It’s 1984 in West Germany when U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Agent Conrad Vogel gets a routine assignment—a background check on a low-level enlisted soldier. Expecting little to come of it, he soon uncovers the GI’s relationship with a German barmaid—a barmaid who knows much more than she should and people that she shouldn’t, and what appeared to be routine suddenly becomes anything but.
With the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact nations still a potent threat to the Free World, and terrorist bombings and assassinations in full swing against military personnel, Conrad sets out to unravel a web of espionage, betrayal, and murder.
Small town Sheriff Penny Miller and her outlaw friend Scratch managed to survive a nuclear blast in Nevada and a brutal attack on their peaceful lodge in Colorado. They head for Los Angeles, looking for a fresh start. It seems the citizens of Southern California remain blissfully ignorant of the coming war. They believe zombies are simply an urban legend.
As usual, there’s no rest for the wicked. When they find themselves in a suspiciously run Malibu rehab facility, Miller can't relax. She knows the gore is about to hit the fan. It seems that Miller can sense when zombies are near. And they’re almost always near.
When all hell breaks loose around them, Miller and Scratch must survive deadly experiments, resist an ongoing government conspiracy, and battle another horde of ravenous zombies. And that’s just for starters.
Sheriff Penny Miller of Flat Rock, Nevada, has always done her duty. On the first night of the zombie apocalypse, she swore an oath to protect her friends from the ravenous hordes. However, now that the virus is rapidly spreading to the rest of the country it has become clear that Miller and her friends, Scratch, Sheppard, and Rat, are winning battles but losing the war. And that’s just not good enough for Penny. Too many people have already died.
Determined to stop the maniacs who have been funding the research that created the undead, and with the key to stopping the virus in hand, Miller and crew embark on a long and dangerous journey north. Their route cuts through the very heart of zombie occupied territory, but this time they are out to end the apocalypse once and for all. Unfortunately, the elite committee of government officials who control the Super Soldier program knows exactly where Miller and her friends are headed, and they are determined to capture or kill them at any cost.
Sheriff Miller doesn’t stand a chance. Of course, lousy odds never stopped her before. She gives the order to move out.
Sheriff Penny Miller has come too far and lost too many friends to quit now. She and her companions have made it safely to Mountain Home, Idaho, the operation center of the three-person Enhanced Bioweapons Select Committee that controls the nation’s response to the zombie outbreak. Miller knows they are still funding the research that started the zombie apocalypse.
And Miller didn’t come to the home of the zombies to attend a church social. When Sheriff Miller stumbles across a homegrown militia whose leader shares her hatred of the Select Committee, she sees the opportunity she’s been waiting for. Together with Major McDivitt and his team, Sheriff Miller sets out to destroy the three committee members who have the most to gain from the spread of the zombie virus. One last mission should finish the job.
From the Low Countries comes a high-stakes collection of crime fiction.
In Dutch Treats, the shadows stretch long and the tension runs deep. This gripping collection brings together twenty-one stories by some of the most celebrated crime writers in The Netherlands and Flanders—authors whose names are household words in Europe and whose work has won top awards like Holland's Golden Noose and Belgium's Hercule Poirot Prize.
These stories are sharp, surprising, and expertly told. Each is a stand-alone mystery, translated with care by editor Josh Pachter, a well-known name in the world of short crime fiction. They explore everything from quiet deception to bold, dangerous choices—with characters who are clever, reckless ... and sometimes just unlucky.
This isn’t merely one more mystery collection. It’s a showcase of major talent, featuring heavy hitters like René Appel, Michael Berg, Dominique Biebau, Bavo Dhooge, Hilde Vandermeeren, and Marion Pauw, to name a few. Their stories have appeared in the world’s most respected mystery magazines, and now, for the first time, they’re gathered in one exciting volume.
For readers who enjoy clever plots, moody settings, and a fresh perspective on crime, Dutch Treats is an unforgettable read.
1913. Veteran Jim Bishop takes a job with a motion picture company that is filming a movie based on a famous western gunfight. As the filming proceeds, Jim begins to wonder what really happened in Contention City, Arizona, those thirty-three years ago.
