Showing results by author "Matt Braun" in All Categories

In the Texas Panhandle, Newt Bascom and Sam Jordan are stock detectives who have the brains to outwit most rustlers—and the brawn to outfight the rest. Now, Bascom and Jordan are being dispatched on a once-in-a-lifetime job. Someone has made off with a prized, imported English bull named Homer. The detectives have to bring Homer home …

When Luke Starbuck takes on a wealthy banker as a client, the only thing more compelling than the paycheck is his prey. The James-Younger gang has confounded countless detectives, including the men of the Pinkerton Agency. Now it's Starbuck's chance to bring down the most notorious group of outlaws the West has ever seen-led by none other than cold-blooded killer Jesse James. Undercover work and patient tracking take Starbuck from Kansas City straight through the Indian Territory

In California, the Southern Pacific Railway was prying the West wide open, and the land was worth its weight in gold. While some men got in on the action, and some got out of the way, one group of settlers was making a stand and holding up the railway. Turning to Alan Pinkerton's Chicago detective agency, the railroad robber barons hire the perfect agent to penetrate the settlers' organization, a man who had learned a spy's trade in the Civil War. Tall, debonair, and pleasure-loving Ash Tallman can fight when he has to.

With outlaws wrecking havoc left and right, a cow town in Texas is on the brink of becoming a ghost town. That's when it's time to call in Chicago-based Pinkerton agent Ash Tallman and his partner Vivian Valentine. Going undercover as a handsome, charming drifter, Ash is always ready with his gun and popular with the ladies. And the lovely, vivacious Viv plays the role of a fervent evangelist, offering salvation with the promise of a sweeter reward to any sinner who can give her clues.

It is 1881. El Paso, the wildest border town in an untamed Texas, is at a crossroads. A booming sin city crawling with corrupt politicians and gunslick outlaws, the town now faces its greatest challenge: the savagery of the notorious Banning Brothers. Dallas Stoudenmire is the marshal El Paso...

Outlaw Kingdom Matt Braun In 1889, Bill Tilghman joined the historic land rush that transformed a raw frontier into Oklahoma Territory. A lawman by trade, he set aside his badge to make his fortune in the boomtowns. Yet Tilghman was called into service once more, on a bold, relentless manhunt...

Matt Braun turns the classic elements of tough men and rough land into westerns that ring with authenticity. A native of the West and author of 31 novels, he bases many of his book on historic records. Deadwood draws on accounts of the infamous Butch Cassidy and his gang. The mountains and canyons of Dakota Territory create the perfect hideout for lawless men—Hole-in-the-Wall.

In the summer of 1871, a gang threatening the residents of Newton, Kansas gunned down a lawman named McCluskie. Ninety seconds later, five of the attackers were dead, picked off by a consumptive 17-year-old named Kinch Riley. After avenging the murder of his mentor, Kinch disappeared from the pages of history. Although the rest of Riley’s life wasn’t recorded, his name and lightning speed with a gun live on in Western lore. Braun studied old newspaper articles and records of eyewitness accounts to recreate what might have happened in the last year of this enigmatic young man’s life.

America's richest legends come from the frontier - from the land where the events of a single moment might erase the lines between law and lawlessness, between safety and mortal danger, between heroes and villains. The carefully selected stories in this collection are vibrant proof that the great American West is a fertile ground to storytellers. Here is the most varied collection of short stories by 17 highly acclaimed Western writers.

The Orphan Train is nothing more than a traveling asylum for young urchins, stolen off the streets of New York's Lower East Side. Across the country they will be sold to the highest bidder - unless stopped in their tracks. Hickok and Cody take on the task, and begin a deadly cross-country journey tat will end in the wilds of Manhattan. Their quest for justice pits them against underworld thugs and raw corruption in a bloodbath that rocks the city. New York will never be the same again.... 

Ben Thompson carved out a name for himself as a gambler and a shootist - from Dodge City to the Rio Grande. But settling down in Austin with a wife and young son didn't settle Ben's taste for the sporting life. He still found himself in the gambling dives - where the turn of a card too often led to a shootout. Soon a circle of powerful businessmen decides that Thompson is the only man who can tame Austin's wild side. They ask him to rule the streets - and take no prisoners. They want him to take on the job of a marshal in a town in which every man packs a gun. 

In the 1870s the frontier was a battleground, where the US Army fought Plains warriors, outlaws terrorized the land, and lawmen took no prisoners. Into the West came a family of New York City stage performers: a widowed father, his son, and a daughter whose beauty and singing voice could make the most hardened frontiersmen weep. The Fontaine family was not prepared for the the life they found across the Mississippi. From Abilene to Dodge City, they crossed paths with some of the legendary figures on the frontier, from Jesse James to Bill Hickok and General George Custer.