Eight years ago, forty-year-old Caulfield Blake was run out of the West Texas town of Simpson by a lynch mob. As sheriff, he'd been called on to carry out justice. But the War was ending and upholding the law was a tough kind of business. And when it meant hanging 'Colonel' Henry Simpson's son for killing an unpopular federal judge, the community-including Blake's own wife and children-wanted no part of him. Now Colonel Simpson wants to expand his spread and force out his neighbors, so he blocks up Carpenter Creek and dries up the already barren soil. There's only one man who will stand up to the powerful Colonel Simpson and he's been making a good living for himself rounding up mustangs by the Brazos River. But when Caulfield Blake gets an urgent letter from his remarried ex-wife, he listens to his heart, and not to his sense, and heads back home.

Pinto Lowery never wanted anything more than the chance to raise a family and find a piece of land he could call his own. But after fighting in the Civil War, he couldn't settle, and instead drifted all over the West breaking mustangs, haunted by the ghosts of his fallen comrades. All that changed in a flash. There didn't seem to be a good reason to leave mustanging to go work on the farm of Mister Tully Oakes while Oakes travels north on a cattle drive. The man had a reputation for being stingy, ornery and contrary. But when Pinto met Elsie Oakes and her young children, an old yearning stirs in his heart and Pinto decided to take Tully's offer, Time goes by quickly when the work is hard. Yet, while the corn is being harvested and everyone is around the fire at night, Pinto can almost fool himself into believing he's found a loving family, and the first secure home he's known since boyhood. But the day of Tully's return looms and the Hannigan gang has taken to raiding the local ranches-imperiling Pinto Lowery's simple dreams of the future.

This story follows a miner in the wild Gold Rush era set in Oatman, Arizona territory.

Mastincala, the Rabbit Boy, is born in a tumultuous and uncertain time for his people, the Lakota. He is but a boy when his father is killed during the clash between the Lakota and Colonel Harney s army at Rosebud, and he vows to avenge his father s death. Mastincala joins Crazy Horse and the Oglala on their rides against the Crow, fighting against the encroachment and overhunting of Big Horn country. He earns the name Tacante, Buffalo Heart, for his courage during one particularly fierce battle, and sheds his softer boyhood persona. When gold is discovered in the sacred Black Hills, a series of unstoppable events is set in motion culminating in the bloody massacre at Little Big Horn. In the midst of the turmoil, Mastincala must decide how to forge a future for his family while defending the honor and tradition of his ancestors. Lakota vividly details the struggle of the Lakota people against the white man for control of their hunting grounds, and offers a moving, bittersweet portrait of the period that marked the end of a way of life for the Plains Sioux."

Pete was born on a ranch near what is now Fort Worth, Texas. His father was a red-headed Irishman, who had lived and traded with the Comanche for years. His mother was the daughter of a Comanche medicine man and a cousin to Quanah Parker. The white man knew him as Pete O'Neal; the Comanche knew him as Little Fire. Pete was accepted to West Point, but his education was cut short when the Civil War broke out. He spent the entire war as one of Jeb Stuart's aides. After the war, he did a lot of things; he lived with Indians, fought Indians, worked on the railroad, and punched cattle. It took six hundred heads of cattle, one very large dog, and a Wyoming winter to set his mind at rest. A letter from his uncle in Texas got him started on his way home.

"There are whole lifetimes in these magical stories, laced with secrets and surprises and dreams and disappointments and humor. Like Gish's characters, most of us seek our salvation mostly in the wrong places, sometimes stumbling upon truth where we should have looked for it first -- in our hearts and in the search itself. Read these stories. They will help you find your way". (Tom Auer, Publisher, The Bloomsbury Review)

"Dreams of Quivira is written with honesty and a load of talent. There is a depth of characters here that we seldom find in short stories. Each story rings with haunting truth, some pain, and a redeeming message. A welcome addition of Gish's work". (Review: Rudolfo Anaya)

Robert Gish's eight stories of the old and new West speak of the search for a region of the mind and heart, as much as for the places in which his characters act out their personal dramas. For some the West remains a place of renewal and hope, like Coronado's Quivira, promising escape from wrong starts and thwarted desires and offering the possibility of transformation. For others it is the graveyard of expectations, where harsh truths and unwelcome realities must be faced.