1880. In the actual Contention City, Sheriff Lon Dayton is contacted by the notorious Dutch Bascom regarding the territorial governor’s proclamation of amnesty for Bascom and his gang. Dayton has no choice but to walk the tightrope balancing the alleged intentions of the outlaws against the promises of the unscrupulous politicians and railroad men who claim to be in favor of the outlaw’s surrender. But are they really?
Collected within these pages you will find twelve masterful tales of ill-conceived notions and faulty assumptions from prolific Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine contributor David Dean.
A retired man with a mole-infested lawn decides a ferret is the obvious and nature-provided answer; an American prisoner in Mexico is offered a work-release program in which survival, not freedom, is the prize; and a travel agent discovers the consequences of blind love in Belize. These and other stories comprise the suspenseful tales that you will find within this collection. But remember—the wisdom of serpents is poison.
The Wisdom of Serpents and Other Stories of Tragic Misunderstandings is the second volume in the collected short fiction of David Dean, following Tomorrow’s Dead and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense.
Review of "The Mole" by Anne Van Doorn of the Netherlands:
BEST SHORT STORY OF THE WEEK Since 2016, I read a short story a day. My favorite read this week is “The Mole” by David Dean, published in his short-story collection The Wisdom of Serpents and Other Stories of Tragic Misunderstandings.
Moles are making a mess of Stivac's garden and that annoys the elderly man enormously. A few days ago, his foot sank into a mole run, causing him to fall. To end this predicament, Stivac buys a ferret. He hopes the little carnivore will hunt down the moles. But the ferret is not interested in moles. The next day, Stivac finds the ferret dead, and the neighbor's cat is resting contentedly near him. Three days later, the neighbor's cat is found dead—poisoned.
Over the years, David Dean has written stories about tragic misunderstandings and what they can lead to. "The Mole" is a fine example of what a writer can do with this appealing premise. In fact, all the characters have their own misconceptions, leading to a dramatic, tragic finale. A well thought out plot, masterfully executed.
Rumors rising out of the Yucatan jungle report healings and miracles attributed to a holy relic. Father Pablo Diego Corellas discovers that even his own parishioners are making secret pilgrimages to the decrepit plantation where it is held. There, Doña Josefa, a mysterious woman who is either mystic or mad, possesses an artifact that she claims is a fragment of the robe worn by Christ at his trial. Guarded by armed Mayan farmers, she holds sway over an ever-growing number of pilgrims desperate for the healing power of the Purple Robe.
Much against his own wishes, young Father Pablo is dispatched to the interior to investigate, while a police captain and a vacationing American couple make plans of their own for the robe. But when the relic is stolen, they soon discover that miracles have unforeseen consequences and that no one is beyond their reach.
On a gray winter day in 1958, the body of a man washes up on Santa Barbara’s breakwater. He has wounds much like those of the crucified Christ. Trevor Westin, a young writer with deep family connections to the city, sees murder where the local press and powers that be see only a simple case of drowning. Trevor goes on a dangerous search for answers. Along the way he will cross paths with beatniks, beach bums, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Hopper, and agents from the CIA. He will also be introduced to the brave new world of hallucinogenic drugs. Meanwhile, off the coast of Santa Barbara, at the bottom of the sea . . .
Charlotte Wilson is an investigative journalist reporting on a global pandemic that seems to have no identifiable cause. When she is contacted by the COO of a multinational biotech company claiming he has the answer to what’s making people sick, Charlotte and her producer Nick start dreaming of Pulitzers and national syndication.
But as she begins to uncover the truth, Charlotte discovers she is at the center of a conspiracy that is 12 years in the making, one that touches every part of her professional and personal life. Millions of lives depend on her breaking the news, but the story is so big, will anyone believe it? Charlotte may not live long enough to find out.
Steven Booth’s The Orchard is many things – an intriguing mystery, an intense suspense tale, a terrifyingly plausible bio-thriller – but overall it’s just plain great. Pick it up at your own risk. You’ll be in its grip from the first page to the last…and thinking about it long after you put it down.
