Showing results by author "J. A. Johnstone" in All Categories

They just wanted to get home for Christmas...but fate had other plans. It's December 1890. A Texas rancher named Big Jim Conyers has a deal with Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Forth Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed.

Falcon was called to Sorrento by a crusading newspaper reporter trying to expose a conspiracy of greed and corruption — with innocent men dying at the end of a court-ordered rope. As acting US Marshal, Falcon quickly makes some very dangerous enemies. Then he himself is sentenced to hang. But in 24 hours he’ll be out of jail, out on the streets, and shooting lead against a small army of gunmen. Because he knows the three men who have taken over Sorrento. And he sentences them to death — the MacCallister brand....

A long way from Montana Territory, Falcon MacCallister is back east, visiting his family, with Buffalo Bill Cody by his side. When the government asks both men to take a break from being famous to get back to fighting, Falcon and Buffalo Bill head west - into a hornet's nest of trouble. A renegade Indian has followed his vision of bloodshed on a once peaceable territory. A land baron uses the slaughter as an excuse to clear out a valley. And the U.S. Army, trying to keep the peace, is backstabbed by a traitor.

In Phoenix, a sheriff guns down a banker and robs him of a document. Going to the banker's aid, a witness hears the dying man's last words and takes hold of the map the sheriff was really after. By the time the crooked lawman realizes he has the wrong document, Jolene Wellington is on the run - and framed for the murder of the banker.

Falcon MacCallister never thought he’d wear army brass. But Colorado is about to join the Union — and the would-be state has just made him Lt. Colonel in its Home Guard. Then, before his military career can take off, Falcon loses one of his men and two deadly new Gatling guns to a murderous ambush. Falcon is going to get those Gatling guns back — before they kill the wrong people.

In a small Texas town in 1950, a man from the Pinkerton Detective Agency interrupts an old-timer's daily game of dominos to learn the truth about Butch Cassidy - who is still alive and well and sitting right in front of him.... So begins the novel of the West's most legendary outlaw - as told by America's master storytellers, William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone. Butch Cassidy: The Lost Years reveals the stunning secret behind that infamous shootout in Bolivia that claimed the lives of the Sundance Kid and, allegedly, Butch himself.

Flintlock takes no pleasure in killing. But when his pal O’Hara gets bullwhipped by a trio of lowdown prairie rats, Flintlock finds sanctuary for his wounded friend at the cabin of a kindly miner and his lovely daughter. Flintlock heads out to hunt down some food. But there’s more than just deer lurking in these woods. A bloodthirsty band of eight savage raiders — led by a half-mad gunslinger called The Old Man of the Mountain — wage a full-scale attack on the miner’s cabin.

After crossing the dry Arizona desert — and missing six meals in a row — Sam Flintlock is flat-out desperate. For food. For work. For lodgings. Luckily, he finds all three in the high timber country east of the Mogollon River. A very young and pretty heiress, Lucy Cullen, has an unusual proposition for the bounty hunter. She will pay him cold, hard cash to spend one full week in the gothic mansion of her murdered uncle. What’s the catch? The place is haunted....

The stench of death hangs over Happyville. When Flintlock rides into town, he sees windows caked in dust, food rotting on tables, and a forgotten corpse hanging at the gallows. The citizens of Happyville are dead in their beds, taken down by a deadly scourge, and Flintlock must stay put, or risk spreading the killer disease. His quarantine is broken by Cage Kingfisher, a mad clergyman who preaches the gospel of death.

Brewster Ritter had a warning for Flintlock: Do not cross the Sabine River. Ritter, the so-called Baron of the Bayou, is a vicious crime king still seething because Flintlock killed one of his gunmen in a Texas dustup. But Flintlock has his own powerful reasons for crossing into the nightmarish swamp country from East Texas. Now in an eerie land of mysterious mists, haunting cypress trees, snakes, gators, and black-hearted, trigger-happy war hogs, Ritter is waiting for Flintlock with enough men and guns to kill him 10 times over.