Two stories deal with the transformations and disappointments of young men caught between their own needs for adventure and the demands of their families and communities. "The Quick and the Dead" tells of a first close encounter with death and spiritual transcendence. "Seeing the Elephant" is an exuberant coming-of-age story that explores the interplay between Hispanic and Anglo culture, between the masculine and the feminine, between innocence and experience. Other stories look into darker regions of the human heart. Writtenin a lyrical yet earthy style that reflects the dreams and ideals of his characters, Gish's stories probe the mysteries at the heart of human relationships.

"A rousing frontier saga."-The Washington Post "(Cooper's) sympathy is large, and his humor is as genuine--and as perfectly unaffected--as his art."-Joseph Conrad The Last of the Mohicans (1826) is the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. The continuing adventures of the peerless frontiersman Hawkeye, also known as Natty Bumppo among other monikers, is an unforgettable saga of the frontier life of early America. Set during the French and Indian Wars of mid-eighteenth century, this hair-raising historical novel opens as the French army is attacking Fort William Henry, a British fort in Western New York commanded by the withdrawn Colonel Munro. In the forest between Fort William Henry and another distant British outpost, Munro's daughters Alice and Cora, are escorted through the dangerous terrain by Major Heyward and a Huron Indian named Magua. When the group crosses their path with the white frontiersman Natty Bumppo and his Indian companions, Heyward is warned that they are being betrayed by Magua, and the group is not being led to Fort William Henry. Magua runs to the woods, and the group is lead to safety by Natty and the two remaining members of the Mohican tribe, Chingachgok and his son Uncas. Next morning, the group is attacked by a gang of the Huron tribe, and all are captured with the exception of Natty Bumppo and the mohicans. In the ensuing events of this extraordinary novel, the conflicts of battle, love, and race are unfolded against a thrilling adventure story. This classic of American literature has been adapted into numerous films, including the 1992 version starring Daniel Day-Lewis. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Last of the Mohicans is both modern and readable.

When his father dies and the family scatters, Erastus ('Rat') Hadley hires on as a hand to a local farmer. Rat is abused and tortured in his new home, but a depression is on and it's a tough time for a young man to be on his own. When Rat's loyal childhood friend Mitch Morris intervenes and the sheriff rescues Rat, his luck changes. Landing a job at last, Rat rides shotgun for the Western Stage Company out of Fort Worth. He quickly picks up a reputation as a crack shot, and as business increases, Rat is able to save towards the small ranch he'd always dreamed of. His steady routine is interrupted when the hero of his childhood, Sheriff Cathcart, asks him to become his deputy. Rat's first duty as deputy is to track down the Oxenberg gang, one of the deadliest groups of bandits in all of Texas. When he draws close to his quarry, Rat is faced with one of the toughest lessons of his life: friendship and old loyalties don't always square with justice and the law.

Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara hit it off in prison, where they were both doing time for grand theft auto. Now that they're out, they're joining forces for one big score. The plan is to kidnap the wife of a wealthy Detroit developer and hold her for ransom. Looks good until they learn the lowlife husband doesn't want his wife back. So it's time for Plan B and the opportunity to make a real killing--with the unlikely help of a beautiful, ticked-off housewife who's hungry for a large helping of sweet revenge.

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregon and her ambitious husband, Raul, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl, into womanhood in Aravaipa Canyon. Mexican and Anglo settlers have pushed the Apaches from their lands, and the Apaches carry out raids against them. In turn, the settlers, angered by the failure of the U.S. government and the military to protect them, respond with a murderous raid on an Apache encampment under the protection of the U.S. military at Camp Grant, kidnapping Nest Feather and other Apache children. In Tucson, while Valeria finds fulfillment in her work as a seamstress, Raul struggles to hide from her his role in the bloody attack, and Nest Feather, adopted by a Mexican couple there, tries to hold on to her Apache heritage in a culture that rejects her very being. Against the backdrop of the massacre trial, Valeria and Nest Feather's lives intersect in the church, as Valeria seeks spiritual guidance for the decision she must make and Nest Feather prepares for a Christian baptism.

