Showing results by author "Jack R. Stanley" in All Categories

The War of Secession is over. However, between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers, murderers, rapists, horse thieves, and cattle rustlings dominate the land. Trace LaFon and Xavier Falcon are called back into service with the Texas Rangers under Captain Leander McNelly - and they become part of a new Special Ranger Force to save the Nueces Strip. At this time and in this place, Texas needs hard men to a hard job - to draw a hard line for law and order.

What if in the dark, small hours of a morning, you discovered Secret Service agents at your front door telling you that you were now the President of the United States? That’s the way it happened to Porter Randall, a Texas Panhandle surgeon turned novelist who had been persuaded by friends to run for Congress for just a couple of terms. Could a non-politician without rampant ambition or a lust for power fulfill this office? What would happen to the country? Porter becomes The Reluctant President and finds out.

Muleshoe is a not-so-modern Texas Panhandle town of about 5,000 - on Saturday - during the county fair. But Jarvis Dickle’s been murdered there - three nails in the top of his head. Nobody liked Jarvis - but then nobody even knew who he really was. His daughter, Lottie, a local disc jockey, is surprised it hadn’t happened before. Down at the Coffee Mug, they’re takin’ bets on who did the town a favor. But ol’ time Sheriff Asa Hunt knows you need to nip this kind of thing in the bud before it can become like a fresh cow patty on a hot day.

After the Civil War, two young Texas Rangers are fighting a different war along the frontier of West Texas. Apaches from Mexico raid up across the Rio Grande into Texas attacking homesteaders and settlers. The savages steal, rape, and murder farmers, ranchers, merchants and their families. All that stands between the onslaught of savage attacks and a peaceful life are the Rangers.

Texas never had a law against being stupid. Young Trace LaFon counted that a good thing or he'd never have lived long enough to become a Texas Ranger or partnered up with Xavier Falcon. But the two become a part of history the very first time the Rangers were ever used as an arm of law enforcement in the Lone Star state.

Joshua Guymon is a small town sheriff in the mostly Mormon Star Valley of Wyoming Territory. This is back in the days when to be Mormon was to be an outsider in the American West. His younger prodigal brother seems to have settled down from his wild ways and married. Joshua goes to meet his brother's bride and see how the newlyweds are doing on a ranch in the southern part of the territory. But trouble has a way of finding Joshua, from a crooked gambler to a highwayman to an escaped prison killer.

"A love for sex and poetry were the only things my daughter got out of college," an elderly lady says. Now, she runs an escort service. One of her girls was murdered last year. Did my daughter have anything to do with it? Scott Kaven, a former Houston homicide detective turned private eye, takes on the case involving a Green Bay, Wisconsin, escort service and its striking owner. With the confidence and experience of a successful cop, a smart ass attitude, and a sharp sense of humor of his own, Kaven gets things done.

A town like Temptation with a town marshal like Ranson Nye tended to attract gunfighters. From the youngsters who thought themselves faster or better than the marshal to those who were trying to build a reputation — they all came to try their luck — even if it meant betting their lives on the outcome. Not all were truly bad men — however the times and the profession brought violence and death with it. This made a lawman’s task a chancy job never knowing which end of the bullet he might end up on.

A trail robbery and multiple murders end up as the problem of Ranson Nye, town marshal of Temptation, Texas. This town built in the hopes of taking the last dollars from tired cowboys headed back home after cattle drives to Kansas is becoming more than it ever intended to be. When a newspaper comes to town, almost everything changes for this dusty little spot on the Red River across from The Indian Territory. When Mother Nature intervenes, tragedy brings out secrets and hidden talents. Add a Texas Ranger to the mix and we have Bad News in Temptation.

Just before World War I, a young American airman put his bi-plane down on the Mexican side or the Rio Grande. Barney Linedecker always got air sick if he was more than four feet off the ground. While he thought he was at least safely back on the ground, it turned out he was actually captured by a second rate Mexican bandit who wanted to be as famous as Pancho Villa. This was the bandit leader’s big break because he suddenly had what Villa does not, an air force. Also kidnapped by the bandits was an oversexed south Texas rancher’s daughter who had the hots for the young pilot.

Widower and rancher Ranson Nye stopped in Temptation, a "wide open" town on the Texas side of the Red River. He was headed to the Oklahoma Indian Territory to find a new wife and mother for his two children. Inside The Red Slipper saloon, he meets a young widow beginning her first day as a prostitute. On the spur of the moment, he asked Genoveve Van Dorn to be his wife with no intimacy involved. In desperation, she accepts his offer to keep from actually becoming a prostitute. However, within moments, there is a shooting in the saloon, and three men are killed — one of them the Town Marshal.

Ethan Andrews killed a man in Missouri. On purpose. Many would consider the killing justified, but he couldn't take the chance. He thought of himself as a killer. Rather than ruin his family name back in Kentucky, he changed his name and fled west. Along the way to starting a new life, he acquired a new family. He still had to protect them with his gun. It's an adventure story of the American West where only the strong thrive.

The Corporate War was over in the Matheus quadrant of the spiral Kermerus Galaxy and along with it the careers of many who fought and survived. Honored and awarded Captain Ash Kennett washed up alone on an astroid as an ore miner trying to dry up from his alcoholism and the guilt of the deaths of multitudes under his command during the war. He was located years later by his old friend, Doc, who had a proposition and a new ship. THE ERRANT, an abandoned and derelict starfighter-carrier, had been refitted, rearmed, enhanced, and disguised as a cargo hauler. But THE ERRANT still had her teeth.

Filming a real war isn’t at all like making a Hollywood movie - especially when you’re a combat photographer. Imagine you’re with a squad caught in an ambush. All the fighters – on both sides – have automatic weapons, and all you have is a camera. You change your pants – a lot. The danger, the blood, the humor, friendships, the heroism, and the tragedies are real.