Winner of the Spur Award and the Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in Western Literature Matt Braun delivers a stirring depiction of the struggles of the Anglos, Indians, and Mexicanos in the New Mexico Territory of the late 19th century. Clint Brannock has been commissioned to track down the infamous vigilante Miguel Ortega and put an end his violent revolution. But Elizabeth’s relationship with Ortega places the family in grave danger. “Matt Braun is a master storyteller of frontier history.”-Elmer Kelton, best-selling author

Based on a true story

For decades the Texas plains ran with the blood of natives and settlers, as pioneers carved out ranch land from ancient Indian hunting grounds and the U.S. Army turned the tide of battle. Now the Civil War has begun, and the Army is
pulling out of Fort Belknap–giving the Comanches a new chance for victory and revenge. Led by the remarkable warrior, Little Buffalo, the Comanche and Kiowa are united in a campaign to wipe out the settlers forever. But in their way stand two remarkable men …

Allan Johnson is a former plantation owner. Britt Johnson was once his family slave, now a freed man facing a new kind of hatred on the frontier. Together, with a rag-tag volunteer army, they’ll stand up for their hopes and dreams in a journey
of courage and conscience that will lead to victory … or a battle to the death.

The Osage Indians struck it rich on oil. Then the killing began.

The Osage Indians lost their ancestral freedom on a windswept reservation in Oklahoma. Now, in the Roaring Twenties, the land is spewing black gold; oil has been found, and every Osage owns a share of the rights. Soon Osage tribal members are being killed for their oil royalties while a corrupt sheriff turns his back on the murders, and Special Agent Frank Gordon organizes an undercover operation while working openly with frontier legend US marshal Will Proctor.

Their investigation unearths a string of thirty-three murders, and as they race against death, Osages are still being killed. Gordon is determined to bring down the mastermind behind the ring of cold-blooded butchers. But when one of his own men is murdered and the killers turn on him, Gordon realizes there is a law beyond the law–the law of survival.

He’s a sporting man–with a scheme as big and bold as Texas.

Dan Stuart plans to stage the prizefight of the century and reap a million-dollar gate. But soon he finds the path to riches strewn with obstacles.

Outraged politicians block Stuart at every turn, and a gang of robbers led by a sharp-shooting beauty has plans of its own: the heist of the century. Stuart has two champion pugilists, five gunmen, Bat Masterson, and Judge Roy Bean in his corner.

Now, with his team set to score and the Texas Rangers hot on his trail, the West’s first boxing promoter is desperately searching for a place to hold his fight. And when he finds it, what a hell of a fight it will be.

He found a people who needed his courage.

Born a slave, Jim Beckwith forged his own path to freedom as a mountain man. But when a wealthy trading company owner offered to pay him to live among the Crow Indians, Beckwith accepted the deal–and discovered another way of life that changed him forever.

He fought a battle that had to be won.

Here in the Wind River Mountains, amidst blood feuds and blood brothers, he became Bloody Hand, a man sworn to take a hundred scalps–and destined to become the People’s greatest warrior–in a life-or-death struggle that shaped the fate of a nation.

Matt Braun’s Spur Award-winning Dakota tells the compelling story of Teddy Roosevelt’s foray into rugged Dakota Territory. Stunned by a Valentine’s Day telegram, Teddy Roosevelt reaches his Manhattan home just in time to watch death first claim his mother and then his wife on that dark day in 1884. Abandoning a promising political career, 25-year-old Teddy seeks the healing solace of the Dakota Bad Lands. After bagging grizzly and elk, decking a gun-waving giant, and building two thriving cattle ranches, Teddy soon finds himself in the sights of a deadly rival.

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. It is into this wilderness that Luke Starbuck must ride. A manhunter determined to catch his prey, he knows that he’s riding into a trap. He just doesn’t know who has set it. Deadwood takes listeners deep into a world of conspiracy and danger, where Luke Starbuck will have to rely on his wits as much as his guns. Richard Ferrone’s muscular narration is the perfect fit for a hero who casts a long shadow across the paths of the most deadly outlaws.

Could the most feared gunman in the West

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.

become a respectable lawman in the wildest city in Texas?