—Steve Hockensmith, author the Holmes on the Range mysteries and The White Magic Five and Dime
5.0from 1 reader
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<h1 id='c6'><i>Chapter Five</i></h1>
<div>I sat down in the booth in the small café. I wondered how Nick had found this place. It was a fifties-style setup, with pictures of Elvis, Marilyn, and Ike everywhere. There were jukeboxes at the tables, and the booths looked like they were stripped directly from the interior of an old Corvette or Bel Air. I signaled the waitress, who wore a silly pink gingham outfit, a little pink hat, and an intense air of boredom. She also had the requisite facemask and gloves on, to try to stave off WBS. That this restaurant was even open was a bit of a miracle.</div>
<div class='indent'>After slopping coffee into our cups, the waitress wandered off to chat with a coworker, without even stopping to wipe up the splatter.</div>
<div class='indent'>“What’s so damned important that I had to fly thirteen hundred miles to Wisconsin to meet you in this dump? You said it was juicy. Come on, spill it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>He smiled, the big silly grin brightening his stubbly face.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well?” I prompted.</div>
<div class='indent'>“It’s Verigro,” he said, as if that explained everything.</div>
<div class='indent'>I waited. He continued to smile. I opened a creamer and poured it slowly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Aren’t you going to ask me about it?” he asked, the smile falling ever so slightly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You’re getting to it, I’m sure.” I sipped my coffee. It tasted liked it had been burning for hours.</div>
<div class='indent'>Nick huffed. “You take all the fun out of things, you know that, Lotte?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I decided to take pity on him. “Okay, fine. Gee, Nick,” I said with mock enthusiasm, “what about Verigro?”</div>
<div class='indent'>The smile returned. “There’s something going on. Something big. Peter Youngs wants to talk to you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Who’s that?” I had never heard of him.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Oh, just the Chief Operating Officer.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Hold on!” I said. Nick shushed me and looked around as if CNN was sitting on his shoulder. “Hold on,” I repeated, more softly this time. “The COO? Why the hell would he want to talk to us?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No, not us. He wants to talk to you. Asked for you specifically. Wouldn’t say what it was. I doubt he wants to show you pictures from his last vacation.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sat back in my seat, which made flatulent noises as I shifted. Verigro was the largest biotech firm in the country, maybe the world. It made Monsanto look like a high school chemistry class, and Du Pont look like a baking-soda volcano. If I remembered correctly, Peter Youngs was Verigro’s rising star. He was billed as young, brilliant, and powerful. If he had something to say, and he had to tell it to an investigative reporter from Seattle, it must be one hell of a scandal.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Do we have a meeting?” I asked, keeping my voice almost to a whisper.</div>
<div class='indent'>“About two hours from now. Some restaurant on Third Street. He originally suggested he meet you at Lake Park, but I told him it was too cloak and dagger.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you do a background?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Right here,” he said, handing over his portable. I paged through some basic stuff: Verigro’s history, its current stock price, its board of directors—and I stopped. Errol Foster—the owner of Foster Media Network, in other words, our boss—held a position on their board.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you see this?” I said, turning the portable so that he could look.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah,” he said, nodding. The smile was plastered to his face again.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You know he’s going to go apeshit if he gets a hold of the fact that we are following this story.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If it pans out, it’ll be the biggest scoop in years. He’s got to see that the story is better for the network than whatever he’s got invested in Verigro shares. He’s always been a health food kinda guy. Not exactly a biotech fanatic.” He took a sip of his coffee and lowered his eyes. “Besides,” he said into the cup, “you can always sweet-talk him into running it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nick,” I said, raising my voice again, “I’ve told you before to drop it. Foster and I haven’t had anything to do with each other in years. I doubt I could sweet-talk him into checking his watch.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I glowered at him, then went back to paging through Nick’s research. Verigro began as a participant in the Human Genome Project back in the 1990s. Fifteen years ago, they pioneered the technology for selective codon sequencing of DNA, which allowed them to write codons to order. They could now insert foreign genes precisely into the DNA sequence of nearly any organism and do it cheaply. If it came down to it, they could rewrite the entire genome of an organism from the files they had in their database. I kept waiting for them to start programming Tyrannosaurs, but that wasn’t the business they were in. They made transgenic foods—mostly crops, but some transgenic animals as well—economical and safe, with little chance of replicative fading. Verigro’s flagship product was BioStar, a gene from some unpronounceable thermophilic deep-sea bacteria which programs crops to stay fresh without refrigeration and maintain the nutritional value of foods after cooking. BioStar was hailed as a miracle, especially in third world counties. No more famine. Verigro was the hero of the biotech world.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You think it’s about BioStar?” I asked. The waitress approached to refill our coffee cups, and Nick leaned back in the booth as nonchalantly as he could muster.</div>
