Takes the top 50 wildest episodes in the region's history and presents them to the reader in one convenient, narrative-driven package.

The story of New England is built on an endless armature of fascinating stories of Yankee ingenuity and hardy, intrepid characters. Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks will take the top fifty wildest episodes in the region's history and present them to the reader in one convenient, narrative-driven package.

From romance and robberies to cowboys and Indians, the Old West is filled with phenomenal happenings, mysteries, and ghosts that are sire to send a chill down any spine. Haunted Old West is the perfect collection for any campfire gathering.

From romance and robberies to cowboys and Indians, the Old West is filled with phenomenal happenings, mysteries, and ghosts that are sire to send a chill down any spine. Haunted Old West is the perfect collection for any campfire gathering.

Myths and Mysteries of New Hampshire reveals the dark and ominous cloud of mysteries and myths that hovers over the Granite State. This book offers residents, travelers, history buffs, and ghost hunters a refreshingingly lively collection of stories about New Hampshire's unsolved murders, legendary villains, lingering ghosts, terrifying myths, and haunted places.

Gathered for the first time, this robust collection of eighteen frontier tales, Half a Pig (and Other Stories of the West), from Spur and Wrangler Award-winning author Matthew P. Mayo, rides hard with a range of fast-action offerings, including the previously unpublished novella, Trouble at Tall Pine, starring ever-popular Roamer, noble loner forever trying to lose himself in the West. Inside, you'll find the lynching-inspired Spur Award finalist title story, Half a Pig; the bone-cold, eye-for-an-eye drama of Will Rogers Medallion Award-winning Peaches; the clanking, clockwork gundown of Peacemaker Award finalist Scourge of the Spoils; and numerous other critically acclaimed short stories, including the noir-tinged pages of Snows of Montana and Snake Farm. There's the classic Western barroom showdown in Just Once, the time-travel nightmare of Been a Long Time, and the brutal hunter/hunted chase novella Bloodline. The freaky shaman's subterranean rituals in The Witch Hole rival the grim comeuppance of a truly bad seed in Pay the Ferryman. And then there's the mysterious journal of the gritty disappearance of an inveterate rover in Lucky Tam ... and so much more. But wait! There's also an eyebrow-raising stack of five bold and brassy adventures of that silent, noble loner, Roamer, and his jug-hoisting mentor, crusty mountain man, Maple Jack, including the heretofore unpublished Trouble at Tall Pine. Half a Pig and Other Stories of the West is a collection of short stories that is as varied and as surprising as the assortment of bottles lining the mirror-backed bar in Lucky's Gambling Hall and Saloon. Prop a boot, drop a coin, and pick your poison, pard!

Western Writers of America 2022 Spur Award Finalist

A rancher discovers just how many times a man's luck can hold out in this thrilling novel in the bestselling Trail Drive Series

After struggling for years to work a raw-patch ranch in the arid flatlands of Texas, young Mitchell Newland learns that his herd of scrubby range cattle will fetch ten times their local price if they're driven to Montana.

He strikes a one-sided deal with the devil, neighboring rancher Corliss Bilks, to back his play with cattle, men, and horses. The trail brims with hellish hardship: prairie fire, stampede, flooded rivers, hailstorms, rattlers, sickness, long, broiling days and frigid nights.

Halfway to Montana, range pirates and a rogue Apache war party close in. Mitch and the boys fight, grim and helpless, watching as their herd is driven westward in a cloud of dust and cackling laughter.

Cut down to two bloodied men, Mitch collapses, far too late, and admits the old man has won the bet. But salvation in the form of a Basque sheepherder revives Mitch and his pal, Drover Joe, and Mitch realizes he isn't done. Not by a long shot. And now he has nothing to lose.

Everyone loves a heel, especially one to whom nothing was sacred and who charmed his or her way into the hearts, minds, and wallets of bumpkins and belles alike. This collection offers twenty-four tales of petty bandits, sleazy bunko artists, and conniving conmen and -women who traveled West to seek their fortunes by preying on the men and women who went before them to settle and explore. These stories of who they were, what they did, and why they are remembered for their deeds include ample and engaging historic illustrations of the shady characters at work and at play.

Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Frontier Prospecting, offers 50 tales of hard-bitten sourdoughs, petty bandits, outright outlaws, guilt-free gunmen, and murderous money-grubbers as they scrabbled to gain the lands, foodstuffs, and fortunes of wide-eyed greenhorns, gullible and trusting tenderfoots, and slow-on-the-draw gold panners.

The state of New Hampshire is illustrated through gorgeous photographs and evocative essays, showcasing 50 iconic places, events, inventions, foods, and objects from the Granite State.

The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary-if misunderstood-thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from history all get their due in the short essays featured in these enlightening, informative, books. Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in New England History features twenty short biographies of nefarious characters, from Charles W. Morse, serial monopolist, cheat, liar, and swindler, to Emeline Meaker & Mary Rogers, otherwise known as the Lady Killers.

The only thing a man can trust is his gun in this gripping Ralph Compton western....

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks. While Grady Haskell sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie, the ruffian pushes all feelings aside for a potentially big score.

When Haskell's bold daylight bank job in prosperous Bakersfield turns bloody, Charlie attempts to thwart the heist--and ends up the only gang member caught alive. Sentenced to swing, Charlie makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and prove his innocence.

But with a mysterious marshal and a party of angry townsmen hot on his heels, Charlie must track the killer thieves through a vicious winter storm in the High Sierras--before the seething posse gets the chance to hang him high.

