Showing results by author "William Johnstone" in All Categories

When the Missouri farm boy named Jensen came west, he started fighting, surviving, and learning every brutal step of the way. He learned from a mountain man named Preacher. He learned from Indians. And from outlaws. And he learned that nothing burns the souls of men faster than the lure of glimmering gold. From one ramshackle frontier mountain town to another, Smoke sees gold strikes - and gold fever - drawing crooks and cold-blooded killers from across the nation.

No one saw the first attack coming. A perfectly orchestrated assault on a mass-transit railroad line that left countless Americans dead. Intelligence experts are convinced this is no ordinary terrorist attack. To pull off something like this, it would take a deep-state traitor with dark foreign connections. And to stop them, it will take someone who isn't afraid to shed blood. Enter Barry Rivers, the Rig Warrior. An urban legend in the intelligence community, he has been living off the radar for years. But when he sees his country under attack, he contacts his nephew, an FBI agent.

When Duff MacCallister sees smoke rising from his neighbor's ranch, he knows something is very wrong. But he isn't prepared for what he finds: smoldering buildings, a rancher and his wife brutally slaughtered, and a 14-year-old survivor who could not save her parents. Now, Duff is going after the killers - and his only companion is the headstrong girl who refuses to be left behind. Duff and his new companion head into the towering Gore Range. Up ahead are two convicted murderers who were about to be hung in Cheyenne and the killers who broke them loose.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the High Sierras. But Smoke Jensen and his children, Louis and Denise, won't let a little snow stop them from heading to Reno for the holidays. There are two ways for them to get there: the long way, going around the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or the short way, going right through them. Smoke decides to take a gamble. They'll follow the trail that, decades earlier, brought the legendary Donner Party to a gruesome, tragic end....

Smoke Jensen’s daughter Denny can outride, outrope, and outshoot any man who gets in her way. But being a pretty woman, Denny sometimes attracts the attention of unsavory suitors. Like the lecherous Count Malatesta. Denny met the seductive Sicilian on her trip to Europe - and almost fell head over heels for the swindler. What’s he doing in America?

If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen hates, it’s a man who fights dirty. And no one fights dirtier than a politician. Especially a lying, cheating, no-good grifter like Senator Rex Underhill. Luckily, with another election coming up, this senatorial snake in the grass has some serious competition: Smoke’s old friend, Sheriff Monte Carson. Carson’s an honest man, and he’s got Smoke’s full support. But Underhill’s got support, too: a squad of hired guns ready to hit the campaign trail - and stain it red with blood.

Doing time in Texas is no picnic. But getting sent to The Walls in Huntsville is a fate worse than hanging. If the guards don’t kill you, the prisoners will. And if it weren’t for the fact that the man who framed Hank Fallon and murdered his family could be inside The Walls, Hank would never step one foot in that heinous helltrap - let alone go undercover as an inmate. But this isn’t just another assignment. This is his chance for revenge.

There are two kinds of traps in the Old West. One is the kind that Preacher and his buddy, Charlie, use to catch a mountain-load of fur pelts. The other is the kind that Charlie steps into — a trap set by a low-life gambler and his seductive partner in crime to swindle Charlie out of his fur money. Preacher hates to see a good friend get robbed. So he sets off after the grifters — on a riverboat bound for New Orleans.

On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who’d given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself.

With a handful of murderous rogues, Captain Jed Foster has run off with four wagons containing new Springfield rifles, bayonets, and ammunition meant to resupply the troops at Fort Bowie in Arizona Territory. Foster plans to sell the weapons to the highest bidder — whether it’s Apaches, Mexican revolutionaries, or Confederate veterans who still dream of destroying the Union. But that’s the least of Foster’s problems.

In a wild frontier boomtown like Rattlesnake Wells, it’s hard to know who to lock up, who to let out, and who to gun down. But as town marshal, it’s Bob Hatfield’s job to separate the sinners from the saints — or at least keep them from killing each other. Now there’s a new boy in town. He’s fresh out of prison. He swears he was wrongfully convicted of embezzling from his boss at the local mine. He wants to clear his name and reclaim the woman he loves.

Hank Fallon knows what it’s like to rot behind bars. To wallow in the filth of a rat-infested cell. To smell the pent-up rage of cutthroat killers and thieves. Fallon earned his freedom the hard way. He saved the lives of four guards, got released early, and became a detective. Then he went undercover, infiltrated a prison gang plotting to bust out — and barely made it out alive. Now they’re sending him back. Behind the iron. Straight to hell.

Hank Fallon used to be one of the best deputy marshals in the country. Then, he got framed for a crime he didn't commit. Got sentenced to 10 years in a federal penitentiary. And got out early for saving the life of the captain of the guards during a riot. When Fallon is released, a private detective is waiting for him. He wants to put Hank behind bars again - but this time, as an undercover agent....

When Smoke Jensen sees a gang of outlaws holding up a stagecoach, his gunfighter instincts take over and he storms in with guns blazing. He kills one of the gunmen, the rest scatter like the rats they are. Another notch on the sharpshooter's weathered grip. But the dead man is the brother of the notorious outlaw Gabe Briggs, and Briggs will want revenge....

Kate Coldane has sweated blood for this saloon, and she won’t let it go down without a fight. Silas Atwood may be the richest rancher in Hudspeth County, but that doesn’t give him the right to push her around. When Atwood sends one of his goons to cause trouble at her watering hole, Kate’s son Rusty guns him down. It may have been self defense, but Atwood is the law, and that means Rusty has to run.

Smoke Jensen has journeyed up to the Colorado Rockies to a sell a prized bull to a local rancher. Instead, the rancher and his wife have been mercilessly slaughtered by outlaws only moments before Smoke’s arrival. In a hail of bullets, Smoke pulverizes two of the murderers and drags two others to the town of Brown Spur for justice. Come hanging day, the two killers are on the way to the gallows when a thundering gang of raiders crashes into town and rescues them from the jaws of death.

Smoke Jensen has come to Corpus Christi, Texas, to take delivery of 500 horses he purchased from and old friend. That's when a Mexican revolutionary, Colonel Butamante Keno, brazenly crashes the border, slaughters 22 innocent US citizens in cold blood, and steals a thousand head of cattle - along with 200 of Smoke's horses.

In Montana Territory, one name above all others strikes fear and hatred in the hearts of the Crow Indians - John Jackson, better known these days as Liver-Eating Jackson. Consumed by grief and rage, the mountain man has brutally killed 10 braves so far in his one-man war of vengeance against the Crow, who murdered his beloved wife. Smoke Jensen knows Jackson by another name - "friend". He's not sure to what extent Jackson's exploits are true - devastating loss and frontier savagery have certainly driven lesser men mad.

Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk — from way back East. What is he doing out here? The Mountain Man’s former neighbor, Humbolt Puddle, has died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir, just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron is circling the Humbolt ranch like a ravenous vulture. Poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap. Smoke is the not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke’s neighbor is his enemy, too.

Sally has traveled to the silver-mining town of Goth, Colorado to open a restaurant with a friend. That's where she crosses paths with five bank robbers in a hurry to strike it rich. With the local sheriff lying dead in a pool of blood, Sally fights for her life while a frontier surgeon tries to work a miracle. Burning with fury, armed with a gun and a badge, Smoke Jenson goes on the hunt - a posse of one against a gang of outlaws more dangerous than he can know.