<div class='indent'>Once the waitress had retreated behind the counter, Nick moved forward again, conspiratorially. “Yeah, I do,” he said simply.</div>
<div class='indent'>I looked at him for a moment, trying to remember. “Isn’t their CEO running for Senate?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah, Jackie Hughes is the front-runner, and is supposed to win in a landslide.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If we run this story, it will destroy Hughes’s political career.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yep,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Fuck,” I said quietly. If there was something wrong with BioStar, then this really was a Pulitzer waiting to happen.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I know the feeling,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“The meeting’s in two hours you said?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah. Macchione’s Italian Garden. Just you two.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“But you got us a truck, right? In case he wants to talk on the record?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No. No truck. We’re flying under the radar on this one.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“What do you mean, no truck? Didn’t you get this cleared with Jared?” Jared was our news director in Seattle.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nope. I wanted to see what we had before I stuck our necks out. There is a small but real chance that Youngs just wants to air some corporate dirty laundry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“You unmitigated ass,” I said, and I meant it. “Your plan was to get the story, then have me use my feminine wiles to persuade Foster to run a piece that could possibly cost him several million dollars in stock? Is that about right?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well, when you put it that way…” he trailed off.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You have to tell Jared. Call him right now!” I commanded.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Look, Lotte. I’m the producer. This is my call. If we screw up, it will be my ass, not yours. You have to trust me, okay?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sighed. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “I do trust you, Nick. But this is crazy, even for you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, the smile returning.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you at least get me a hotel room? I’ll need to freshen up before I meet with Youngs.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Next door.” I looked out the window to see a large, modern-looking hotel. “Parking’s underground. The key is waiting at the front desk. I brought you a suit. It’s in your room.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“At least you did something right,” I grumbled.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I heard that,” Nick said sweetly.</div>
<div class='indent'>I headed for my car with visions of a shower and a quick nap in my future.</div>
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When seventeen-year-old Usaré García slips away from her high school dance, no one expects the night to end in murder.
Her body is found across campus, and the investigation quickly reaches far beyond one student, one suspect, or one bad decision. Street gangs, racial tensions, hidden relationships, and old loyalties all begin to surface inside the school’s tightly wound world.
Enrique Tavish is not a detective. He is a school administrator who knows the south side, understands the advantages of passing easily through white spaces, and has spent years trying to keep his own hungers and anger under control. But when Usaré’s death exposes a web of deception around students, staff, gangs, and police, Tavish cannot stay safely on the sidelines.
His focus turns to Los Levantes, a street gang with cartel connections, but the deeper he pushes, the more dangerous the case becomes. Soon Tavish’s family is threatened, the police are questioning his methods, and justice begins to look less like a clean answer than a personal reckoning.
Ways to Be Wicked is a dark crime thriller about murder, identity, temptation, and the dangerous line between conscience and revenge.
Step into the gritty world of crime and consequence with award-winning author Lou Manfredo's first collection. "A Dozen Ways to Die" offers twelve meticulously crafted tales that span the breadth of American history and the depths of human nature.
From the smoky speakeasies of Prohibition to the neon-lit streets of modern cities, Manfredo's stories peel back the layers of morality, justice, and the human condition. Meet a cast of unforgettable characters: hardboiled detectives, conflicted soldiers, cunning gangsters, and ordinary people facing extraordinary choices.
