Former policeman Jay McGraw's job as a messenger for Wells Fargo takes him east on the San Francisco to Chicago run of the Central Pacific. While often routine and boring, guarding the famous Wells Fargo treasure box is a steady job. Rarely does he envy his close friends who still walk a beat in Chinatown. But trouble soon comes his way. Not long into the run, a gang of masked bandits blow up a key bridge on the trail. Jay knows they are after his cargo, even though the train carries other valuable freight. If Wells Fargo loses their heavily insured shipment, Jay will lose his job. However, escaping from the heavily armed, very persistent riders seems impossible. A last-ditch escape effort sees Jay fleeing the bandits by hot-air balloon, only to land in the midst of a deadly range war between cattlemen and Basque sheepherders deep in the Wyoming territory. Despite Jay's remote location, the bandits continue their dogged pursuit of him, and seem willing to risk anything to steal the precious lockbox.

Wyoming s free range is in peril. The free rangers, led by the Catlin brothers, are accustomed to letting their cattle roam where the grass is green and water easy to come by. When they first spot the barbed wire barricades, blocking the herds progress to the river, they are incensed. Tempers flare, bullets fly, and soon it s an all-out range war between the cattle barons and the little free-range outfits. San Saba Lee, foreman of the prosperous Tincup Ranch, finds himself in a tough spot when his boss decides to erect barbed-wire fences on the Tincup spread. He admires the Catlin brothers, and he carries a torch for their beautiful and brave sister Rhoda, but he needs to keep his position as foreman in order to make amends for a past mistake. Lee finds himself torn between his heart and his sense of duty, desperate to forge an agreement to stop the flying bullets from stealing the life of another one of his friends."

North Castle Books are designed to bring the global variety of knowledge to a broader audience. Primarily aimed at the general reader through bookstore distribution, North Castle Books makes available, in handsomely bound paper editions, titles of literary and cultural significance that our editors have found to be of lasting importance. Spanning the range of fields from Asian Studies to American Studies, from short stories to scholarly treatises, from myth to memoirs, from Economics to Government, from Russian Politics to Recent History, North Castle Books will occupy an important place on bookshelves. Each edition will be reasonably priced, affording students, scholars, and serious readers the means to expand their horizons and broaden their aesthetic understanding.

The story of the Cheyenne Indians in the 1870s, and their bitter struggle to flee from the Indian Territory in Oklahoma back to their home in Wyoming and Montana.

"Mr. Fast's novel will stand or fall upon its value as a dramatic, finely presented story. It is all of that: a model, which may easily become a classic example, of what to put in and what to leave out in the writing of a historical novel. ... I do not believe it is saying too much to suggest that in the person of Mr. Fast we may have the next really important American historical novelist". -- Joseph Henry Jackson, New York Herald Tribune Books

"Fast's writing, austerely polished and austerely poetic, is admirably suited to this epic tale of a desperate effort for dignified survival. ... Fast has gotten to the core of this incident and made it into a rich American novel". -- New York Times Book Review

"An amazing restoration and reconstruction. Thecharacters breathe, the landscape is solid ground and sky, and the story runs flexibly along the zigzag trail of a people driven by a deep instinct to their ancient home. I do not know any other episode in Western history that has been so truly and subtly perpetuated as this one. A great story lost has been found again, and as here told promises to live for generations". -- Carl Van Doren

War had killed 'Glint' McClain's taste for gunfighting. Perhaps that is why a young hardcase could best the famous gunman and leave him for dead on the parched ground of the Arizona desert. Father Miguel finds McClain and nurses him back to health. To repay this kindness, McClain agrees to fight off the Lathrops, local mine owners who are enslaving the Indians in Miguel's parish. Yet despite his Good Samaritan ways, the townspeople want Father Miguel dead-he brings nothing but trouble, they say. And now, the Indians fear him too. Is Father Miguel a man of God or Father Diablo, a lying cheating scoundrel? McClain must take the measure of his savior, before he can take aim at the true enemy.

Barry Weston loves Barbara Dawn, whose father s ranch, the Cinchbuckle, is one of the largest in the West. When Steve Moley, a philanderer and the son of the Judge Moley, begins paying attention to her, Barry takes a stand and warns Steve away from the innocent Barbara. Steve doesn t take kindly to Barry s meddlin, and the two begin a scuffle that ends with Barry giving Steve a taste of some lead medicine. Barry knows he can t expect justice after shooting the son of Judge Moley, and goes into hiding on the plains, wanted by both posses and outlaws. Barry s exile transforms him from a wild, gangly kid into an upstanding, broad-shouldered man. Upon his return to his hometown, he finds the family ranch run-down and dilapidated and Judge Moley buying up all the spreads in the valley. Barry yearns to right all the wrongs that have been committed in his absence, but he must test the mettle of his skills against the money and machinations of the Moleys."

