the red-light districts of Amsterdam and the seedy streets of Bangkok, accelerating to a breathtaking climax that will test Nolan's physical and moral fortitude to the absolute limit.