Among the twelve stories in this collection, "The Alimony Prison" is a Prohibition-era tale of corruption and survival; "Last Call" is a poignant exploration of a World War II soldier's moral struggle; and "Soul Anatomy" is a contemporary story that delves into the complexities of police shootings and ethical dilemmas.
Manfredo's prose crackles with authenticity, drawing on his extensive experience in law enforcement to paint vivid, realistic portraits of crime and its consequences. His unique blend of classic noir sensibilities and modern storytelling creates a collection that is both timeless and timely.
"A Dozen Ways to Die" is more than just a collection of crime fiction—it's a journey through the darker corners of the American experience, where the lines between right and wrong blur and every choice has a price.
Perfect for fans of Raymond Chandler, Dennis Lehane, and anyone who appreciates finely crafted crime fiction that goes beyond the surface to explore the complexities of the human psyche.
Up-and-coming Amsterdam lawyer David Driessen thinks he’s hit the jackpot when a wealthy client showers him with praise, glamour, and plenty of money. But David learns far too late that every gift from the shady realtor comes with a catch—and a price tag. As his gambling addiction, his constant need for cash, and his wife’s infidelities combine to drag him deeper and deeper into his client’s twisted world of money and despair, David struggles to stay ahead of it all… before his time runs out.
In The Amsterdam Lawyer, René Appel—two-time winner of the Golden Noose, the Netherlands’ equivalent of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award—once again demonstrates the skill that led leading Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad to proclaim him “the godfather of the Dutch psychological thriller.”
“A fascinating novel, bubbling over with greed, mistrust, and ruthlessness.” Gijs Korevaar, Algemeen Dagblad
"René Appel is a first-rate Dutch crime writer. The Amsterdam Lawyer is a compelling and twisted legal thriller, the first of what will hopefully be many of his books to appear in English." Steve Steinbock, reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
The Amsterdam Lawyer is translated from the Dutch by Josh Pachter.
In this new collection, David Dean—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s longtime favorite author—brings you the Edgar Award nominated “Tomorrow’s Dead,” along with ten other short stories of crime and suspense. This master of short fiction has entertained readers for decades with his suspenseful stories, and for the first time ever you can read them back-to-back.
Tomorrow’s Dead and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense takes the reader through mysterious misdeeds that will bring you to the edge of your seat… or have you hiding under your covers. In these arresting short stories, David Dean’s characters find themselves in sticky, often illegal, situations that shift at every turn. From the chief of police being blamed for a series of murders to long lost siblings on quests for revenge, these stories will leave you wanting more. Luckily, the next Collection is on its way soon!
Dr. Duncan Bright treats patients who invent lovers, struggle with addiction, and constantly challenge and berate him. His dedication to guiding his clients through the turmoil of life is tested when he meets teenagers Dawn and Zander—their escalating violence and erratic behavior become his greatest challenge.
When a body is found in Central Park, Dawn and Zander are the prime suspects, and the police come to the psychologist for his insight. As he is drawn deeper into the investigation, his professional and personal lives become jeopardized.
Dawn’s Web, a gritty, page-turning psychological thriller, explores the twisted minds of Dr. Bright’s patients, the motives of murderers, and his own flawed intentions.
Continuity releases November 20, 2026. Order yours today.
His father controls the family. The Great Clock controls history. Carlos San Sebastian has never controlled much of anything.
Then someone murders his father six years before Carlos was born.
Carlos belongs to a dynasty of time travellers whose history is supposedly protected. Their past cannot be changed. Their bloodline cannot be interrupted. And no one should be able to kill the family patriarch before his children exist.
Yet someone has.
With twenty-two hours before the damaged timeline corrects itself, Carlos must travel through his family’s history, identify the killer, and prevent a murder that has already happened. Unfortunately, he can barely control his own jumps, has never solved a crime, and has spent most of his life disappointing the father he is now expected to save.
His only possible ally is his estranged sister, Monique, who abandoned the family years ago and has no interest in preserving the man or the legacy Carlos has been ordered to protect.
