In the bestselling tradition of such western writers as Louis L'Amour and Elmore Leonard come the riveting and unforgettable first two books of Tobias Cole's "The Sharpshooters" trilogy-now in one volume BRIMSTONE The story of Andersonville prison camp was written in blood, with few left alive to tell it. Union Army sharpshooter Jed Wells was one of them, and he was sworn to share the tales of those who suffered and died beside him. It is a promise that has brought Jed to Kansas and to small-town sheriff Amos Broughton, a friend and fellow survivor of hell on earth. But Broughton's dangerous obsession with a mysterious man threatens to explode in a vengeful rain of bullets and death-forcing Jed Wells to take up his rifle to save a soul damned by terrible secrets that are buried with the bones of captured soldiers in the Georgia mud. GOLD FEVER Union Army sharpshooter Jed Wells met the possibly mad artist Josephus McCade when they were prisoners in Andersonville, and he remembers well the strange man's rants about a "key" to unimaginable wealth. Now that the guns of the war between North and South have fallen forever silent, curiosity is drawing Jed back onto the trail of the eccentric McCade. But the artist's charmed life may soon be coming to a brutal end, thanks to a secret he will tell no one-a mystery that's pulling Jed Wells himself into the gunsight of a killer.

The refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing and Applications, ISPA 2003, held in Aizu, Japan in July 2003.

The 30 revised full papers and 9 revised short papers presented together with abstracts of 4 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on applications on Web-based and intranet systems, compiler and optimization techniques, network routing, performance evaluation of parallel systems, wireless communication and mobile computing, parallel topology, data mining and evolutionary computing, image processing and modeling, network security, and database and multimedia systems.

A nameless rider plods through the desert toward a dusty Western town shimmering on the horizon. In his latest novel, Robert Coover has taken the familiar form of the Western and turned it inside out. The lonesome stranger reaches the town -- or rather, it reaches him -- and he becomes part of its gunfights, saloon brawls, bawdy houses, train robberies, and, of course, the choice between the saloon chanteuse or the sweet-faced schoolmistress whom he loves. Throughout, Robert Coover reanimates the Western epics of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, infusing them with the Beckettian echoes, unique comic energy, and exuberant prose that have made him one of the most influential figures in contemporary American literature. It is, as The Washington Post Book World put it, "a fast-forward, ribald vision of the American West, a free-for-all that slides from surreal to ridiculous like a circus-goer's grin through a funhouse mirror ... a heady frisson, a salon entertainment, one helluva ride."

The Western, though a singularly American art form, is one of the great genres of world literature with a truly global readership. It is also durable despite being often unfairly maligned. Ever since James Fenimore Cooper transformed frontier yarns into a distinct literary form, the Western has followed two paths: one populist - what Time magazine famously billed 'the American Morality Play' - capable of taking many points of view, from red to redneck, but always populist, with a sentimental attachment to the misfit; the other literary - eschewing heroism, debunking with unsettling candour many of the myths of the West. It can sometimes be difficult to draw a sure line between the two forms, but both are represented in this outstanding collection which includes stories by Rick Bass, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Larry McMurtry, Mari Sandoz, Christopher Tilghman, and Mark Twain, among many others.

An old elk hunter has set up an isolated camp in the Big Horn Mountains of northeastern Wyoming a week ahead of the opening of rifle season for a little "quiet time" before the rest of his "family" shows up. Alois, Ace, Gronsky and his dog Dozer are sucked into events that swirl around their idyllic setting, as teams of suspicious strangers set up three camps in separate locations in the vicinity. Not only are the strangers unfriendly, they are downright hostile to anyone snooping around. Little wonder; they plan to shoot down Air Force One on its way back from Jackson Wyoming. Five Jihadists are broken out of the new prison in nearby Wesley Montana and given the equipment they believe will shoot down the president's plane. The jihadists are purposely set up for failure. Air Force One goes down. The "home grown" Wyoming Militia, with collusion from corrupt law enforcement, wipe out the Jihadists, and the government manipulated media tells the world that the POTUS (the President of the United States) and his family are dead while those responsible have been destroyed. Ace has rescued his kidnapped Indian friend from the Jihadists and they witness the shoot-down of Air Force One and two escort fighter jets. They also witness the deployment of the president's escape pod and the pilot ejected from one of the fighters. If things were not bad enough already, Ace, his friend, Billy Black Stone, and fighter pilot Melanie, Yaz, Yasulevicz, must protect the first family from the teams bent on finishing the job, and battle winter conditions in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Despite the snow, things really heat up during the climax of this tale.

