Two lifelong friends team up for revenge in this gripping Ralph Compton western. Their bond started with a schoolyard tussle. Now the need for vengeance is what binds Luke Croft and Red Connover together. When Luke taught himself how to fire a Colt, he never imagined he’d turn into a gunman. But when his stepfather’s dodgy business dealings turn his life upside down, Luke asks Red to help him destroy the man who murdered his kin. The road to vengeance is long and hard, and the two friends, who are barely out of boyhood, will need all the help they can get if they want to catch a cold-blooded killer.

He may be little known today, but Ben Daniels was a feared gunman who typified the journeyman gunfighter every bit as much as those whose names have become legend. Yet his story has eluded researchers and yarn-spinners alike—until now. Two prominent western historians have teamed up to tell the story of Ben Daniels’s rise from outlaw and convict to presidential protégé and high-ranking officer of the law. Tracing his life from jailhouse to White House, from Dodge City to San Juan Hill, Robert DeArment and Jack DeMattos present a full-length biography of Daniels, the most controversial of Teddy Roosevelt’s “White House Gunfighters.” The book faithfully traces Daniels’s early years, the time he spent in the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary, his rebirth as a Dodge City lawman—including the controversy over his shooting a man in the back—and his part in the Battle of Cimarron. Following military service with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, Daniels was appointed by President Roosevelt as U.S. marshal for turbulent Arizona Territory. Daniels was as quick with his mind as with a gun, but he had a rough ride to redemption. This original biography belongs on the shelf of every gunfighter buff and anyone interested in the broader story of the Old West. It rescues Daniels from the footnotes of history and shows us the amazing life of one of the West’s most intriguing gunmen.

UNDER TROUBLED SKIES, the third volume in the Western Quest Series, follows Aaron Turner, his family and friends, through the tumultuous years culminating in the War for Texas Independence from Mexico. Aaron, a tall red headed forty-three year old Methodist minister and Major in the militia wants to raise his family, crops and livestock in peace along the Navasota River. But many trials will be endured and much bloodshed before he will find that peace. He is called upon by the Mexican government and his friend, Stephen Austin, to put down the Fredonian Rebellion in Nacogdoches. For his action, he is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in command of the Northeast Texas militia. He soon finds that keeping the peace and maintaining order in such a large area is a big job. His old acquaintance, Santa Anna, prevails in a bloody civil war that leaves him dictator of all Mexico. The conflict spreads into the province of Texas, where Aaron will face him again at San Jacinto. At what price will he find the peace and prosperity he has sought in the new “promised land?” STEPHEN L. TURNER was born a fifth generation Texan, a sixth generation Arkansas and an eighth generation American. His youth was steeped in the history and culture of his heritage. He graduated from Texas Tech School of Medicine and has worked as a pediatrician in rural Plainview, Texas since 1984. He is married and has two adult children. He spends his free time running their panhandle ranch, raising and training horses, and hunting. He is the author of OUT OF THE WILDERNESS and ON THE CAMINO REAL, the first two volumes of the Western Quest Series.

The mountain-top volleys from any scholarly set-to among social historians concerning the elusive roots of American democracy do reach our ears from time to time, and this rather formidable cannonade just may strike off some sparks, although it is hardly leisure reading. The author's efforts seem to have been spurred on by academics past and present (including historians Elkins and McKitrick) who have examined frontier communities and others more current and have concluded that democracy is a process of peaceful decision-making in a self-contained, homogeneous community. Dr. Dykstra, taking umbrage, has moved through the years 1867-1885 in five ""frankly ambitious frontier settlements,"" and has plowed up enough evidence in the social, political, economic, etc. areas to state with confidence that instead of the traditional view of conflict hindering progress, one should brace conflict with cooperation on an equal basis. Conflict, Dykstra insists was ""normal . . . inevitable . . . a format for community decision . . . change."" A shift in focus that just might--in an undoubtedly popular interpretation--cheer our chaotic days. A thorny, difficult book but worthy.

This is not your grandfather’s history of Texas. Portraying nineteenth-century Texas as a cauldron of racist violence, Gary Clayton Anderson shows that the ethnic warfare dominating the Texas frontier can best be described as ethnic cleansing. The Conquest of Texas is the story of the struggle between Anglos and Indians for land. Anderson tells how Scotch-Irish settlers clashed with farming tribes and then challenged the Comanches and Kiowas for their hunting grounds. Next, the decade-long conflict with Mexico merged with war against Indians. For fifty years Texas remained in a virtual state of war. Piercing the very heart of Lone Star mythology, Anderson tells how the Texas government encouraged the Texas Rangers to annihilate Indian villages, including women and children. This policy of terror succeeded: by the 1870s, Indians had been driven from central and western Texas. By confronting head-on the romanticized version of Texas history that made heroes out of Houston, Lamar, and Baylor, Anderson helps us understand that the history of the Lone Star state is darker and more complex than the mythmakers allowed.