But the deeper Carlos travels into the past, the more the family’s laws begin to look like lies. The Great Clock may not protect history. His father may not deserve saving. And restoring the family timeline may require Carlos to surrender the first life that has ever truly belonged to him.
Continuity is a time-travel novel about family, consequence, and a son forced to decide whether becoming an adult means accepting his inheritance or finally refusing it.
They cannot have the life they planned. She will not let him have another.
Three days after marrying Olympic sharpshooter Angel Meade, forensic expert Ridge Warner has annulled the marriage, attended her funeral, and discovered that the empty casket was only the beginning.
Angel is alive, armed, and determined to erase every person connected to the truth that destroyed their future. Her attacks leave Ridge’s home in ruins, his allies exposed, and the woman he loves marked for death. Each failed attempt only sharpens Angel’s resolve. She does not merely want Ridge dead. She wants control of the ending.
Ridge knows how to read a crime scene, anticipate an attack, and turn almost anything into a weapon. But Angel has built her campaign on false deaths, manufactured evidence, and carefully staged realities. To keep another victim alive, Ridge must give her a lie convincing enough to believe.
Now hunter and target are each acting on a version of events created by the other, and the next mistake may decide whose story survives.
Months after fifteen-year-old Rosa helped save his abducted daughter, Enrique learns that Rosa has been sold into sexual slavery by her brother. Driven by gratitude, guilt, and an attraction he won’t admit, the high school principal slips secretly away to search the brothels of Nogales, unsure whether he can bring Rosa home, or even find her at all.
Rosa refuses to remain a victim, but she has no intention of becoming Enrique’s grateful rescue. Fierce and calculating, she pulls him deeper into a violent struggle involving traffickers, gang loyalties, frightened children, and enemies who do not consider escape the end of an account.
As Enrique risks his marriage, career, and life to protect her, he must confront the possibility that his heroism and his hunger come from the same dangerous place. Because the more Rosa claims the right to decide who she will become, the harder it is for him to deny what others can already see.
She’s a Lot Like You is a relentless borderland crime novel about moral debt, desire, and the terrible difference between saving someone and believing you have the right to decide what their freedom should look like.
In Footsteps in the Shadows, Lou Manfredo crafts a masterful collection of crime stories that delves into the darker sides of human nature and the weight of moral choices. Beginning in contemporary Brooklyn, readers are introduced to Detective Joe Rizzo, whose sharp instincts and steady resolve are tested as he uncovers truths buried beneath the city’s chaos. Whether navigating the haunting silence of empty subway stations or pursuing leads down rain-soaked streets, Rizzo’s world is one of tension and grit.
The collection’s early stories set the stage with meticulously crafted cases that invite readers into the lives of investigators and the moral dilemmas they face. As the pages turn, the narrative broadens, spanning generations and offering perspectives from a small-town sleuth in mid-20th-century Long Island to the struggles of a modern detective grappling with his family's legacy.
Rich in atmosphere and charged with emotion, Footsteps in the Shadows captures the fragile humanity of those on both sides of the law. These tales resonate with fear, hope, and determination, drawing readers into a world where every choice carries weight and every shadow tells a story.
With compelling characters and vivid storytelling, Manfredo offers a haunting exploration of crime and its ripple effects, making this a must-read for fans of gripping, emotionally resonant fiction.
In the untamed frontier of the Indian Territories, Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves rides a fine line between justice and survival. Tasked with tracking down fugitives and bringing law to a lawless land, Reeves is a man of few words and swift action. Alongside his partner, Lighthorse lawman David Walks-As-Bear, he faces a brutal landscape where outlaws rule and the weak are left behind. But when rumors of a gold shipment set the criminal underworld on edge, Reeves finds himself on a collision course with a gang of ruthless bandits—and a mysterious Irishman named Donovan who’s more than just another gunslinger.
As the sun beats down on the dusty town of Temptation, alliances shift, bullets fly, and the line between legend and reality blurs. In a place where dime novels paint heroes and villains with broad strokes, Reeves knows that justice isn’t always black and white—it’s written in blood, grit, and the thunder of galloping hooves.
