Lane Weller is a man who is looking for something bigger than himself to believe in. He finds it with Cora McGavin, a woman who is also looking for something more than she has in life now. Unfortunately, Cora is married, and her husband is a bullying sort who always wants things done his way. As a result, Lane becomes something of an outcast, riding the lonesome range. Through the course of events, he has to decide whether his love with Cora is the real thing or just something to lie about. This is a bold novel, written along classic lines, about a man and a woman who fall in love in...

This is a survey of lesser-known works of Wyoming fiction from the 1880's to the 1980's, covering the dime novel, the popular novel, the historical novel, and the literary novel. This entertaining and informing study is written by a well-known scholar of Western and Wyoming fiction and an acclaimed writer of Western fiction himself.

Tom Atkins is out of work. So when the Norden brothers ride into his camp one night and offer him a job, he figures he might as well accept. The Norden boys are nice enough and they just bought a small ranch nearby. All things considered, Atkins could do worse. But gradually, as time goes by, Atkins begins to notice things. Small things, but troubling. Some of the folks in town don't seem too friendly to anyone from the Norden ranch. And some of their neighbors are downright rude and insulting. Small things have a tendency to become big things, though, and it won't be long before Tom Atkins...

Men and women, guns and horses, tough situations and no easy solutions-these are the features of a dozen new stories by one of the most acclaimed writers of Western fiction today. John D. Nesbitt shows once again why his work is consistently praised for its evocative setting, realistic characterization, tight prose style, and thought-provoking story lines. The stories in this collection are original, and like Nesbitt's novels, they are classic in form and style. What unifies this collection, in addition to its details of time and place, is its view of life, in which men and women have to make...

This collection contains seven works of fiction ranging in length from short story to novella. The stories take place in rural California from 1964 to 1970, and they continue the mystery/noir style in which John D. Nesbitt has gained recognition. The world of these stories is born out of a vision of hard-edged realism, in which decent characters struggle with the circumstances of a hard-working life as well as with amoral drifters, opportunists, and criminals. The romance is spare, and the sex is not always pristine. But the main characters persist and survive. John D. Nesbitt's work is...

A stranger named Dunbar comes to the town of Dry Camp and goes to work at Rich Stanton s ranch. Shortly after Dunbar s arrival, he helps find the body of an old man named Ross Guilford. The foreman, Paul Kelso, picks a fight with a ranch hand named Willard Brumley. Dunbar intervenes, and Kelso fires him. As Dunbar asks around, he learns from Jack Brumley, Willard s father, that Guilford knew something about Brumley s wife, Louise, a beautiful woman of color who disappeared twenty years earlier. Stanton hires a man named Holcomb, who pairs up with Kelso to provoke Willard into a fatal...