Lessons learned from past betrayals can protect Colby Vincent's heart or cost him a chance at happiness he never thought to have. Colby thought he'd never let anyone close again after being betrayed by everyone he loved, but one closeted, stubborn oilfield worker with a penchant for dressing like a cowboy seems determined to out himself and win Colby's heart. It's as if Hunter Talamentez walked right out of Colby's fantasies and into the convenience store where Colby works. But Hunter is closeted, and he's never considered changing that. He's got his homophobic cousin with him, a family that he knows won't support him if they know the truth about who he is and a job where being out could get him hurt. He resigned himself to spending his life alone until he gets to know Colby. Then he embarks on a journey with Colby that will change their lives if only they both find the strength to take a few chances. Nothing comes easily, and learning to give from the heart when that heart has been shattered twice before might be more than Colby is capable of. He isn't sure about having more than a fling with Hunter, yet he can't seem to stay away from the man, either. What was meant to be one night together turns into more, and Colby loses his ability to keep Hunter at the safe distance he'd wanted.

Louis L'Amour is recognized the world over as one of the most prolific and popular American authors. While every one of his 89 novels is still in print, a lesser known fact is that L'Amour is also one of the all-time bestselling authors of short fiction. This volume features 35 action-packed frontier stories.

A BARGAIN WITH DEATH
Passing uneasily through the dried-up town of Espero, Texas, John Slocum learns soon enough that his apprehension is justified. After a not-so-friendly welcome at the Six Feet Under Saloon, he's given the choice between a bullet or a bit of employment: Escort the town mortician's strikingly pretty bride-to-be from a train station at Dexter Junction--in exchange for a hefty sum.
But with someone after the gunslinger and the mysterious beauty, Slocum reckons that the undertaker neglected to tell him the whole story. There's treachery in store for Slocum upon returning to Espero, a place where men have been known to land in an early grave... "much" too early...
Slocum Buried Alive
The longest-running Western series in America today, the Slocum adventures by Jake Logan have entertained readers since 1975.

USA Today Bestseller! One of Refinery29's Best Reads of September In this novel authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in a dazzling work of historical fiction, a captivating story that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before-Caroline Ingalls, "Ma" in Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved Little House books. In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril. The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters. But Caroline's new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles' hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses. For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier's most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past.

Welcome to Wolf Creek. Here you will find many of your favorite authors, working together as Ford Fargo to weave a complex and textured series of Old West adventures like no one has ever seen. Each author writes from the perspective of his or her own unique character, blended together into a single novel. In our latest adventure, Wolf Creek is threatened by marauding Kiowa warriors who seek to avenge the deaths of their comrades at the hands of buffalo hunters. While the town fortifies itself, and a cavalry detachment looks for the raiders, the stage from Wichita is attacked -leaving a handful of Wolf Creek citizens alone and on foot in hostile territory... About the author: Beneath the mask, Ford Fargo is not one but a posse of America's leading western authors who have pooled their talents to create a series of rip-snortin', old fashioned sagebrush sagas. Saddle up. Read 'em Cowboy These are the legends of Wolf Creek. Appearing as Ford Fargo in this installment: Bill Crider, Jackson Lowry, Kerry Newcomb, Troy D. Smith, Frank Roderus, Robert J. Randisi

The Western, with its stoic cowboys and quickhanded gunslingers, is an instantly recognizable American genre that has achieved worldwide success. Cultures around the world have embraced but also adapted and critiqued the Western as part of their own national literatures, reinterpreting and expanding the genre in curious ways. Canadian Westerns are almost always in conversation with their American cousins, influenced by their tropes and traditions, responding to their politics, and repurposing their structures to create a national literary tradition. The American Western in Canadian Literature examines over a century of the development of the Canadian Western as it responds to the American Western, to evolving literary trends, and to regional, national, and international change. Beginning with Indigenous perspectives on the genre, it moves from early manifestations of the Western in Christian narratives of personal and national growth, and its controversial pulp-fictional popularity in the 1940s, to its postmodern and contemporary critiques, pushing the boundary of the Western to include Northerns, Northwesterns, and post-Westerns in literature, film, and wider cultural imagery. The American Western in Canadian Literature is more than a simple history. It uses genre theory to comment on historical perspectives on nation and region. It includes overviews of Indigenous and settler-colonial critiques of the Western, challenging persistent attitudes to Indigenous people and their traditional territories that are endemic to the genre. It illuminates the way that the Canadian Western enshrines, hagiographies, and ultimately desacralizes aspects of Canadian life, from car culture to extractive industries to assumptions about a Canadian moral high ground. This is a comprehensive, highly readable, and fascinating study of an underexamined genre.

Tracking down the killer of his old partner, The Gunsmith rides to a crossroads town in New Mexico. He has to duck hot lead all the way to the saloon before he can enjoy a drink and the favors of the fanciest female this side of the Rio Grande. To get to the bottom of his friend's death, he lets the town fathers talk him into turning lawman once again- which only brings a host of enemies out of the woodwork. Luckily, his lady sticks by him, but The Gunsmith will need more than good loving to survive in this violence-hungry hamlet where paid gunfighters outnumber the "good citizens" two to one.