Step into a world of high-stakes showdowns, frontier justice, and larger-than-life figures who shaped the Wild West. Legends of the West delivers the thrill of the chase, the weight of the badge, and the unforgettable ride of a man who became a legend in his own time.
In the vast reaches of the Indian Territory, danger rarely stays buried for long. After weeks on the trail, Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves finds himself drawn into a new and growing threat that spreads across the frontier like wildfire. A violent prison break unleashes three desperate men—killers with nothing left to lose. Led by a former Confederate colonel with fierce ambitions and old grudges, the fugitives head west with a reckless plan that could ignite trouble across the Territory.
As rumors travel faster than riders, Reeves and the Lighthorse lawmen begin to piece together the trail of violence left behind. Each clue reveals a larger scheme—one involving stolen gold, rising unrest, and talk of stirring old loyalties back to life. With every mile, the stakes grow heavier, and the line between justice and vengeance becomes harder to see.
Across trading posts, settlements, and lonely stretches of open land, alliances shift and tempers flare. Settlers whisper of uprisings. Merchants close their doors early. And the name of the escaped colonel begins to echo like a storm rolling in from the horizon.
Set against a land where memory is long and justice rides hard, this new chapter in the Legends of the West series follows Bass Reeves as he tracks a danger that threatens far more than one town or one badge. It marks a turning point in a struggle shaping the future of the frontier—one forged in grit, shadows, and the relentless pursuit of what is right.
John Hyland lives a small, tightly controlled life in suburban Chicago. He works a dull office job, keeps the same routines every day, and tries to stay ahead of painful memories from his past. Then an old man at a diner starts calling him by another name—Blaney—and seems certain John is tied to a long-ago crime involving stolen gold. That strange meeting cracks open the careful life John has built.
As John tries to understand why this man has singled him out, the story begins to connect his lonely present to buried trauma, old violence, and a mystery that reaches back dec-ades. Fear follows him from the diner to his job, to his apartment, and finally out toward the rail lines linked to the famous robbery known as “The Big Touch.” John is no longer simply hiding from old wounds. He is pulled into something larger, darker, and far more dangerous than he expected.
What remains is a mood of unease and quiet sorrow, mixed with deep empathy for a man cornered by memory, guilt, and the pull of the past.
Shannon Delaney always lived in the shadow of her twin sister, Sarah. Sarah is brilliant, beautiful, and bound for Berkeley, while Shannon is unsure, overlooked, and heading nowhere fast. The only thing that’s ever been hers is Frankie—her best friend since fifth grade, the one boy who saw her for who she really was.
But now Frankie is slipping away, drawn into Sarah’s orbit as they compete together in a high-stakes math tournament. Then something strange happens. A mysterious blue light glows from an old glass paperweight by Shannon’s bed, revealing ghostly visions—of snow, of love, of heartbreak. She tries to convince herself it’s just a dream, but the feeling won’t fade. The glass may be showing her the truth.
As Shannon watches her world shift—her sister’s secrets, Frankie’s choices, her own unraveling sense of self—one thing becomes clear: the hardest truths aren’t always the ones others hide. They’re the ones buried inside.
After Olympic sharpshooter Angel Meade is shot at a competition in Beijing, her fiancé, forensic expert Ridge Warner, donates blood to save her life. Then, a mysterious DNA report throws their relationship into chaos. Angel becomes distant, secretive. Ridge knows she’s hiding something, but has no inkling of what it could be.
Back in the mountain town of Woodland Park, Colorado, Ridge tries to settle in—but peace doesn’t last. A pastor is found murdered inside his church in a shocking and disturbing scene. Ridge is asked to help with the investigation, and within hours, he’s nearly killed by a hidden explosive. All signs point to something darker happening beneath the surface of this small mountain town. People are lying. People are dying. And Ridge finds himself at the center of it all.
As the story unfolds, trust becomes a fragile thing. Relationships are tested. Loyalties shift. The deeper Ridge digs, the more tangled the truth becomes. Beneath the surface of this quiet town, something dark is pushing forward, and Ridge must confront the possibility that the truth may come at a cost he’s not ready to pay.
