West Routt Library District

In his latest Byrnes family novel, Dusty Richards tells of the blood that was spilled trying to make Arizona Territory a good place to live. Building a ranching empire is one thing, keeping it out of the hands of the no good opportunists crawling through the Arizona desert is a daily grind for Chet Byrnes. But nothing will stop Chet from bringing his ranch into a bold new era.

Pairing extensive research with a brilliance for reviving the past in gripping narrative, Spur Award-winning author Mike Blakely has penned an epic novelization of the Mexican-American War in A Sinister Splendor. It's 1845. Texas joins the union and Mexico threatens war over the disputed Texas border. Meanwhile, expansionists dream of an America that sprawls all the way to the Pacific Coast. Can a conflict with an already war-torn Mexico satisfy this...

"Once upon a time in the Old West, Buck Trammel was a Pinkerton agent with a promising future. But after a tragic incident in a case gone wrong, he struck out for the wide-open spaces of Wichita, Kansas. Working as a bouncer at The Gilded Lily Saloon, he hopes to stay out of trouble. But soon enough, his gun skills are put to the test. The Bowman gang shows up, turning a friendly card game with a Wyoming cattleman into a killer-takes-all shooting...

"In prohibition-era Southern California, real life detectives Charles D. Siringo and Dashiell Hammett must solve a mystery involving a ruthless politician--Joseph P. Kennedy. With sharp dialogue and rich historical background, Ragtime Cowboys is an exciting, suspenseful tale in which the Old West and Hollywood collide. Los Angeles, 1921: Ex-Pinkerton Charlie Siringo is living in quiet retirement when Wyatt Earp knocks on his door and asks him to track...

On November 7, 1908 in the town of San Vicente, Butch Cassidy was killed in a bloody shootout with the Bolivian army. Or was he? In a small Texas town in 1950, a Pinkerton detective interrupts and old- timer's daily game of dominos to learn the truth about Butch Cassidy-- who is alive and well and sitting right in front of him. So begins a novel about the West's most legendary outlaw, as told by America's master storytellers.

Smoke Jensen is in Corpus Christi, Texas, to take delivery of five hundred horses he purchased from an old friend. That's when Mexican revolutionary Colonel Bustamante Keno brazenly crashes the border, slaughters twenty-two innocent U.S. citizens, and steals a thousand head of cattle--along with two hundred of Smoke's horses. Going where the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers cannot, Smoke crosses the border in hot pursuit. The Federales capture and...

Ignacio Ortiz, a Mexican orphan and a runaway searching for his past, lives through eras of intense change, including revolutionary upheavals, two world wars, and the beginning of the modern west during New Mexico's last territorial days. As these turbulent events serve as a backdrop to his life, Ignacio's own loyalties will be tested by the passions of his tempestuous employers, the MacAndrews clan.

"As sleepy as Buffalo Peak's been, legendary marshal, Elwood "Firestick" McQueen, and his deputies "Beartooth" Skinner and "Moosejaw" Hendricks never expected a couple of drifters to wake it up -- by kidnapping two lovely ladies in town. Hardly the sharpest quills on a cactus, these dim drifters call it courtin'. Firestick doesn't see it that way. Now the woman snatchers are heading for West Texas with their reluctant brides-to-be -- and unwittingly...

The spring of 1806 found Hiram Harris and his Cherokee wife, Sarah, and their family leaving the east Tennesee hills to settle a new home in New Madrid, a town on the Mississippi River. Soon they would be dead and their children sold into slavery. It seemed the very earth had turned against them all with floods and earthquakes, but the Harris children miraculously survive, escape and continue their extraordinary journey west.

"Weather and creaking joints permitting, Jim Hawkins could be found every weekend sitting in the rocker outside the Manix store in Augusta, whittling and spitting. He needed a hickory cane to push him up out of that chair, especially in the bitter cold Augusta winter.Jim said hardly anything. Ever. Henry Lancaster heard his grandfather talk to his grandmother fairly often--but seldom to anybody else. That all changed when Jim took Henry along on a...