Showing results by narrator "Eric Messner" in All Categories

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.

Heading west to San Diego some honest pilgrims paid 10 men good money to keep their wagon train safe. Soon word comes to Tombstone, where Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves are wearing out their welcome gambling with Wyatt Earp. The wagon train’s guards turned against their charges and headed off to Mexico with six young pioneer girls captive. Everyone knows the tortures of the damned that await the girls in the hellholes south of the border. But only Matt and Sam will do something about it.

Retired lawman Jason Storm sets up a new life for himself as a rancher in Paradise Valley. But when a gang of outlaws invade the town, Storm straps on his gunbelt one more time....

Mountain man Joe Fox reluctantly led a group of settlers through the Rockies and into the clutches of Max Starbeau, who traveled with the party until he was able to commit theft and murder and kidnap Joe's girl. Now, Joe Fox is forging a new trail of vengeance!

Outlaw Roy Blanton raised his four boys in the family business since they were half-pints. That is, until US Deputy Marshal Casey Dixon had hot-headed Billy, the youngest, hanged for shooting a policeman. Now the Blantons have vengeance on their minds....

Almost 10 years ago, 18-year-old Colt McCrae was sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit. When his estranged father is murdered, he is released, and returns to Whiskey Hill, Wyoming. He's not welcome by everyone. Colt means trouble - because he knows who killed his father. Ruthless range baron Frank Drummond wants the land and will bury anyone who dares oppose him. But Colt is no longer a kid with a chip on his shoulder. He's a prison-hardened man with a mind for justice?

Battle lines have been drawn between the North and the South, pitting state against state - and brother against brother. For the three brothers, the Civil War would change not only their lives, but the destinies of future generations. Jacob, the eldest, defies his father's wishes and enlists with the Union, a decision that wins him the love of an officer's daughter - and the hatred of a dangerous childhood rival.

For 17 years, Ty Mattson never knew if his father survived the Mexican War. But when he receives news that his father is alive - and he's joined the Confederate forces of General John Morgan - Ty leaves home to enlist with Morgan's Raiders. Owen Mattson turns out to be everything Ty imagined he would be: a good man, a true mentor, a great soldier. But a Confederate assassin's bullets nearly divide father and son yet again.

Coming back into Leadville, Marshal Spencer comes across a murdered Utes and the site of an ambush. Back in town Sheriff Gannon suspects a group of US Marshals transporting a prisoner is not what it seems. A necklace, a marshal star and a handful of clues, set off a violent shoot out and lead to a brutal punishment.

Yuma Prison is a fetid hellhole filled with the dregs of humanity — killers, thieves, and backstabbers who'd kill over a scrap of meat. Now it's home to Frank Morgan, who's posing as an inmate. A ruthless outlaw named Cicero McCoy has buried a fortune in stolen bank money in a harsh, desolate little piece of hell known as Ambush Valley. To get Cicero to lead him to the loot, Frank has become Cicero's new best friend behind bars — and co-plotter of a daring breakout. Until the time comes for Frank Morgan to make a fatal choice — and for one of them to die....

For Frank Morgan, a reunion with his estranged son brings back bittersweet memories of another time and place. Conrad Morgan is an Eastern businessman trying to build a railroad through an untamed corner of New Mexico Territory. Even though Frank has revenge-hungry killers on his trail, his kin needs him now. So with a gun-toting, hard-loving beauty named Rebel by their side, father and son ride straight into a pitched battle with hired killers and furious Apache warriors. It’s a firestorm more treacherous and evil than Frank Morgan has ever faced.

Kansas doesn’t want it. Neither does Texas. The 35-mile wide strip of land destined to become the Oklahoma panhandle is a place unlike any other on the frontier: with no laws, no rules and a powerful attraction for killers, looters and fugitives. Frank Morgan, a gunfighter feared by all and hated by some, has been warned to stay the hell out of "the strip." But warnings never did work well on Morgan. So when an ambush robs him of his heart’s desire and nearly takes his life and his would - be murderers take refuge in the strip, the die is cast....

Colter Farrow was just a skinny cow-puncher when the men came to Sapinero Valley and murdered his best friend, whose past as a gunfighter had caught up with him. Now, Cole must strap on his Remington revolver, deliver some justice, and make a reputation of his own.

Young twins Jed and Tim Strange set out to find their sister, who left home to avenge their father's murder over a year ago. But when they're accused of a murder they didn't commit, they must go on the run to find the true killers.

It's in the lawless Indian Territory that Daniel Strange meets his demise. Riding his chestnut mare to Texas to buy himself some cattle, the best gunsmith in St. Joseph, Missouri gets waylaid by a pack of murdering outlaws. His lifeless body is left dangling at the end of a rope - robbing his family of a loving husband and father.

Changes have come to 1910 Texas and Hewey Calloway doesn't like them. An injury signals the end of his freewheeling life and he begins to see the loneliness of the road ahead, if he doesn't take action to change his direction. Can his past hold the key to improving his future?

Hewey Calloway and his brother Walter are young men looking for work. Their first job puts them in the middle of a territory war between two powerful ranchers, C.C. Tarpley and Eli Jessup. It's a tough trail for two green cowpunchers and the forks in that trail may lead the brothers in different directions.

Hewey Calloway is between a rock and a hard place: The open range and simple life of his childhood are disappearing. He can't live a cowboy life whose time has passed and he's not ready yet for the new challenges of the 20th century, like automobiles, telephones, and barbed wire fences. He and his friends, all of them good old boys, must learn that even the best choices involve some kind of sacrifice.

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....

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.