Showing results by publisher "Wordwooze Publishing" in Historical Fiction

Here is a time when the old west became new - the 1930s-50s - as Louis L'Amour witnessed it first-hand in Southern California before and after World War II. Many people think the age of gunmen, scheming land barons, murderous bad guys, and the determined men who stood up against them, went out with the end of the Old West around the 1890s. But, in L’Amour’s own time in the New West, there were far more bad men toting guns and making grabs for far more wealth and valuable land than in the fabled days of the Old West.

In one of the first crime novels ever set behind the scenes of big-time television, Clarence Budington Kelland has plotted a thrilling adventure of danger and death which climaxes in a series of fast-moving surprises. Peter Mortain, one of the youngest directors in this very young medium, was beleaguered enough, directing the first episode of the most expensive variety show ever produced. He had a cast whose first appearance on television made them skittish, a thousand technical details to handle, and a star…who was also his boss!

Against the political stage of 1689 Port Royal, Jamaica, the unswerving Atia Crisp is thrust into the world of bondage, violence, beauty, and love. Shipwrecked and sold into slavery with her sister Livia, the pair are soon separated and Atia is used as a pawn in a card game. Captivated by her beauty, Atia is swiftly liberated by sugar merchant, Capitaine la Roche (also known as the pirate, Gator Gar), whose past is stained with blood and grief.

Houdini’s Last Handcuffs weaves a mesmerizing blend of historical fiction and fantasy in 1950s Manhattan. On the 30th anniversary of Houdini's death, three young friends, gifted a mystical Ouija Board by the enigmatic writer Walter Gibson, find themselves thrust into a world of wonder. While the adults attempt to reach Houdini in a Séance at his former residence, the children unknowingly call upon the great magician, not through the Ouija board or séance but via an enigmatic pair of handcuffs from their father's magic collection.

Dakota Territory: 1885. A violent band of Civil War veterans, who roamed the Badlands were roused from their restless inertia by the murder of the Colonel they idolized. The towns simmered, and hatreds flared up anew, and every stranger became suspect. Since Smoke Wade was a stranger, when he stepped out of the hotel a dozen tough and sullen men were waiting for him. They followed him down the dusty street like a pack of hungry dogs stalking a young deer. Someone in their midst spoke the word. "Murderer."

The day Teddy Roosevelt learned McKinley had died and he was now president of the United States, he made up his mind he would cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. No small task. The French had tried and failed with more than twenty thousand dead. Roosevelt wasn’t alone in wanting to see a canal. The Wall Street financier, J. P. Morgan, wanted it too, and so did revolutionaries in Panama. Morgan wanted a shorter route for his ships and was willing to secretly finance the insurrection against Colombia, who owned the territory of Panama. Not everyone was wild about America in Panama.

From the misty mountains and shadowy hollows of West Virginia, a new legend arises. It’s 1863 in the Civil War-torn southern Hardy County. Beloved school teacher George Voorhees becomes the unlikely hero shortly after he joins the local Union Militia known as the Swamp Dragons, at his brother’s insistence. When he’s mortally wounded in an ambush by Luther Boggs, a vicious leader of a gang of Confederate bushwackers, Abigail—his friend, local midwife, and witch—turns him into a real swamp dragon in order to save his life.

The wheels on the Syndicate's deadliest racket–taking over unions to leverage the old protection racket on whole industries–have begun to steam-roll over the shipping business in the quiet California town of Pacific Port. They send an S.O.S. for the one-man army–P.I. and ex-spy Morocco Jones.

Archibald Cloyd was an ubergeek and as pedantic as it is possible to be. Hollywood hired him at thousands of dollars a week as the technical director on a movie about Napoleon. Wilson Page, Archibald's secretary, figured he didn't deserve anything better than being nursemaid to a strutting egomaniac.

Stampede Canyon held all the natural beauty of the West—and all of it's dangers. Sheer cliffs studded with silver rose straight to the sky on three sides—and the fourth was pitted with traps.

Wisecracking Jane Teach had pirate blood, a take-charge attitude, and a penchant for sticking her nose in the wrong places. Sober-minded Bill Popple was from one of Long Island's first families, a conservative-minded young man who walked the straight and narrow. When they met it was loathing at first sight, definitely not a match made in heaven. But with six people trying to kill them over a dead bootlegger's lost fortune and a pirate's treasure secretly buried 300 years ago, they both needed each other.