From the bestselling author of Riders of the Purple Sage, comes another classic Western tale. The sun set across the purple sky over the Don Carlos Rancho while the warm Santa Fe breeze rustled through the grazing fields just off the trail. The Colonel sat on his porch, staring over the whole scene, pondering the seemingly-doomed future of his prized cattle ranch. "Another spell with my heart like this last one will kill me," he said nervously to his right-hand man, Britt. Afraid it would break her, the Colonel kept his condition from his alienated daughter, Holly who was shipped off to boarding school in the East at the tender age of eight. The Colonel would settle for nothing less than the best education for his daughter. Not to mention, the West crawling with outlaws, thieves, and greed was no place for a naive, young woman. However, in the wake of the Colonel's death, Holly is forced to return and take the reins of her father's beloved cattle empire. In the midst of hordes of outlaws ransacking the ranch and antagonizing their stock, the heiress must learn the ways of the West alongside the Captain Britt, in an attempt to salvage what's left of her father's dream. In the spirit and glory of a classic Western, and published exactly as the author originally intended, Knights of the Range, is one of Zane Grey's swiftest and most exciting novels. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

When Ryan came riding back into Tularosa people gawped in disbelief. The power-players in town wanted him out of town whether by horse or by casket. His old friends welcomed him, but their faces were shadowed with doubt and hard questions. Why could he make it back to town to see his sister s killer hang when he couldn t be bothered to stay and support her against the treacherous Kane brothers when she was still alive? It doesn t take Ryan long to realize that Billy Kane, who stands to hang, is not his sister s killer. He focuses his attention on the men who first ran him out of town, certain that they know the killer s identity. No matter how long it takes, Ryan is determined to avenge his sister s death and bring her murderer to justice. This time he s not going to allow the powerful forces that control most everything in Tularosa hide the truth."

Midwife Mildred Harrington is riding back home one evening after checking on one of her pregnant neighbors when she stumbles upon an injured stranger. She soon realizes it's her old sweetheart, Pat, from country school-and he may not be telling the full truth about how he was injured. Set in rural Montana in 1925, Waltzing Montana follows Mildred as she grapples with feelings for Pat while also trying to overcome the horrific abuse she suffered as a young teenager. Ultimately Mildred must decide whether to continue her isolated life or accept the hand extended to her. Inspired by the life of midwife Edna McGuire (1885-1969), who operated a sheep ranch in central Montana, Blew has turned the classic Western on its head, focusing on rural women and the gender and diversity challenges they faced during the 1920s.

Ray Storey left Kansas for one reason: revenge. Assuming the role of Kit Carson in a Medicine Show that travels to small towns around East Texas, he hunts down Sam Hawkins, the brutal murderer of Storey's innocent younger brother. As Ray finally arrives in the same town as his quarry, he is faced with the harsh reality that he might not have the wit or courage to bring the cruel Hawkins brothers to justice. When a man is killed and a woman kidnapped, Storey must throw away his act and shoot with real bullets, or his own life and honor will be forfeit.

Some hot property Mal's crew desperately need another payday, but not desperately enough to transport a Blue Sun flightcase to Badger, no questions asked, when the area is swarming with Alliance spacecraft equally keen to regain the stolen property. Yet Jayne refuses to miss out, and sneaks the case aboard Serenity. Lucid dreams Within hours of secreting the case Jayne suddenly finds himself back on the Cobb homestead with his brother Matty miraculously cured of the damplung. Wash is at the controls of the highest-spec cruiser money can buy, the billionaire head of a 'verse-spanning business empire. All of the crew but River are soon immersed in vivid hallucinations of their deepest desires, while their bodies lie insensible on the ship. Fantasies gone sour Wash's empire begins to crumble; the Cobb ranch is under attack by merciless bandits. As everyone's daydreams turn nightmare, Serenity floats on a crash course towards a barren moon, with only River standing between the crew and certain oblivion.

Lizzie Randall, the preacher s pretty daughter, has been discovered brutally murdered. The young Mexican boy Paco Morales is found close to the scene making him a convenient scapegoat to hang for the heinous crime. When the town drunkard Willie Turner claims that Morales is innocent, Sheriff Ward Vincent is forced to investigate the heinous crime more closely. As his investigation progresses, the dark underbelly of the small western town is exposed, and the guilty seem to outnumber the innocent."

It makes a lot of difference who is the sheriff in the town of Lariat. When Grubb was sheriff, Kurt Dodd and his men ran wild. Cattle rustling was a business to them, and they went about it in a business-like fashion. Save for the valor and alertness of Bob Lee and his Texas men, they d have wiped out the whole Tomlinson outfit. When Bob Lee becomes sheriff, the war on the rustlers begins in earnest. Bob is elected to the tune of barking six-guns, and after his election the gunfire only increases, as Kurt Dodd s gang try to drop him dead. In the fights for his life and for the safety of cattlemen, the only man Bob wants at his back is Dick Markley. Dick chooses a job that offers better money than sheriff s deputy, improving his chances to win the hand of one Miss June Tomlinson, leaving Bob to fight off Dodd s men without his help. Bob is faced with some difficult decisions: between love and friendship, friendship and his job, his life and his personal sense of justice; Bob will make choices that ll forever alter his destiny."

At once a love story and a lush comic masterpiece, Martha Moody is a speculative western which embraces the ordinary and gritty details - as well as the magic - of women's lives in the old west.