The first-ever book to cover the history of the renegade Outlaw country music movement from its beginnings in the 1970s to its resurgence today, "Outlaws Still At Large " draws from the author's interviews with current artists to reveal a rich, vibrant music scene beneath the mainstream Nashville gloss, while it shows the trials and adventures of life on the road. Hamilton traveled more than 20,000 miles with the Outlaws to get his story, and in the end, the music changed his life. One of the Outlaws, Shooter Jennings, who is the son of 1970s Outlaws Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, says about Hamilton and this book: "Besides his insanely neurotic attention to detail, or his relentless obsession with perfection, Neil is someone who cares very deeply for music and art. He cares so deeply that he's willing to spend as much time as he finds necessary to do this right, to do it true, and do justice to the thing he loves and protects with such grace and dignity. He is, like us, a warrior." Hamilton begins with a historical background to the rise of country music and the Outlaw movement, before offering five chapter profiles on prominent Outlaws from the 1970s: Waylon, Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, Johnny Paycheck, and David Allan Coe. He then shows how the 1970s Outlaw movement faded, how Nashville pop regained its crown, and how the current Outlaw movement has emerged. From there he presents chapter profiles on 15 current artists, including Shooter, Blackberry Smoke, Elizabeth Cook, Dallas Moore, Jackson Taylor, Jason Boland, Lydia Loveless, Whitey Morgan, Wayne Mills, Joey Allcorn, and Hellbound Glory. The book concludes with a look at the promoters behind the Outlaw scene and the emergence of Outlaw music on SiriusXM radio. Hamilton found that there's really no one Outlaw musical form. Some of the artists are most heavily influenced by Hank Williams, others by Elvis Presley, or by the 1970s Outlaws, or by Southern rock, or even punk rock. Yet, beneath this diversity and creativity, there remains a central attachment to country's roots and to the belief that music should be created primarily for the heart and not the wallet-even if it means many a hungry night in a low-pay honky tonk. If readers bathed in music history get a feeling that Hamilton formatted the book in word similar to the way that Willie Nelson formatted his path breaking album "Red Headed Stanger" in music, they will be right on the mark. That structure is meant to convey the continuing link between country roots past and present and the continuing belief that country music based on sincerity still has something to say in a society awash with shallow forms and fleeting moments.

Gripping and entertaining, George V. Higgins delivers a compelling and uncomfortably realistic account of the way society and the law really function. It’s been a decade since the turbulent 60s and policeman John Richards still has to deal with a handful of leftover student radicals who continue to terrorize the Boston streets. In an effort to convict them once and for all, he liaises with ambitious lawyer Terry Gleason. Matters culminate one crisp Sunday morning when the students decide to rob the Friary, a pub in downtown Boston well-established as a site of drug-trafficking. Seven civilians are left dead in what comes to be called the Friary massacre. The trial proves nightmarish and unpredictable, not unlike the decade it took Richards and Gleason to apprehend the culprits in the first place. In a heart-stopping rendition of cops and robbers, Outlaws proves that in the Boston demimonde nothing is as it seems.

A legend in the biker community, Peter “Big Pete” James was the most revered gangster in the Outlaw Nation. He first perfected his skills with the Hells Angels, the Outlaws’ chief rival, before persuading thousands of disgruntled members from splintered Outlaws chapters to unite. Together, they formed a powerful criminal syndicate involved in extortion, contract murders, drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering and assassinations. Then a shocking medical diagnosis knocked James sideways, forcing him to face a new life on the outside of the organization he built, dodging snitches, federal law enforcement, and contract hits. In The Last Chicago Boss, James provides a startling and unprecedented expose into the inner workings of the Outlaw Nation from the unique perspective of its renowned leader, all brought to life through never-before-revealed interviews, police files, wiretaps, recordings, and trial transcripts.

In the late nineteenth century Tom Ketchum and his brother Sam formed the Ketchum Gang with other outlaws and became successful train robbers. In their day, these men were the most daring of their kind, and the most feared. Eventually Tom Ketchum was caught and sentenced to death for attempting to hold up a railway train. He became the first individual--and the last--ever to be executed for a crime of this sort. Jeffrey Burton has been researching the story of the Ketchum Gang for more than forty years. He sorts fact from fiction to provide the definitive truth about Ketchum and numerous other outlaws, including Will Carver and Butch Cassidy. The Deadliest Outlaws initially was published in a limited run of one hundred paperback copies in England. This second edition in hardcover contains additional material and photographs not found in the earlier printing.

To Rory Yates being a Texas Ranger is about justice, but all of that changes when he is brought to a small southern town to help uncover the mysteries behind a local woman's death—only to discover corruption and lies. Texas Ranger Rory Yates is not keen for hero status. But it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his newfound fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo, a municipality with two stoplights. And now, according to the Chief of Police, it has one too many Texas Rangers. Rio Lobo Detective Ariana Delgado is the one who requested Rory, and the only person who believes a local councilwoman's seemingly accidental death is a murder. Then Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets, favors, and lies as crooked as Texas law is straight. To get to the truth before more people die, Rory is forced to take liberties with the investigation. The next ballad of Rory Yates may not be about a hero, but rather an outlaw song.

A “compulsively readable” history of how Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson redefined country music (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Outlaw delves into the country music scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s, when three rebels—Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson found themselves in Music City writing songs and vying for record deals. Channeling the unrest of the times, all three Country Music Hall of Famers resisted the music business’s unwritten rules and emerged as leaders of the outlaw movement that ultimately changed the recording industry. This account offers a broad portrait of the outlaw movement in Nashville that includes a diverse secondary cast of characters, such as Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman, and Billy Joe Shaver, among others. With archival photographs throughout, Outlaw is a comprehensive examination of a fascinating shift in country music, and the three unbelievably talented musicians who forged the way. “[An] engaging cultural history . . . a fascinating chronicle.” —The Washington Post “Riveting.” —The Wall Street Journal

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK * INDIE NEXT SELECTION * LIBRARY READS SELECTION * AMAZON EDITORS' CHOICE * WASHINGTON POST BEST OF THE YEAR The "terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling" (R.O. Kwon) adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.