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. Thompson’s career as a lawman is about to take an explosive turn. He finds himself at a crossroads: Is his personal code of honor the price for a tin-star badge? It’s a risk he’s willing to take … even if there’s no going back.

Doc Holiday

Matt Braun

He came from the American South, a gentleman by breeding, a dentist by training, a gambler by vocation. But as Dr. John H. Holliday, a man fleeing his tragic past, drifted across the West, living among some of the roughest men on the frontier, word spread quickly he never walked away from a fight, and he never drew too late.

Now, from Dodge City to Denver and Cheyenne, from boomtown to sinkholes, “Doc” Holliday was driven by the demons of his past, a skilled gambler and a seasoned mankiller–his name was known and feared long before the O.K. Corral. The story of a man who spoke softly and carried a lightning gun, Doc Holliday is Matt Braun’s extraordinary chronicle of the West’s most complex and legendary figure.

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 has hired to bring a quick end to the Bannings’ reign of terror. Bloodshed erupts as the Bannings hire an assassin to send Stoudenmire to an early grave. Now the former Texas ranger will rely on nerves and a quick gun to save his own life– and bring swift justice to a desperate town…

In a place called No Man’s Land
Texas rancher Ben Langham hired Luke Starbuck for his loyalty and toughness gained by riding with Rip Ford’s Texas volunteers. But when Langham sent Starbuck after a band of horse thieves, a loyal man left behind the only home he had ever known–and met the stranger in himself.

One man found a home …
To track down a thief, Starbuck posed as an outlaw, misled his woman, and killed to protect his own life. Then he rode into a kingdom of vicious horse thieves and entered into a fierce duel with a criminal mastermind hiding behind a respectable
life. Somewhere along the line, honest, hardworking Starbuck discovered that he was a changed man–one who had forged himself a freedom and a future in a place where other men died …

The West made legends of two men. Heaven help the fool who dared to risk their wrath.

In a windswept campsite of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis has arrived to experience the thrill of the buffalo hunt. His guides are Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody–two heroic deadshots with a flair for showmanship and a thirst for adventure. But a train approaching from the East will provide Alexis a front-row seat to murder and mayhem that will set Hickok and Cody on the trail of cold-blooded killers.

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…

In a land of death and corruption

Texas rancher Ben Langham left his sprawling inheritance to the man he trusted most: Luke Starbuck. Once Starbuck had dreamed of having land of his own. Now he dreams of finding the man who gunned down Langham–and bringing him to justice.

One man found a calling of his own…

With the Cattlemen’s Association behind him, Starbuck has all the authority he needs to ride into New Mexico on the path of a murderous band of thieves. But he didn’t count on coming face to face with a scrawny killer named William “the Kid” Bonney, a shifty sheriff named Pat Garrett, or the true story behind the legendary Lincoln County War. Suddenly, Luke Starbuck finds himself dead center in a powerful conspiracy–and heading straight into the line of fire…

Matt Braun is a master of Western fiction. His ability to capture the flavor of the wild American frontier and the personalities of its rough men has earned him scores of dedicated fans. They relish the world of Braun’s novels, where lives depend on a sharp eye and a steady trigger. In the summer of 1871, a Texas 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. Matt 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.

In a lawless land
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.

One man will enforce his own brand of justice …
Undercover work and patient tracking take Starbuck from Kansas City straight through the Indian Territory. But when Jesse outwits him during a bank heist in Minnesota, innocent blood is spilled, and Starbuck’s mission becomes a downand-dirty vendetta that will leave one man standing–and the other six feet under
…

John Wesley Hardin’s powderkeg temper earned him twelve bodies by age twenty–and a place at the top of the Texas MOST WANTED list. Now a happy husband and a father, he thinks his fighting days are over and done. Until he’s ambushed by an angry loser in a local poker game …

Soon the law is on Wes’s trail again, but this time he’s got too much at stake.

Hardin only wants peace–but he’s willing to wage a one-man war to stay free.

Bill Tilghman was the real thing, a lawman who wore his badge for one reason alone: to bring criminals to justice. Master novelist Matt Braun captures the final days of this extraordinary manhunter—when he faces a heroic fight on the bloody
corrupt streets of Cromwell, Oklahoma. The saga of a man who would not back down and the woman who loved him to the end, One Last Town tells the story of a land swiftly vanishing into a new era: the legendary American frontier.

