Sam Houston is a living legend in 1861. The hero of the Battle of San Jacinto, he had defeated Santa Anna to win independence for Texas back in 1836. He had twice served as president of the Republic of Texas, helped Texas join the Union, and served as senator and governor of Texas. Before settling in Texas, he had been a hero of the Creek War and governor of Tennessee. He had been friends with Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett, and had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe, whose rights he had often defended and who had named him the Raven. Yet now, approaching seventy years of hard living, he finds everything he has fought for being torn asunder. Texas is joining the Confederacy, and Houston, a Unionist who has been cast out as governor, quickly loses power, prestige, and friends. He could hide in retirement, but such is not the way of a warrior. The Raven prepares for his most important fight yet. He knows this battle will test his endurance and faith. He knows he will need his...

"Boggs is among the best western writers at work today." —Booklist"Boggs is unparalleled in evoking the gritty reality of the Old West." —The Shootist'Til Death Do Us PartStranded in the Mojave Desert, Micah Bishop is about to cash in his chips for good when he's rescued by an unlikely savior. Whip Watson is hand-delivering two dozen brides to the silver boom town of Calico, where miners are going loco for companionship. Better still, Watson asks Micah if he'd help escort the wagons—and far be it for Micah to pass up both cash and some very pretty faces.But Micah doesn't know that Whip Watson has some killer competition. Candy Crutchfield is racing to get to Calico first with her own maids-in-waiting. Neither Watson or Crutchfield are going to back down. Both are willing to kill to beat the competition.Now, Micah is going to find out just how far he'll go for a buck. Because these "wives" aren't what they seem. And they're...

SUMMARY: On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, with disastrous consequences. In a unique, compelling approach, author Johnny D. Boggs shifts perspectives from one first-person account to another to describe the bloody robbery, as well as the events leading to it and its aftermath.

Recalling his early life as a young cowboy, sixty-two-year-old Madison Carter remembers his first love: her name was Estrella O'Sullivan, and he met her the summer he turned sixteen back in 1873.The summer of 1873 marked Madison's last drive up what is now called the Chisholm Trail. It was the first time he tasted oysters and the only time he pinned on a badge. It was the summer of longhorns, miserable heat, friendship and betrayal, and murder. In the end it was the summer the whole world came crumbling down on the United States, and Madison's world crashed too.The summer of 1873 was the year Madison watched a bunch of men die. One of them was a man he killed, an encounter one never forgets.

From a Spur Award-winning author comes a thrilling tale of faked deaths, runaway slaves, and revenge amid the Civil War. The only way to escape the purgatory that is the Florence Stockade is to die, so on February 3, 1865, Zebulon Hogan dies. Corporal Favour and Private Gardenhire, the only two soldiers of the 16th Wisconsin healthy enough to tote Zeb's wasted-away ninety pounds, wrap him in a dirty, stinking, and damp blanket, and carry him to the Dead House. It was typhoid pneumonia that got him, the soldiers told the Confederate guards.Zeb is buried in the prisoners' cemetery, but the grave is shallow and it's likely that the hogs rooting around will soon be sinking their teeth into his rotting flesh. Then, young Ebenezer Chase, a runaway slave, sees the shadowy figure of a hand clawing through the muddy dirt over that grave, like it's reaching to pull anybody nearby into the deepest part of Hades. Ebenezer's first impulse is to scream, to warn the soldiers in...

"Boggs is unparalleled in evoking the gritty reality of the Old West." —The ShootistAn Unholy AllianceMicah Bishop doesn't believe in miracles—until a derringer-packing nun busts him out of jail. But it's not Christian charity that's driving Sister Genevieve—she wants Micah to take her to a place called the Valley of Fire, deep in the most lawless and perilous part of New Mexico Territory. It was here where an order of nuns met their Maker, and it's Sister Genevieve's mission to see that they are given a proper funeral.Or so she claims.Micah's not in the habit of helping nuns, but it turns out the only true vow Genevieve ever took was to get rich—and there's a fortune in gold buried along with the sisters. With kill-crazy bandits and blood-hunting bounty hunters after them, it'll take a miracle to reach the Valley of Fire, let alone get the gold. But sometimes, the Almighty does work in mysterious ways. . ."Johnny Boggs has...