More Than Eight Million Ralph Compton Books In Print

Life at the Barr-McGee ranch has settled into a pleasant lull of work and rest for members of The Outfit. Life should be good . . . but big Rafe Barr stews about his wife and son's murderer, and leaves to search for resolution, revenge, reckoning. Meanwhile, Black Jack Smith attends a high-stakes poker tournament in Santa Fe, where he encounters southern gambler Colonel Rufus Turlington the Second, and his powerful covert Brotherhood of the Phoenix. The group plans to make good on its rallying cry: The South shall rise from the ashes, reborn in a brutal public lynching--with visiting President Ulysses S. Grant as its swinging centerpiece. Returning to the ranch after dealing with the vicious killer, Knifer, and his midget partner, Plug, in Denver, Rafe and Cookie discover a cryptic telegram from Jack, something about a phoenix, a word that conjures specters from their secret-agent war days. The men ride for Santa Fe with Doc in tow, driving his latest invention, Ethel the War Wagon. Stakes are high and the men bet all in hopes they aren't too late to save the President of the United States, and prevent the rebirth of a scourge long thought dead. It's up to Rafe, Cookie, and the rest of THE OUTFIT to extinguish the rising flames of villainy and hatred.

A son will fight to the death to save his inheritance in this stirring story of the Old West.

For years Rory Middleton waited for his long-lost son to return to Turnbull, New Mexico, to run the family's Dancing M Ranch with him. By the time Brian returns, his old man is dead and buried. Although he's named as the rightful heir to the cattle spread in his father's will, Brian's about to find out it's not that simple.

Brandon MacMawe, Brian's half brother, wants the property for himself--as does the county's wealthiest rancher, Wilf Grindle. Brian's got both hands full fending off these men when a wild card rides into town: a no-account con man and killer named Mortimer Darturo, who has ideas of his own for the dead man's ranch....

More Than Eight Million Ralph Compton Books In Print

Saddle up and enjoy these 14 new tales of hot lead, cold hearts, and more leather-slapping action, adventure, and edge-of-the-seat danger than you could ever hope to find on either side of the Mississippi. The writers within these pages range from seasoned Western scribes to those new to the field, but all are united by their love of the legends of the Wild West. Most write for the Black Horse Westerns series published by Robert Hale, Ltd., one of the few publishers worldwide to produce a regular supply of new Western fiction. From high-noon showdowns and shade-tree lynchings to raging prairie fires and scrub-country manhunts, Express Westerns' first collection, Where Legends Ride, will grab you by the vest front and won't let go until you've surrendered to the posse. So sink spur and hang on ... it's time to go where legends ride

Rafe Barr, master tracker, spy, and war hero, is locked away in Yuma Territorial Prison for life, wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and son. But five years into his sentence, Warden Talbot Timmons, who has made Barr s time at Yuma a living hell, offers him a deal: full pardon in exchange for the return (alive) of the young daughter of California s Governor Pendleton from a life of drug addiction and prostitution by Deadwood s top bad man, Al Swearengen. Rafe smells a rat, but agrees.
On the trail to Deadwood, Rafe rescues his old pard, explosives expert Cookie McGee, from a dicey situation. In Deadwood, Rafe and Cookie find the girl, the law, and a whole lot of trouble, and barely make it out with their skins only to find their back trail fogged by El Jefe and his Hell Hounds, a gang of cutthroats and desperadoes hired by Warden Timmons.
Rafe, Cookie, and the girl ride hell-for-leather toward the hidden Colorado valley where Rafe s ranch once stood. Along the way they save a crew of colorful characters with peculiar talents gambler, safecracker, and former slave, Black Jack Smith; feisty widow, Arlene Tewksbury; and local doctor, inventor, and drunk, Deathbed Jones.
The fuse is lit as a mob of desperadoes and renegades led by the Hell Hounds swarms the ranch, and Rafe, Cookie, and the rest of the gang find themselves in an explosive battle for their lives. And that s only the beginning for THE OUTFIT

Western Writers of America 2022 Spur Award Finalist

A rancher discovers just how many times a man's luck can hold out in this thrilling novel in the bestselling Trail Drive Series

After struggling for years to work a raw-patch ranch in the arid flatlands of Texas, young Mitchell Newland learns that his herd of scrubby range cattle will fetch ten times their local price if they're driven to Montana.

He strikes a one-sided deal with the devil, neighboring rancher Corliss Bilks, to back his play with cattle, men, and horses. The trail brims with hellish hardship: prairie fire, stampede, flooded rivers, hailstorms, rattlers, sickness, long, broiling days and frigid nights.

Halfway to Montana, range pirates and a rogue Apache war party close in. Mitch and the boys fight, grim and helpless, watching as their herd is driven westward in a cloud of dust and cackling laughter.

Cut down to two bloodied men, Mitch collapses, far too late, and admits the old man has won the bet. But salvation in the form of a Basque sheepherder revives Mitch and his pal, Drover Joe, and Mitch realizes he isn't done. Not by a long shot. And now he has nothing to lose.

One man's quest to lose himself in the West. Roamer's long-planned winter snowshoe trek to the high, lonesome peaks of the Bitterroots takes a hard turn when the big loner of a woodsman finds his mentor, cantankerous mountain man Maple Jack, savaged, terrorized, and raving about the Alooknok, blood-eyed demons who absconded with his cold-weather mate, Winter Woman, a no-nonsense healer and midwife. It's up to Roamer to rescue her. He takes to the trail in the wake of a blizzard, battling winter-starved timber wolves and the unforgiving elements. Tracking him, the addled Maple Jack falls prey to a trio of greasy wolfers. Then the very demons Roamer seeks find him-and force him deep into the belly of the beast, a foreboding, grim place in the raw mountains where sunlight never shines. A brutal battle among friends, enemies, and Alooknok will seal their fates and haunt the few survivors ... forever.