She's haunted his dreams for years, and now she's back to wreak havoc on his heart When Sheriff Cody Banks' wife died, he blamed Abby Brennan and, in his grief, made sure she knew it. Looking back, he knows that his behaviour was likely the reason Abby left town years ago. So when he sees her-and the child she's raising in town, Cody attempts to apologise, ashamed to see the fear he puts in her beautiful eyes and determined to show her he's no longer that same angry man. The only reason Abby returned to Wyoming was to bury her last living relative. She has avoided Cody Banks ever since he made it clear how much he resents her, focusing instead on raising her young niece and keeping her own family legacy alive. But when Abby inherits the property adjoining Cody's, she can't help but face the handsome sheriff who still lingers in her memory. Circumstances keep pulling them together, but has time healed their wounds and given them a chance at a happily-ever-after?

Women Writing the West WILLA Award Finalist From "the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries" (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century Deadwood When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America. The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland's potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul-or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed. Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue's new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.

For the life of me, I don't see how anybody in his right mind would want a berth on a busted down wreck like the Jessie Bill. But then there ain't many people on the Jessie Bill in their right minds [...]My name is Peter Paul Sherman and I'm mud clerk on the Jessie Bill. Flunky might be a better word for it. I'm 17 and if I can live through one more season on this leaky old tub, I'll put in for a job on some respectable boat... And so begins the wonderful adventures of Mr. Peter Paul Sherman. It's the kind of story that the incomparable Mr. Samuel Clemens would have recognized in a flash. Peter Sherman's lively and hilarious account of this travels up and down the mighty Mississippi will delight every family that appreciates the wonderful history and unique characters that make up our rich American heritage. Where else could you find battles with river pirates, riots caused by floating Shakespearean acting troupes, picnics that turn into brawls...and it's all true. More or less.

They raped and murdered his mother and sister. Then they viciously killed his father and seriously wounded his Uncle Milo. Finally, believing all to be dead, the killers burned down the cabin with the bodies inside, but...they had missed one.
Young Jonathan Doyle returning from a hunting trip with some Indian friends finds his home burned to the ground, the charred bodies of his family in the ashes. The heinous murders would have gone unsolved except for one thing: his Uncle Milo, though seriously wounded, had escaped the inferno and survived to tell the tale. Jonathan Doyle swears revenge, citing "an eye for an eye" as his ultimate goal.
Thus begins a trail of vengeance as a distraught young man begins the search that will last for years; destined be one of the most dangerous ever attempted in the bloody history of western lore: filled with danger and heartbreak for a nineteen year old boy intent on delivering his brand of "Ozark Mountain Justice" on the killers; A quest known simply as: the "Ozark Vengeance Trail."

At the end of the War Between the States, great numbers of rootless, exhausted men and women set out to try and rebuild their lives in the unmapped, untamed freedom of the Great Plains. Noble McCurtain had been sickened by the slaughter of the war-he deserted, seeking a place where he could live in peace. Fleta Corey had waited years for her husband to return from the war, trying desperately to keep herself and her little boy alive. Noble chanced by their cabin just in time to save them from a murderous band of raiders, and they decided to join forces and head west... There, on the Santa Fe Trail, they would find not the peace they were seeking, but danger and death, and love and hope.

Larry McMurtry returns to the Old West in a fast-moving, comic tale about a woman determined to conquer anything that stands in the way of an ultimate confrontation with her wayward husband.

In his first historical novel in ten years, Larry McMurtry introduces Mary Margaret, a nineteenth-century version of the formidable, unforgettable Aurora Greenway of Terms of Endearment. Mary Margaret is married to Dickie, who hauls supplies to the forts along the Oregon Trail and, as Mary Margaret rightly suspects, enjoys the pleasures of other women across most of the frontier. Fed up and harboring a secret love of her own, she collects the kids; her brother-in-law, Seth; her sister, Rosie; and her cranky father and makes her way westward to settle things once and for all.

The story of their trek across the country is packed with the elements McMurtry fans love: encounters with historical figures such as Wild Bill Hickock and U.S. Army colonel Fetterman (whose incompetence resulted in one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the American West), larger-than-life fictional characters who join the family on their journey, and confrontations with nature at its wildest. With characters based on actual traders of the Old Santa Fe Trail, Boone's Lick is vintage McMurtry.