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 that would make his name a legend for all time–in an epic confrontation with outlaw gang leader Bill Doolin.

Winner of the Golden Spur, Matt Braun writes novels with an unparalleled knowledge of the West. In the harsh land of New Mexico, Clint and Virgil Brannock keep a sharp eye on their ranch, the Rio Hondo, and family lest cheats and hustlers move in. When corrupt attorney Stephen Benton and his Santa Fe Ring threaten the ranch, the two brothers realize they must fight for the land and livelihood they cherish-or die trying.

Matt Braun has won all the most prestigious awards for Western authors, including the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. His talent is as spot-on as a sharpshooter’s rifle in this tale of jealousy gone wrong. Investigator Jack Stillman is sent to solve a series of murders in the Tenbow Valley. Posing as a gambler, he unwittingly places himself right in the murderer’s crosshairs.

TEXAS EMPIRE
MATT BRAUN

Jack Jordan, an Indian fighter turned trailblazer and cattleman, is willing to risk it all for a spread of Texas land in the uncharted Llano Estacado–and for the adventure of a lifetime.

Already a legend before turning thirty years old, Jordan’s greatest quest still lies ahead. In a breathtaking canyon called Palo Duro, Jordan is about to make an extraordinary stand with a herd of cattle, a courageous woman, a fast gun–and a vision that won’t die.

The Brannocks

Matt Braun

Earl Brannock was a gambling man who fled the fires of the Civil War and found a boomtown called Denver–in a land being built on dreams, luck, and gold. Virgil Brannock joined him next, fresh from Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, determined to rise to the top of the frontier’s rough and treacherous business world. Finally, Clint came riding a trail of revenge: a fiery young Brannock who dared to wear a badge…The three brothers were reunited once again. And on a frontier brimming with opportunity and exploding with danger, vicious enemies would test their courage–and three beautiful women would claim their love…

The classic, Golden Spur Award-winning novel of a man, a family, and a nation

He came off the frontier: a buffalo hunter, a gambler, a loner. In Abilene he won a saloon at cards and earned the fear of a lawless town. From then on, Jake Kincaid would not be stopped. He began a rampage of ambition and deal-making that forever changed a land called Kansas and the Indian Territories. But along the way the deeds and misdeeds of Jake Kincaid affected more than the frontier–they shaped the lives of his two sons. One who became a lawman. One who became an outlaw. Both destined to come face-to-face behind blazing guns …

From Wild Bill Hickok to the Dolan outlaw gang to Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, The Kincaids tells the classic saga of America at its most adventurous–through the eyes of three generations who made laws, broke laws, and became legends in their time.

In Matt Braun’s The Last Stand, the land of the Five Civilized Tribes is stolen from its people by a federal government determined to make Oklahoma the forty-sixth state. Chitto Starr, a full-blood Cherokee, will not go gently into the night. Instead, Chitto ignites an armed rebellion–and brings an honest, determined lawman onto his trail.

For Deputy US Marshal Owen McLain, hunting down Starr and his rebels is the last job he wants–and the one he has to do right, or die. Now the two men are locked in a duel of cunning and violence on a tragic, history-scarred land. And before one of them dies, they must each make a harrowing journey of honor, courage, and war.

Print Oliver gave his blood and his soul for the Confederacy. Then he came home to find his family ranch under siege from Union carpetbaggers and his neighbors urned against him. For the Texan there was no choice but to blaze a trail toward
power, rounding up wild longhorns and driving them toward markets from Galveston to Abilene. But as Print forged an empire, his family paid a heavy toll. Now he had to make a bitter choice–between the blood of his own kin and the land he’d claimed with a dream.

Lucas Brokaw is an incredibly wealthy man. But though he has amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world, he is without an heir. Looking death in the face, he decides to leave his money to whoever can prove to be his reincarnated self. He
has set up a foundation to oversee his assets until someone steps forward as the reincarnation of Lucas Brokaw–and can prove it. Hundreds of candidates emerge, each claiming to be the millionaire returned to collect his fortune. But all of them
fail to provide significant knowledge of the life of Brokaw to back up their petition.

