Western Thriller

When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novel Double Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. In Appaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s.

Sheriff Walt Longmire is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of 25 armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back.

Craig Johnson's mystery stories have earned him an esteemed position in the pantheon of contemporary crime novelists. In this fourth installment, Longmire is called to investigate a dead Vietnamese girl found along the Wyoming highway.

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail 26-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.

When a University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Game Warden Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries in his district. First, Joe finds the professor's vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then he finds the professor's frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, Joe's investigation is obstructed by Federal agents, extreme environmentalists, and Governor Colter Allen. Meanwhile, Joe's associate, falconer Nate Romanowski, is approached by a shadowy group of local militant activists who are gaining in power and influence.

Here is the kind of authentically detailed epic novel that has become Louis L’Amour’s hallmark. It is the compelling story of US Air Force major Joe Mack, a man born out of time. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It's the kind of town that doesn't have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute.

What if you woke up lying in the middle of the street in the infamous town of Fort Pratt, Montana, where thirty young Native boys perished in a tragic 1896 boarding school fire? What if every person you encountered in that endless night was dead? What if you were covered in blood and missing a bullet from the gun holstered on your hip? What if there was something out there in the yellowed skies—along with the deceased and the smell of ash and dust—something the Northern Cheyenne refer to as the Éveohtsé-heómese, the Wandering Without, the Stealer of Souls?

1933. Cornelia Stover is headstrong and business-minded—not the kind of woman the men of Boldville, New Mexico, expect her to be. Then she stumbles upon a secret hidden out in the hills. 1970. Decades later, Joanna Riley, a former cop, packs up her car in the middle of the night and drives west, fleeing an abusive marriage and a life she can no longer bear. Eventually, she runs out of gas and finds herself in Boldville, a sleepy desert town in the foothills of the Gila Mountains.

Jon Talbot is a history professor who makes sense of the past by examining facts. He also knows how to speculate about the what-ifs. Jon’s doing both following the death of his wife, Pax. Driving home late from a volunteer assignment, she plunged off a mountain highway and died. The police find nothing suspicious about the facts: a deer in the road, a blown tire, a broken neck. But the what-ifs are leading Jon down a twisting trail of secrets. After five years of marriage, he is finally getting to know his wife.

Tooth and Claw follows Walt and Henry up to Alaska as they look for work after they both return from serving in Vietnam. While working for an oil company in the bitter cold of winter, they soon encounter a ferocious polar bear that seems hell-bent on their destruction. But it’s not too long until they realize that the danger does not lurk outside in the frozen Alaskan tundra, but with their co-workers, who are after priceless treasure and will stop at nothing to get it.

The World at Night is an edge-of-your-seat World War II tale of intrigue and espionage, set in the shadowy back streets and glittering salons of occupied Paris. Film producer Jean Casson, a Paris sophisticate, struggles to come to terms with the uncomfortable realities of life under German occupation, as he becomes caught up in the initial actions of what was to become the French Resistance.

Every cowboy at the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo is hot for rising music star Maggie Killian. But Maggie is laser-focused on her songs, her next show, and her future. She’s not going to be any cowboy’s buckle bunny. Down-and-out bull-rider Hank Sibley needs big money fast, so he strikes a deal with the devil to lose in Cheyenne for cash. When Hank reneges to get Maggie to go out with him, the only thing standing between him and deadly payback is a pissed-off, buckle-wearing Maggie.

The Denver Post hails Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire mystery series as a must-listen. Joining the four previous novels - all of which have been Book Sense picks - The Dark Horse puts a unique Wyoming twist on the classic British village mystery. When Longmire meets a woman jailed for her husband's death, he travels outside his usual haunts to discover the truth behind this unusual murder case.

The governor of Wyoming has given game warden Joe Pickett the thankless assignment of taking a tech baron on a hunting trip. But unbeknownst to them, as they trek further into the wilderness, a hunter is hot on their heels. Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his charge. Meanwhile, when Joe's closest friend, Nate Romanowski, and his own daughter, Sheridan, learn of the threat to his life, they follow him into the woods to rescue him, and all three come together for one final showdown.

Sheriff Walt Longmire and Dog are called on a routine search and rescue to Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, where Walt finds himself on a rock outcropping remembering when his father told him about the first time he saw a man die. In the late forties, Bill Sutherland was shot but the investigation was stymied because no member of the elk camp—where he was found—was carrying the caliber rifle that killed the state accountant.

In Craig Johnson's latest mystery, Depth of Winter, an international hit man and the head of one of the most vicious drug cartels in Mexico has kidnapped Walt's beloved daughter, Cady, to auction her off to his worst enemies, of which there are many. The American government is of limited help and the Mexican one even less. Walt heads into the 110-degree heat of the Northern Mexican desert alone, one man against an army.

It's been six weeks since Jack McBride's life went to hell: The resolution of his first case as chief sparked a county-wide drug war, his brother Eddie rode into town with a pocket full of cocaine and trouble on his mind, his estranged wife returned from her one-year sabbatical determined to win him back, and Ellie Martin ended their brief affair.

With her ex-husband, Ted, working nearby in an adjoining county, Kate Fox is eager to prove she’s the better sheriff. But when the less-than-popular ex-foreman of a local ranch is found dead, Kate gets the opportunity she’s been looking for. As it turns out, the case hits a little too close to home. The dead man’s body is discovered in a truck that belongs to Kate’s brother Jeremy - and he's missing. Evidence left at the crime scene leads Ted to suspect the ranch’s new foreman, but Kate isn’t convinced he’s responsible for the crime.