Sam'l Flintlock has been hired to protect an innocent man who narrowly escaped the noose but everyone still seems to want dead. The murder of a school teacher sets in motion a battle to the death that pits Flintlock against the hidden man who pulls the strings in the town of Open Sky. But first Flintlock must find out who that man is, what he wants and why. As people start dying, the pieces start to fall together and Flintlock knows that for every evil deed there must be a reckoning....and Flintlock is that reckoning.

He is brave, tough as leather, and has left behind a trail of deadly enemies - outlaws he's hunted down or killed with the cold heart of a man used to violence. A feared bounty hunter and the scourge of bad men everywhere, Flintlock carries an ancient Hawken muzzle-loader, handed down to him from the mountain man who raised him. He stands as the towering hero of a new Johnstone saga.

In a saloon north of El Paso, the legendary Doc Holliday is forced to kill a rancher's son in self defense. His father, Colonel Robert McHenry, is desperate for revenge. And now Doc is a hunted man on the run. Heading west, he turns to Jacob O'Brien, hoping to find refuge at the family ranch. Jacob knows it's a lose-lose situation — one that's bound to end in violence and blood. Colonel McHenry is the famous "Lion of Lynchburg," whose relentless courage in the Civil War earned the respect of fighting men everywhere.

They ride after sundown. Black robed figures with skulls for faces, terrorizing the town of Recoil like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the sheriff hopes to defeat this hellish band of outlaws, he'll need back-up. Enter Colonel Shamus O'Brien. The seasoned ranch hand and patriarch has fought off more than his share of horse thieves and marauders. But he's never seen anything like these ornery devils.

The war between the States has ended. Now, driven from Texas by carpetbaggers, former CSA Colonel Shamus O'Brien sets off for a new frontier - New Mexico. Here, where land is cheap, bandits shoot to kill, and rustlers rule the night, it takes more than one man to run a ranch. So he offers a partnership to his eldest son, Jacob, with equal shares going to his sons Sam, Patrick, and Shawn. Together, the brother's O'Brien will defend their homestead, the Dromore, in this violent, lawless land...and when necessary, administer their own brand of frontier justice.

Jack “Jackknife” McCabe is through with Special Ops. But in an America where politicians, pundits, and the president care more about polls than securing the borders of the Nation, “Jackknife” finds himself sucked back into the terror wars. To stop a nuclear holocaust in the heart of the country, he leads his family and fellow citizens in the battle against fanatic evil hiding behind Islam.

The twins' train is held up by not one, but two vicious outlaw gangs. The Jessup gang has been using the Spalding gang's hideout to plan the robbery. The Jessups just lost two of their brothers in a bank job gone wrong - courtesy of Duff MacCallister - and they're gunning for revenge. Together, these two bloodthirsty bands of killers and thieves are teaming up to make this one Christmas the MacCallisters will never forget.

As both a prisoner and an undercover operative, US Marshal Hank Fallon has faced down some of the most vicious, terrifying, cold-blooded thieves and murderers in the West. Now, Hank is finally free, and he's got no intention of setting foot inside a jail ever again. But the new federal prison being constructed in Leavenworth, Kansas, needs a warden, and Hank is the right man for the job. He's got the scars to prove it - and to keep the peace. But keeping these lawless hornets in their nest is no easy feat.

n the darkest days of the Civil War, Neville Goldsmith set the world on fire. As Captain for the Union Army, he marched with General Sherman through Georgia, setting homes and cities ablaze with sadistic glee. For Goldsmith, starting fires was a lifelong obsession. And when the war ended, he set his sights on the great American West—to burn it all to the ground. Years later, Luke Jensen learns about a series of fires wreaking havoc from the Dakota Territory to Kansas.

On the West Texas border, a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire, and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world — and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the town tamer.