"Stagecoach guard Red Ryan and his driver Buttons Muldoon have ridden shotgun on some pretty valuable cargo in their day. They're about to learn that the most dangerous cargo of all is human. They've been hired to escort a cowardly traitor facing a court martial in New Orleans. Every hired killer in Texas wants him dead, including gun-handy Hannah Huckabee, a woman with an agenda. She's just one of the dangers they'll face along the way. There are...

"When Chance Jensen wins a Chinese girl from a gambler, he and his twin, Ace, plan to set her free, but she runs off robbing them blind. When they hunt her down in Rimfire, Montana, she's with the gambler, lining up their next mark and the Jensen boys aren't the only ones looking for them"--

Alton Burwick was itching to make a big land grab at Yellow Butte. But first, he had to drive the tough band of squatters from the range. So he rounded up a bunch of killers for the job, and hired Tom Kendrick to ramrod the crew, never mentioning that they would be fighting innocent men and women. Suddenly Kedrick realized he would have to do something fast -- before Burwick's mob turned Yellow Butte into a wasteland.

No one is more evocative of the dusty, gutsy hey-day of the American West than Elmore Leonard. And no story about a young writer struggling to launch his career ever matched its subject matter better than the tale behind Leonard's Western oeuvre. In 1950, fresh out of college -- having written two "pointless" stories, as he describes them -- Leonard decided he needed to pick a market, a big one, which would give him a better chance to be published...

"'On this trip there will be no cussing, no drinking, no gambling, and no loose women.' No problem. Or so Red Ryan thinks--until he meets the passengers. They include four holy and silent monks, one beautiful lady tutor, and a drunken, washed-up gunfighter. Even worse, they're crossing the wild Texas hill country where bloodthirsty Apaches are on the loose and a killer is on the prowl. But that can't compare to what's waiting for them at Fredericksburg....

"Blackstone, Wyoming, belongs to 'King' Charles Hagen. The rancher bought land, built businesses, and employed most of the townsfolk. Unfortunately Sheriff Buck Trammel is not on His Majesty's payroll. The lawdog won't be tamed or trained to accept the king's position as master of the territory, but neither will he threaten his empire. Adam Hagen, the king's oldest son, is vying to take control of his father's violent empire in Blackstone. Sidling...

"Stoneface Finnegan and his new partner are busy renovating The Last Drop Saloon when a very unusual stranger comes to town. He's nothing like the prairie rat drifters, world-weary miners, and would-be outlaws who normally pass through Boar Gulch. No, he's a big handsome devil from San Francisco, Giacomo Valucci. Valucci fancies himself an actor, but his all-too-dramatic arrival is no act. He's come to kill Stoneface Finnegan... Finnegan's gut tells...

The Sackett boys had crossed Black Fetchen and lived to tell about it. Now Fetchen was coming for them with the most expensive hired guns in the country. But the Sacketts were no strangers to trouble and when the showdown came, they would be ready, and someone was going to die.

"When Ben Savage receives a telegram informing him that an old friend died--and left him his saloon--he's not sure what to think. Western saloons are as wild as it gets, full of rowdy ranchers and cocky cowboys, high-stakes gamblers and low-life drifters, hard liquor and easy women. Then there's the occasional outlaw gang. But when Savage travels to Buzzard's Bluff, Texas, to check out his inheritance, he meets the saloon's lovely manager, Rachel...

Galloway was thinking of Flagan Sackett. He knew what Flagan must do to survive because he knew what he would do, and because Flagan was his brother, in thinking as well as in blood.