If their relationship is discovered, Derek's singing career would end, but Max can't live a lie. Who will risk it all for a chance at forever? Derek St. Martin is Nashville's hottest country singer. For eight years, fame and fortune have come his way, but he's not happy. In fact, he's on the edge of a nervous breakdown or checking into a drug rehab centre. Hiding his sexual preference is driving him to resort to numbing the pain. When his stepbrother suggests he should go on vacation, Derek jumps at the chance to relax and get his head on straight. Max Furlo isn't amused. His bosses were leaving him in charge of some singer while he had other more important things to take care of. Seeing Derek St. Martin for the first time hits Max hard and, suddenly, he's considering a summer fling. Both men know that a relationship can never be for them. Derek's career wouldn't handle the news and Max can't live a lie. Yet when a summer fling becomes love, who will be willing to risk it all for a chance at forever?

Multiple-award-winning author Rick Riordan brings back smart-mouthed Texas P.I. Tres Navarre for his most dangerous case yet. If you think the academic world is deadly dull, you're half right....

When a controversial English professor is found shot to death, Tres Navarre — P.I. and Ph.D. — is the only local academic crazy enough to accept the emergency opening at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Police assure him they already have a suspect, so while they wrap up the open-and-shut case, all Tres has to do is teach three classes, grade on a curve ... and walk in a dead man's shoes.

It should be an easy assignment — but one thing Tres doesn't do is easy. When the evidence in the case starts looking a little too perfect, when the killing doesn't stop, Tres takes on some extracurricular research into the heart of an assassin — and lands in a high-stakes game of gangster honor on the darkest streets of San Antonio's West Side....

This supplement for Dracula's America: Shadows of the West contains a host of new rules and material and offers something for every player.

- Two New Factions: The Forsaken, ragged survivors of the 7th Cavalry tormented by a bestial curse, and the Shadow Dragon Tong, crimelords with an agenda as mysterious as the powers wielded by their enforcers.

- The Hunting Grounds: Scenarios and encounters that focus on this mythical realm and the power and threats found within it.

- Territory: Build and develop your headquarters, and exploit the benefits it offers, but beware your enemies taking the fight to your home turf.

- Outlaws, Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters: New campaign options, allowing you to turn to a life of crime, bring in wanted fugitives, or sell your gun to the highest bidder.

- New Monsters: The denizens of the Hunting Grounds, in all their terrifying glory.

- New Hired Guns: There's all kinds of folk willing to sell their skills, and these new Hired Guns offer a range of tactical options... if you can afford them.

- New Gear: Bring a Gatling Gun to a knife fight, or find out why you were always warned about misusing brimstone chalk and vials of ectoplasm.

- New Skills: Riding and Leadership skills give you new combat options and help your posse stay in the fight.

Winner of the 2012 Story Prize
Recipient of the 2012 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award
A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" fiction writer of 2012
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, "Battleborn "represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region's vast spaces, winning redemption despite - and often because of - the hardship and violence they endure. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock. Most bravely of all, Watkins takes on - and reinvents - her own troubled legacy in a story that emerges from the mayhem and destruction of Helter Skelter. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.

When it comes to boiling up a pot of coffee or stirring up a pot of stew, Old Laramie's about as good a man as you're going to find. But other than cooking three squares a day for the cowpunchers over at the Lazy G ranch, Laramie's not good for much. He's about as heroic as Walter Brennan on a bender.
But Laramie's luck--and life--are about to take an amazing turn. Quite by accident, he somehow manages to save a family of Mexicans from bandits, and as a token of their gratitude they give him The Magic Quirt--a horsewhip that he's told will turn him into a new man.
The transformation is indeed magical. Suddenly Laramie is performing feats of ingenuity and courage that would make even the Lone Ranger proud. But magic is a funny thing--and as Laramie's about to discover, sometimes it's all an illusion.
L. Ron Hubbard wrote of his childhood: "The weather of Montana is, of course, brutal. The country is immense and swallows up men rather easily, hence they have to live bigger than life to survive. There were still Indians around living in forlorn and isolated tepees. Notable among them was Old Tom, a full-fledged Blackfoot medicine man." Hubbard and Old Tom became blood brothers, and the medicine man shared with him the kind of lore that make stories like The Magic Quirt as compelling as they are.
Also includes the Western adventures, Vengeance Is Mine , the story of a young man who sets out to avenge his father's death only to commit an act beyond redemption, and Stacked Bullets, in which a game of chance is fixed, a whole town is cheated, and nothing but a stack of bullets can make things right.
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"Pure entertainment from first page to last with that L. Ron Hubbard touch giving this tale an enduring reading engagement from beginning to end."" --Midwest Book Review

Book one in the Love's Command Series When a woman running scared runs into the arms of a sexy cowboy, she might lose her fear, but will she also lose her heart? When a woman on the run hits a town right out of the Wild West, the first cowboy she meets sets his sights on her. Alone, scared, and starting over, Susan will have to decide if the big, bad Russell Ryland, retired Navy SEAL, now rancher, is for real or just using up his down time between missions. Russell takes one look at the smiling, blue-eyed beauty and realises there's a heck of a lot more after retirement than he'd thought. As he begins to dream of a life with Susan, he fights an unfamiliar battle within himself-doubt. Does she want him, or is she merely out for some fun? Time for the reluctant couple nearly runs out when the very men Susan is hiding from come to call. Will Russell wake up quickly enough to save her? Or will their doubts get them both killed?