Maddy Waxfall, new to the rural community of Quannah, ventures out on a rainy day to explore the woods near her home and is haunted by a ghostly vision. She flees into the arms of a loner veteran, Jimmie Bass, who won't deny or confirm what she saw. At 14, Maddy is a determined girl and this experience launches her into the middle of a mystery that involves a generation-old mystery of these dark and blood-stained hills.

Two trail orphans are allied with a black bounty huner and a eye-less man to follow a murderer and retrieve precious things. Doreen and her little brother Jake are rescued from an loutlaw band by Ten, a bounty man in buckskins and feathers. Ten was raised by Indians and rides an awe-inspiring horse, "Great Shakes." Their temporary home with Mrs. Dilsey has been ravaged and their guardian killed. All this was done by Cut. The children hope they have found a new protector in Ten, but he is a hunter of men and has no room in his narrow life for children. He proposes to drop them off with another...

In the gold camp of Blind Pig's Luck, Christmas was almost forgotten but for a great snow storm, a public trial and hanging, stragglers in the storm and the desperate struggle of J. Michael Flynn. What was once a disseparate band of diggers becomes a community, linked by powerful nostalgia, the birth of a child and the recognition of humanity in us all.

"One Dead Fiddle Player" is a contemporay mystery set in a small, quiet, rural town. Cole Bascom, the fiddle player, was murdered in a careless way, as if his life and death meant nothing. There is a ready group of suspects. The fiddle player made as sweet music with a woman as he did with his fiddle. And, like playing the fiddle at a Saturday night dance, when one tune was over, he played another. Was he killed by a betrayed husband? A rejected lover? A spurned lover? Or did some new evil slithering through the undergrowth kill the fiddle player? The fiddle player's boyhood friend, Roy...

What do you do when an old friend looking like death with the warmed over part comes to your doorstep on a hung-over Saturday morning with two unsealed bottles of Wild Turkey and asks for your help? Well, you indulge your friends. You sit down and share the whiskey and prepare for what's to come, wary that it's not going to be good. The best thing is that your own troubles don't amount to much compared to your friend's, and the worst thing is your friend's troubles become your troubles. And the police come to haul your friend away and he begs for your help. This happens to Garland "Mesa" Tate...