She sat down on the porch. "Did you get amnesia in Iraq?" He was busy putting Lizzy in the passenger's seat and shutting the door. When she said Iraq, he jerked his head and frowned. "I never went to Iraq." "Then the uniform was a hoax to pick up women?" Griffin stopped. "Six years ago my identical twin brother went to Iraq. He was killed two days after he got there. Are you mistaking me for Graham?" "Holy shit. Two of you?" Julie whispered. Julie Donavan is looking for a place to start over with her young daughter, but the very thing she's running from shows up in the form of her new next-door neighbor Griffin Luckadeau, hunky rancher and single dad who's absolutely infuriating... Griffin owns the ranch next door and is the twin brother of Graham, the soldier she'd had a one night stand with six years before and who was the biological father of her daughter. She never saw Graham again, and he was killed in Iraq shortly after he arrived. Ever since Graham passed, Griffin has stayed focused on running the ranch. The last thing he needs is a distraction from the woman who moved into the feuding ranch next door. But when his daughter insists she wants to be friends-or better yet, sisters-with the girl who looks like her twin, the sparks begin to fly. The Lucky Cowboys: Lucky in Love (Book 1) One Lucky Cowboy (Book 2) Getting Lucky (Book 3) Talk Cowboy to Me (Book 4)

With her sassy humor and sexy cowboys, USA Today bestseller Carolyn Brown launches her new Longhorn Canyon series. Every summer Cade Maguire looks forward to opening his Longhorn Canyon Ranch to underprivileged city kids. But this year, he's having no luck finding a counselor for the children--until Retta Palmer walks through his door. Flat broke after selling everything she owns to pay for her father's medical bills, Retta is thrilled to hear of an opening for a counselor position. She's not as thrilled about the ranching part, or the sexy cowboy with beautiful blue eyes who's her new boss. After being left at the altar two years before by his fiancee, Cade isn't sure he can take another heartbreak. And Retta isn't even sure she wants to stay. But the sparks between them are absolutely undeniable. And with a couple of lovable kids and two elderly folks playing matchmaker, Cade and Retta may find that the best way to heal is with each other.

He'd step in front of a bull to save a life, but even he's no match for a girl this Texas tough.

Rodeo bullfighter Wyatt Darrington's got it all figured out. The perfect car, the perfect job, the perfect looks―the perfect lie. He may be on the fast track to the Hall of Fame, but he knows he'll always be an outsider to people like Melanie Brookman. Texas-born and bred, with the arena in her blood, Melanie's come to see Wyatt as her personal enemy, and that suits him just fine―this way, she'll never realize the truth.

He's been achingly in love with her for years.

Melanie's always been a fighter. Fiercely independent and tough as nails, she's stood up to everything that got in her way―including Wyatt. But now her infamous temper's got her on the ropes, and there's nowhere left to run but toward the man she swore she'd never trust…and this time, there's no denying just how hot he makes her burn.

The first in a new series featuring an avenging agent appointed by President Grant to settle scores and see that all is right in the West. Zak Cody, son of a wily prospector and an Apache maiden, is thought to have retired as a colonel serving under General Grant, but in his transition to Presidency Grant has appointed this war hero to the role of enforcer and avenging angel of America's untamed regions. Now "the Shadow Rider" and his ebony steed Nox patrol the west assuring that wrongs are righted and those of ill will meet their maker. Heading for a rendezvous at an Army outpost in Arizona he comes across wagon train savaged by Indians and a young woman in need of saving, but not all is as it seems. Dark forces on all sides work to insight genocide and claim the land, and all its riches, as there own.

Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O'Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as farm labourers, they re-enlist in the army and are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud's coalition of Indian tribes in the heart of Montana's Powder River Valley. Thomas finds love amidst the daily carnage-which leads to a moment of violence that will change the brothers' lives forever. Meanwhile, following a double murder in a brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy sets off to track down the killers. As he journeys to a remote outpost, he meets Irish nationalist rebels and anti-immigrant nativists who prove to be opposed to his investigations. Wolves of Eden blends intimate historical detail and emotional acuity in a haunting narrative that explores themes of morality, the resilience of the human spirit and the injustice implicit in warfare.

Capturing the essence of the Southwest in 1915, Oliver La Farge's Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel is an enduring American classic. At a ceremonial dance, the young, earnest silversmith Laughing Boy falls in love with Slim Girl, a beautiful but elusive "American"-educated Navajo. As they experience all of the joys and uncertainties of first love, the couple must face a changing way of life and its tragic consequences.

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.

Sundance, Butch & Me tells the story of Etta Place-an outlaw woman whose original identity may never be known. She accompanied the leaders of the Wild Bunch as they ran rampant over the American West, traveled to New York City, and finally fled to South America. Judy Alter's storytelling and impeccable historical research bring the era of the old west to life while highlighting the life of Etta Place.

Cherokee Rose tells the story of Rodeo cowgirl Tommy Joe Burns, an Oklahoma girl who earned the praise of Theodore Roosevelt for her daring and bravery as a rough-stock rider in the early years of the 20th century. Judy Alter's storytelling and impeccable historical research bring the era of the old west to life while highlighting the life of Tommy Joe Burns.

Hailed as one of "the best novels ever set in America's fourth largest city" (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry's "comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension" (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the "mundane happiness" of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, "El Chevy," bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour's pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully "normal" friend. Since the novel's publication in 1972, Danny Deck has "been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life" (McMurtry), a testament to the author's incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.