New Large Print Westerns for You

Peter Brandvold delivers the third book of his  Lou Prophet, Bounty Hunter Series with The Cost of Dying. Of all the legends of the Old West, few are as stained with ink, blood, and bullets as the violent days of bounty hunter Lou Prophet. But what happens when the hunter becomes the hunted? After a hard night with his sometime lover Louisa Bonaventure—“the Vengeance Queen”—Lou Prophet decides to cool his heels at a local honky-tonk. Things heat up fast when he defends one of the girls from a sadistic brute who also happens to be the deputy sheriff. And now Prophet is running for his life. Heading south of the border to Mexico, Prophet isn’t the only man marked for death. The young red-headed gunfighter Colter Farrow has made an awful lot of enemies, too—and now practically every bounty hunter south of the Rio Grande is gunning for blood. For money. For fun. And, now, for Lou Prophet.

Cutthroats is the first Slash and Pecos Western by William W. Johnstone with J.A. Johnstone. After a lifetime of robbing banks and holding up trains, Jimmy "Slash" Braddock and Melvin "Pecos Kid" Baker are ready to call it quits. Sold out by their old gang, - The Snake River Marauders - Slash and Pecos have to bust out of jail and pull one last job to finance their early retirement. The target is a payroll train. Catch is, the train is carrying a Gatling gun and twenty deputy US marshals who know they're coming. The pair is caught and sentenced to hang, until their old enemy Marshal Luther Bledsoe shows up at the last minute to spare their lives. For a price. He'll let them live if they hunt down their old gang and kill those prairie rats.

Author John D. Nesbitt delivers Dusk Along the Niobrara. Dunbar, working on a ranch in the Niobrara country in Wyoming, connects the death of a hardscrabble homesteader with the death of an old horse trader some fifteen years earlier. As Dunbar goes to work on a corral project in town and then on fall roundup, more murders take place--a wandering drunk who has picked up gossip in an alehouse, and then the proprietor of the alehouse. People who know too much are being silenced. An old woman named Verona tells of an ancient crime on Old Woman Creek, where a sheepherder was killed and his partner escaped. In a final scene at the new shipping pens, Dunbar brings forth the witnesses, and a showdown erupts, with Dunbar bringing justice to the Niobrara country.

A Couple of Louis L'Amour Story Collections

Louis L'Amour is, by far, the most recognized writer of Westerns anywhere. The library maintains a large collection of the writer's works and, to that end, we now present two collections of his stories for our Western-loving readers.

The first is The Man From Battle Flat: A Western Trio. In the title story, Krag Moran is a range rider who becomes entangled in a range war between ranchers and new settlers. This conflict leaves a town divided and, when the first shots are fired and the death toll rises, Krag is going to have to answer to the wrong people. In"Mistakes Can Kill You," Johnny O'Day was a sick child who was taken in and nursed back to health by a young couple. Growing up, he harbored nothing but resentment for their natural child, Sam. When Sam finds himself in a heap of trouble, however, Johnny must stand between him and a pair of gunman.  Finally, in "The Rider of Ruby Hills," twenty-seven-year-old Ross Haney is broke, armed, and ready to settle down. When a feud breaks out between two of the biggest landowners in Ruby Hills, Ross decides to put an end to the fighting that threatens to tear apart his new home. He may have been a loner before, but now he has allies and a plan.

Nine stories make up the second collection titled, Mistakes Can Kill You. These selections highlight some of L'Amours earlier short stories (sometimes written under the pen name Jim Mayo) that demonstrate the ambiguous morality of the best Western writing. For example, in "Black Rock Coffin-Makers," two men who readily kill over ownership of a ranch get more than they bargain for when a stranger gets caught in their crossfire. Other stories include, "The Nester and the Piute"; "Law of the Desert Born"; "Ride, You Tonto Raiders!"plus five more tales. As always, L'Amour's characters come vivaciously to life and the rough-and-tumble spirit of the Wild West leaps from the page.

Rustle Up Some Westerns, Partner!

     This week I have decided to feature three of our new western novels from the Large Print collection.

   Shawn O’Brien, Town Tamer is a western novel by William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone. Not content to settle down on the family ranch in the New Mexico territory; Shawn O’Brien has a great deal of the wanderer in him. He also has a lightning-fast draw, eagle eyes, and a heightened sense of justice. Shawn has been making a reputation for himself all over the West by taking the most dangerous and lawless towns and making them safe for the good, honest citizens to live in peace. When Shawn is stranded in Holy Rood, Utah after a stagecoach accident, he doesn’t take long to realize he’s landed in one of the most vicious towns in the territory. He’s not worried though; after all, Shawn O’Brien is the town tamer.

   The Devil’s Posse is a novel by Charles G. West. Logan and Billy Cross have worked the same cattle drive since they were teenagers and have gained a reputation as being the most dependable of workers. Unfortunately, their boss has decided to retire and the brothers are soon to be out of a job. So the boys aren’t left twisting in the wind, the boss man sends them up to Fort Pierre in the Dakota Territory so they can join a horse drive to Sturgis. On their way to meet their prospective boss, Billy smiles at the wrong woman and draws the ire of Quincy Morgan and his gang of desperados.

     Shotgun Charlie is a Ralph Compton Novel by Matthew P. Mayo. Charlie Chilton is a young and naïve drifter who happens to be big for his age. Charlie is taken in by the leader of a band of small-time crooks who sees something of himself in the kindly, restless youth. When shady character Grady Haskell joins the gang and convinces them to pursue the biggest score of their lives, Charlie fails to thwart the heist and it turns bloody. Unfortunately, Charlie is the only gang member to be caught alive and he is sentenced to hang to the crime. Determined to prove his innocence, Charlie must escape, track down Haskell and the gang, and bring them to justice before he loses his own life.