"Killing time in his garden outside Fort Smith, Arkansas retired US Marshal Doyle Hardy has softened up some. The brutal double murder in Shacktown shapes him up fast. Suddenly, redeputized, he follows a trail that snakes from owlhoot whorehouses to moonshine shacks, dogged by vicious outlaws with old scores to settle. Riding the treacherous Choctaw Trail he is sworn to ferret out the heartless killer, the hell-raiser who will force him to face the...

Former Pinkerton, now co-owner of a saloon, Stoneface Finnegan must rescue his partner's daughter from depraved theater owner, which draws the attention of every trigger-happy gunslinger looking to claim the bounty on Stoneface's head.

"They are the stuff of legend, thundering out of the harsh landscapes and stunning vistas of the American West, vividly lodged in our collective imaginations. From Buffalo Bill to Billy the Kid, from Cochise to Jesse James, these names and so many others screamed across newspaper and dime store magazine headlines while the Wild West was won. Lost Trails features inventive, hard-riding, action-packed stories by America's best Western writers. Louis...

Abigail Wallace has spent the last two years travelling from Virginia in pursuit of her dream to homestead an orchard in California. After finding employment near Denver, she is abducted by two men who are certain she is their boss's missing wife. Abbey expects Sloan Rafferty to recognize she is not his wife, but he seems convinced she is after he learns she and his wife grew up in the same valley. Little by little, she unwinds the secrets that intertwine...

"These five stories range from the surreal to the tear-jerker, as the Old West is held upside down by its boots and shaken until all common sense falls out into the crucible of parody. In Rumors from the Edge of the World, Kid Concho and his Arizona outlaw gang of misfits stumble upon a prophetic Apache spring. Too Long in the Saddle follows the exploits of a Boston newspaper reporter who is ordered on assignment to frontier Kansas. Code of the Ranger...

"In 1882, less than ten years after the Northern Pacific Railroad established a terminus on Commencement Bay and helped create a city called New Tacoma, the community is thriving. Stores, stables, a new hospital, and the beginnings of a hotel to rival San Franciscos Cliff House are going up. In town, horse-drawn street cars are pulled on gravel roads, and there is even the beginning of a new telephone system. In Nell Tanquists opinion, the town has...