"This chase novel, set in 1886 along the driest stretch of any trail in the West, takes the reader deep inside four troubled characters on a collision course for Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, a Texas river synonymous with hell"--

"Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country. The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits--75 cents--a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching...

Special Agent Bella Jordan is assigned to investigate a series of murders in West Texas that are linked to the Spider Rock Treasure.

Roaming across the salt flats and skirting the salt lake Richard a geologist working for an oil company hunts for fossils under the spell of Clarissa the local beauty who plans to use her share of their plunder to get out of small dusty Midland for good. A generation earlier a Depression era couple Max and Marie Omo numbly mines for salt along the banks of the briny lake until the emotional terrain of their marriage is suddenly and irrevocably altered....

"Two strangers meet over the hood of a used car in Texas: Marcus, who is fleeing both his financial and personal failures; and Maria, who after years of dodging her mistakes has returned to her hometown to make amends. One looking forward, the other looking back, they face off over the car they both want and think they need: a low-slung sky-blue 1984 Buick Electra. The car, too, has seen its share of failures. Each dent and ripped seam represents...