What happens when a Korean War vet recovering from serious injuries wins a ghost town in a contest, meets a hard-riding, gun-toting cowgirl, and is threatened by three dangerous people all within a few days? Answer: cock-eyed characters, pixilated dialogue, zany romance, and heart-stopping suspense. Thus begins one of Clarence Budington Kelland's finest and rarest novels, previously only published as a seven-part serial in the legendary and best-selling magazine of its era, The Saturday Evening Post.

Long before Smoke Wade rode into the drought-stricken valley his reputation as a feared gunslinger had been known. The ranchers knew him as a pistolero whose cool eyes and lightning hands were just what was needed to stop the Bristol gang. Even as he rode in, Smoke could sense the trigger-taut atmosphere of thirsty men and cattlemen who were itching to get at the bushwhackers whose guns controlled the waterholes. Tempers were getting shorter and guns were being loaded.

A group of Israeli engineers are trapped in central Iran when the world about them explodes in chaos. Imagine their plight when they discover the Shah has been deposed and Ayatollah Khomeini has returned from exile. How can they escape with their lives? What should they do? Can our hero Guy Hart rescue the attractive Emma Levine and his colleagues from capture by the Revolutionary Guards? The result is an intense action-packed thriller full of danger, death, and fear with some romance, as well as surprising twists and turns.

Mike Lanson was the ace crime reporter for the Gazette, so it was natural that he heard about the kookie wino who had reported eavesdropping on two men plotting a murder. So, it was also natural that he got on the case after one of the two plotters was found dead. Mike, like all reporters, was looking for an answer. But when he filled in the five W's on the next victim, he came up with this: Who: Mike Lanson. What: His own murder. When: As soon as that fire reached the explosives. Where: In a deserted storehouse. Why: Because he knew too much.

Only a few months earlier, the young woman now known as Jane Smith had lived a life of luxury and privilege as the ruler of a small Balkan kingdom. She lived a life of glittering balls, the finest furnishings, the most handsome men, the most exquisite of foods. Her only friends were four bearded old men who served as her cabinet, and worshiped the ground she walked on. Then the Germans had marched in, and she and her four councilors barely escaped with their lives.

The story begins in 1940s Palestine, where twins Rasheed and Rasheeda Dinar work in the family’s inn. When Rasheed falls in love with Natalia, a Jewish woman, he applies what he learned from the Jesuit priest who mentored him to his budding relationship, but by then relations between Arabs and Jews have become tense. And when those tensions come to a breaking point, Natalia mysteriously disappears, and Rasheed and Rasheeda are chased out of Palestine forced to flee to Beirut, Lebanon. As the years pass and the Dinar family expands and enters the 1970s, their convictions are tested.

When Maggie McTigg's brother Michael went off to fight in World War II, he left his taxicab company in her hands. As the only member of the family with a lick of business sense, he asked her to keep it running while he was gone. Maggie took it as a sacred trust, her own contribution to the war efforts, and resolved that it would still be operating when the conflict was over and he finally returned home—no matter what it took and what she had to do. Just how far will a woman go to keep her soldier brother's heritage alive for him until a war is over?

You've never met a ghost hunter or demon slayer like John Thunstone. Defying the naysayers' vision of a pale basement-dwelling hobbyist, Thunstone is tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, and handsome. He likes to spend his evenings in nightclubs, holding court and charming women. But does he lack focus? No! Thunstone is also a serious scholar, deeply studied in the occult and dark arts, and he carries a blade of silver inscribed with the motto sic pereant omnes inimici tui, forged by Saint Dunstan, patron saint of silversmiths, and one of the few men the Devil himself feared.

Here are the final two adventures of Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant in his battles against occult forces of darkness. The penultimate story describes the terrifying consequences when someone violates the terms of a treaty his township signed with Native Americans, a clause that was intended to protect the settlers from their own heedlessness. In the second Eldritch tale, Judge Pursuivant comes to the aid of a man who asks him, "How would you feel if something followed you all around your new home—something cold and sneaky, that wasn't even there when you turned your head?"