Only one candidate is able to pass all of the tests. Now he must prove himself by traversing the final and most difficult obstacle: a chamber of secrets rife with deadly traps that can only be defused by intimate knowledge of Brokaw’s codes. If
there truly is such a thing as a human soul, the world is about to find out.

It takes a man with guts
A rare breed of bulldog and bloodhound, private detective Luke Starbuck has been hired to ferret out the Judas working for the Central Pacific–a mastermind behind a string of train robberies. The target: gold shipments from the Frisco mint. All Starbuck has to do is pass himself off as an outlaw and infiltrate the pack …

To take on the Barbary Coast
But chumming up to a gang leader like Denny O’Brien means that Starbuck must follow him into the vice pits of the notorious Barbary Coast. Getting inside this hellhole of crime is dangerously easy if you make the right moves. Make the wrong ones, and getting out could be murder …

In the 1870s the frontier was a battleground, where the U.S. 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. All the while, the Fontaines kept searching for a place to settle down–until they set their sights on the boomtown called Denver.

Awaiting Lilian Fontaine in Denver is fame and loss, fortune and betrayal. But between dodge and her destiny are a thousand miles of unconquered country, an outlaw band, and one man who will force the young songstress to give the performance of her life…

Luke Starbuck knew Death’s designs were as uncompromising as justice, and as cold and final as an unmarked grave. But when Wyatt Earp and his gang were ambushed one moonlit evening and Earp emerged from the barrage of shotgun fire very much alive, Starbuck began to wonder if there was more to the ambitious, flint-eyed desperado than met the eye.

WHILE WORLD WAR I WAS EXPLODING IN FOREIGN LANDS
It’s 1915. In Europe, men are dying in trenches. In Washington, sentiment is growing for war against the Kaiser. And in Mexico, an explosive plot is set in motion by a German agent, a deposed dictator, and an army of murderous rebels.

A NEW WAR WAS BLAZING ALONG THE RIO GRANDE …
Amidst the chaos of Pancho Villa’s revolution, a force of embittered Tejanos has crossed the Rio Grande, burning ranches, killing Texans, and gathering fighters in its wake. For the Germans, the goal is to paralyze America. For a daring Special Agent and a Texas Ranger, the mission is to
go deep behind enemy lines and cut out the heart of an astounding conspiracy–before the West is drawn into a bloody war of its own …

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 …

From Palo Duro Canyon through the Staked Plains, Bascom and Jordan pick up the trail of the missing bull–and the shadowy rustler who took him. And when Dodge City, run by an ornery Marshall named Earp, turns up empty, the detectives head into a wild land. Bluffing, bludgeoning and bragging their way into a smart, secretive and deadly criminal gang, Bascom and Jordan find their bull all right. But stealing back a critter who has love and leisure on his mind proves to be the easy part of the job. The hard part is getting back to Texas–with Homer and their lives …

Matt Braun, winner of the prestigious Spur Award, is the recipient of the Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in Western Literature. The novels of this fourth generation Westerner are infused with the tradition and lore of the wild frontier. The Brannock brothers have very different dreams for their lives in the wide-open spaces of the American Southwest. Virgil is a railroad man; Clint is in the Cavalry; and Earl has settled in with the Comanches. Their paths cross in a fatal gun-battle that puts their code of honor to the test.

Before the legend, there was the man…and a powerful destiny to fulfill.

On October 26, 1881, three outlaws lay dead in a dusty vacant lot in Tombstone, Arizona. Standing over them– Colts smoking– were Wyatt Earp, his two brothers Morgan and Virgil, and a gun-slinging gambler named Doc Holliday. The shootout at the O.K. Corral was over– but for Earp, the fight had just begun.

Wyatt Earp was a man who craved fame, power and prominence. He came to Tombstone with a plan to get elected sheriff, and a dream of building the biggest business empire the booming mining town had ever seen.

But by Christmas, both his brothers had been struck down, and their assassins were coming after him and Doc Holliday. For Earp, a man of ambition and pride, it would mean putting aside his dream for one last fight…not for glory, but revenge.