I have a life-long love of Westerns. I’ve researched the period and the events extensively. One of the first things I look for in any book I read is period accuracy. The books I write are historically accurate, though they are fiction. I’m on a mission, through my writing, to save the Western genre.
Sixteen-year-old Lon Pearce has lost both parents at the hands of local business owner, Carl Teverence. Grief-stricken, he heads into town, half-cocked and ready to take vengeance—only things don’t work out as planned. Teverence and his men see him coming and turn the tables on him. Lucky to escape with his life, alone and hunted, Lon takes to a long and lonely trail. Now known only as Shawnee, he embarks on a journey to learn the skills needed to exact his revenge. Along the way, he lends a hand to those in need—even when it forces him further outside the law.
This was the first Western I read when I was young. It made an impression on me, not only as a Western, but as a classic story of good and evil with sharply drawn characters that make it come alive to the reader. Grey’s writing puts the reader right in the middle of every scene. And it has an ending you don’t see coming, but one that fits perfectly.
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Essentially this is an homage to the American Cowboy as it tells of his demise as a lifestyle. While some say this one’s hard to read because of its episodic format, I found it the ideal setting for telling the background of the Cowboy’s life and times. Life doesn’t happen in such a structured way as most stories depict. As Monty fights against the progress that will consume him, the reader sees its inevitability. Lament it if you will, it’s a forward-moving engine that will not be stopped.
Originally published in 1963, Monte Walsh continues to delight readers as a Western classic and popular favorite. The novel explores the cowboy lives of Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins as they carouse, ride, and work at the Slash Y with Cal Brennan. As the West changes and their cowboy antics are challenged, the two must part ways to pursue new ways of life. Chet marries and goes on to become a successful merchant and then a politician, while Monte can only find solace in continuing the cowboy's way of life until the very end.
Classic tale of revenge that transcends the Western genre, yet it fits the genre perfectly. Taut, descriptive narrative adds to sharply drawn, larger-than-life characters playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with a hero who refuses to yield, no matter what is done to him. It all leads up to the solution of a mystery that explodes with boundless, brutal action. It’s one you won’t be able to put down until the end.
It’s clear to Will Lockhart that no one in Coronado wants a stranger in town, but he’s traveled a thousand miles through dangerous Apache territory to avenge his brother and no matter what they do to try to run him out, he won’t leave without justice.
A new book by a new writer, this is one I had an editing hand in, and one I’ve come to love. It’s a gripping coming-of-age novel set in the 1840s against the backdrop of the vast push west. Both a personal story of a young man forced to survive in a violent land, and an epic story of wagons west along the Oregon Trail, it grabs the reader from the get-go and holds on to the very end. There are as many twists and turns to this tale as were present in the trail west itself.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
In the bitter Christmas cold of a Maryland winter, Delaino Riodan, orphaned heir to the Conlan family fortune, finally decides that enough is enough and flees the clutches of his abusive family. With him are the only two friends he’s ever known—Tucker, a family slave, and Raj, an exquisitely-trained stallion Del stole from his grandfather’s stables. Together they head west in search of Delaino’s long-lost father, Daniel, and the promise of life and liberty on the far end of the famed Oregon Trail. Drunk on the hope and enthusiasm…
While this is a short story, not a novel, it is, in my opinion, the quintessential psychological Western. Depicting the struggle of an ordinary man saddled with extraordinary tasks, to maintain his honor and his values in the face of temptation, it delves into the minds of the two participants, and takes the reader on a wild ride as they wait for the train. Tension you could cut with a knife replaces action, keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat until the end.
The New York Times-bestselling Grand Master of suspense deftly displays the other side of his genius, with seven classic western tales of destiny and fatal decision . . . and trust as essential to survival as it is hard-earned.
Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier—with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. In these classic tales that span more than five decades—including the first…
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career and joins her husband in Southeast Asia when he takes a job there. She acquires several paintings by a colonial-era British artist that she believes are a warning.
The artist, Elizabeth Pennington, tells her own tumultuous story through diary entries that end when World War I reaches the colony with catastrophic results. In the present, Aislinn and her husband learn that terrorism takes many shapes when they are ensnared by local political upheaval and corruption.
"Aislinn Givens leaves a settled life in Manhattan for an unsettled life in Singapore. That painting radiates mystery and longing. So does Clifford Garstang's vivid and simmering novel, The Last Bird of Paradise." –John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake and The Inverted Forest
Two women, nearly a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives when they reluctantly leave their homelands. Arriving in Singapore, they find romance in a tropical paradise, but also find they haven't left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
In the aftermath of 9/11 and haunted by the specter of terrorism, Aislinn Givens leaves her…
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