Texas Vigilante – Bill Crider

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Bill Crider

Ellie Taine thought the violence chronicled in OUTRAGE AT BLANCO was behind her. But’s she’s about to have more visited on her by a sleaze named Angel Ware.

Sue and Lane Tolbert worked for her, Lane as her foreman. She adored their ten year daughter named Laurie.

Angel Ware was Sue’s brother and a man who’d never been right in the head. He was serving a life sentence for murder until he’d escaped, murdering two guards and two trustees in the process. Ware wanted revenge on all the people who’d put him in prison: his sister Sue, her husband Lane, and his brother-in-law’s brother, Cody Tolbert, a Texas Ranger. You see, Ware never considered that his own actions put him in prison. It was always someone else’s fault.

Ware and his three fellow escapees, having secured the current location of his family, were headed for Ellie’s ranch. As was Cody Tolbert.

And a lot of violence!

Shooter York – Colby Jackson

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Colby Jackson, Mel Odom, western

Jeremiah ‘Shooter’ York and his cousin, George Monk, had just finished off a vicious gang of cutthroats that were robbing and murdering whole families, seven in the area, and the last had been personal friends of the two men. A troop of soldiers came along and they learned another friend was in trouble.

Moon Bear was a Cherokee farmer who had farmed his piece of land for twenty years and his father before that. The American government in their infinite wisdom had begun moving Cherokee off their lands a few years before, 1830, and sent them on what became known as The trail of Tears.

A group of renegades had attacked a group of soldiers and hijacked a load of rifles. A surviving scout, living long enough to mention Moon Bear being there, was enough to send the Army patrol after him.

It didn’t make a lot of sense to Shooter and George. They knew the the Cherokee would never be involved with something like that. But the scout who’d identified him, Henry Langdon, was a good and honest man himself.

A perplexing mystery and one Shooter and George wanted to help figure out before their Cherokee friend was gunned down or hanged.

This is a prequel to the RANCHO DIABLO western series created and written by Mel Odom, James Reasoner, and Bill Crider. There will be another prequel most assuredly because we haven’t seen the incident that gives the name of the town in the series, Shooter’s Cross.  Colby Jackson this time around is Mel Odom.

For those interested, they might want to  check out the RANCHO DIABLO site.

Recommended and can be found HERE.

Dead Man’s Gun & Other Western Stories – Ed Gorman

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Ed Gorman, western

The writer’s group, Western Fictioneers, offers us a selection of fine western stories from Ed Gorman, a writer who excels in several genres. We have nine stories and an essay on writing the modern western.

One of Mr. Gorman’s novel Characters. bounty hunter Leo Guild, appears in GUILD AND THE INDIAN WOMAN.

The title story concerns a pistol that some people have ascribed magical powers that make the bearers unbeatable.

MAINWARING’S GIFT happens n Christmas Eve as a man comes to town looking for a young woman he’d met nine months before only to find her about to give birth and dying and a town full of bluenoses.

Those were my favorites, but ther’s not a bad one in the bunch.

Recommended.