Showing results by narrator "J. Rodney Turner" in All Categories

Inspired by the life and adventures of his own great-great grandmother, Betty Zane was Zane Grey's first novel and launched his career as a master writer of rousing frontier and Western adventures. Betty Zane is the story of the events culminating in the last battle of the American Revolution, when 200 Redcoats from British-controlled Detroit along with 400 Shawnee Indian attacked the small, wood-palisaded Ford Henry on the western frontier.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Jeremiah Halstead keeps the peace in the mining town of Silver Cloud, Montana. But an old enemy has declared war against him. Ruthless and clever, Ed Zimmerman would have become the leader of one of the west's deadliest and hell-bent outlaw gangs. Zimmerman has offered a generous bounty to every desperado willing to put a bullet through the U.S. Deputy Marshal's heart.

Smoke Jensen is the most powerful man on the Sugarloaf frontier - and he's all that stands between a greedy group of Eastern slickers and their schemes for a criminal empire in the Rockies. When Smoke heads back to Boston with his wife, it gives his enemies the opening they'd been waiting for: to kill the mountain man and take over the West. But even on the unfamiliar turf of back alleys and teeming docks, Smoke is more than most men can handle...until his wife is kidnapped. 

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal, and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

Crick City is a small hick town. Violent, mean, and dirt-poor, it's a place nobody wants to call home. But for homicide cop Phil Straker, it is home. And now someone—or something—is turning his boyhood town into a bloody sideshow of mutilation and gruesome carnage. They're called Creekers. Centuries old, driven by rage and lust for revenge, they move through the deep, dark woods—deformed, shadowy outcasts with twisted faces and blood red eyes. Now, as the moon hangs low over their ancient house, they're gathering for a harvest of terror and death Crick City will never forget....

He came west to the Rockies as a young runaway and grew into a legend among the already legendary frontier mountain men. They called him Preacher - a name that would become a monument to all who sought adventure in the savage wilderness of America's untamed west. The only man with the skills to lead a wagon train on the last leg of the rugged Oregon trail, Preacher knows they're headed into trouble. It's hard enough for a hundred greenhorns to survive the wilds of the northwest; being pursued by thieving renegade outlaws and Indians with a thirst for gold makes it damn near impossible.

Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are lifelong drifters who keep one eye on the horizon, one finger on the trigger, and one foot out the door. Roaming the West is what keeps them young, or so Scratch tells Bo. But when they save the life of Cyrus Keegan - the owner of a matrimonial agency - they receive an unexpected proposal that's hard to resist. Keegan needs to deliver five mail order brides to a mining town in New Mexico Territory. All Scratch and Bo have to do is get these gals to the church on time - and alive, if possible. 

Clint Black runs the biggest operation in Montana. He has his own personal army of cutthroats - and he doesn't like competition. The trouble begins when Smoke Jensen brings 3,500 head of cattle up from Colorado to sell to Black's neighbor. More bloodthirsty than businesslike, Clint sets up a roadblock, backed by the biggest guns in the territory. Then he sends word out to Smoke Jensen: Back down or die. 

As the father of a young Crow tribesman, Preacher would like nothing more than to see the long-time natives and newly arrived settlers live together in peace. Then, the killing starts.... As a family man and frontiersman, Jamie Ian MacCallister is more than happy to help the officers at Fort Kearny negotiate a peace treaty with the Crow nation. Until it all goes to hell.... This is not the American dream they were looking for. This is a nightmare. A brutal, blood-drenched frontier war that two heroic men must fight and win - or one struggling nation will never come together.

The first story in a fiery new series about the west's most dangerous boomtown, and the reformed outlaw who risks his life to keep it safe....In the dark shadow of the Prophecy Mountains lies the ramshackle town of Rattlesnake Wells, where dreamers come to make their fortunes, and desperados come to die. The streets of this little settlement are slick with mud and stained with blood, and it will fall to Bob Hatfield to sweep them clean. The town marshal, Hatfield, has a young man's face, but his eyes are those of a killer. He is a good man, but he has a secret that weighs on his soul.

Smoke Jensen never would have come back to the gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana, if it hadn't been for his sister Janey's estate. That isn't the only thing the Last Mountain Man has to settle, however. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove, the man who owns Red Light and who is trying to lay claim to Janey's land. All that stands between Cosgrove and the land is an avenging gunslinger with a blazing .44 - and a good reason to use it. 

There are some things in this world that can't be stopped. Like progress, a moving train, and the American Dream. When the bigwigs in Washington decide to build a transcontinental railroad to the West Coast, they need a man who's just as unstoppable to clear a path through Mexican territory. That man is Jamie MacCallister. Jamie knows it's a tough job. The territory is overrun with Apaches. The Apaches are gunning for a fight. And the first patrol sent in by the president has already been ambushed, kidnapped, and most likely killed. 

Jack McCabe returns home to Montana from medical school, but the family finds he is not exactly who they thought he was. And an old enemy of Johnny McCabe returns, looking for blood.

Framed for the murder of a rancher, Smoke Jensen must escape the angry lynch mob out for his blood, win the trust of the widow of his supposed victim, and clear his name by exposing the land-hungry killers responsible for the crime. 

In the depth of a cruel High Lonesome winter comes a cryptic message for Smoke Jensen. The letter tells of skullduggery by gold barons, railroad magnates, and Chinese tongs in San Francisco. Smoke knows only one person in the city by the bay: the well-rounded, open-natured Francie, mistress of one of the town's most notorious pleasure palaces. Smoke once rescued her from raiding Cheyenne, but now Madame Francie is mysteriously dead...and Smoke's arrival in San Francisco is less than welcoming. 

If anyone knows the road to purgatory, it's Red Ryan. As a stagecoach guard, he's faced holdups, ambushes, and all-out attacks from every kill-crazy outlaw, Indian, and prairie rat. But even he's a bit reluctant to take on his next job: riding shotgun with his driver Buttons Muldoon on a stage bound from Fort Concho, Texas, to Fort Bliss.

Wagon trains carrying immigrants along the Oregon Trail are falling prey to outlaws. Most families surrender their valuables and goods peacefully, but anybody brave enough to resist gets a bullet. The gang's latest victim was a wagon master who sought to protect his charges only to die in the dust. With the blood of good men being spilled and families being terrorized, Preacher and Jamie MacCallister volunteer to escort the next wagon train. Their odyssey across the unforgiving territory takes them through violent storms and into the sights of hostile Indians.

The rural town of Old Hickory. Tennessee was a quiet, picturesque community...until the O'Sheas came to town. Becoming the new proprietors of the town's only funeral parlor, with the help of their charming patriarch, Square McManus, the Irish family was wholeheartedly accepted by the local town folk. The thing began to happen. Strange things...horrible, unspeakable things...in the dead of night. The sighting of wolfish beasts congregating around an open grave in the town cemetery.

Itching for a challenge, Count Frederick von Hausen sails from Germany to hunt down Smoke Jensen. And with a party of the toughest hardasses in the West, von Hausen shadows Smoke into Wyoming's high Rockies. But Smoke Jensen is the last mountain man, and he knows the country like the back of his hand. He also knows that these doomed backtrailers couldn't have picked a prettier place to be buried.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.