J. T. Latham is rotting in prison in the Yuma Territory penitentiary. But then Sheriff Del Buchman offers to commute his sentence if Latham helps execute a prisoner exchange with some dangerous banditos. The only catch is that he must guide the sheriff through the deadly Sonoran Desert. The story was adapted from surviving transcripts of the American Legends Collection, which were written in 1936 as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works...

"In the wake of the death of his wife as she gives birth to his son, and the killing of his brother on the West Texas plains, John Kerney is forced to give up his ranch, leave his son behind, and strike out in search of the murderous outlaws and a place where he can start over. He drifts south until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory and forever changes his life"--

"In 1846, the Mexican-American War cast together Latter-day Saints fleeing persecution and the U.S. Army on a desperate mission to capture California. The Mormon Battalion-including two pregnant laundresses-must march two thousand miles. Among the army's First Dragoons, Moses Cole, a Virginia farm boy running from his abusive father, grows to manhood under the mentorship of a tormented alcoholic and former professor. Among the Mormons, Orson Everett...

"Can the walls of an abandoned house absolve a man accused of a thirty-year-old murder? Not before Silent Cooper and Dempsy Nealy battle Apache thieves, Pancho's Villistas, marauding outlaws, and El Tigre of the Playas Valley. The loss of a letter beneath the ruins of a famous Arizona ranch house thirty years ago led to an untimely marriage for Dempsy's Aunt Cindy, who now runs three ranches with an iron will and a shotgun loaded with buckshot....

"Morgan Clyde, legendary town tamer and shootist, is the kind of man who will look down the barrel of your loaded gun and keep on coming, and the kind of man there's no stopping short of putting him in a grave when he thinks he's in the right. He's just the kind of man that a certain little town in the lawless Indian Territory needs, the town once known as Ironhead Station and the town that has already almost killed him more than once. Only this time,...

"January 29, 1863. United States Army troops attack a Shoshoni village on the banks of the Bear River in what is now southeastern Idaho. Four hours later, the army abandons the field, leaving behind the dead bodies of some three hundred men, women, and children. This all-but-forgotten massacre stands today as the worst killing of Indians by the military in the history of the American West. In the pages of And the River Ran Red, four-time Spur Award-winning...

"Rio Ruidoso offers a gripping blend of history and story as two-time Spur Award-winner Preston Lewis explores the violent years before the famed Lincoln County War in New Mexico Territory. Seamlessly weaving fact with fiction, the author details the county's corruption, racism, and violence through the eyes of protagonist Wes Bracken, newly arrived in the region to start a horse ranch with his alcoholic brother. Bracken's dreams for the Mirror B...