A WORD FROM LOUIS L’AMOUR “Almost forty years ago, when my fiction was being published exclusively in ‘pulp’ western magazines, I wrote several novel-length stories, which my editors called ‘magazine novels.’ In creating them, I became so involved with my characters that their lives were still as much a part of me as I was of them long after the issues in which they appeared became collector’s items. Pleased as I was about how I brought the characters and their adventures to life in the pages of the magazines, I still wanted the reader to know more about my people and why they did what they did. So, over the years, I revised and expanded these magazine works into fuller-length novels that I published in paperback under other titles. “These particular early magazine versions of my books have long been a source of great speculation and curiosity among many of my readers, so much so of late, that I’m now pleased to collect three of them in book form for the first time. “I hope you enjoy them.”

Rafe Caradec—gambler, wanderer, soldier of fortune—was as hard a man as the battlefields and waterfronts of Latin America could fashion, but he was as good as his word. As Charles Rodney lay dying in a dank ship’s fo’c’sle, Rafe swore to make sure that Rodney’s Wyoming ranch went to his daughter, Ann. In Painted Rock, Wyoming, Caradec found land for a man to love, miles of rolling grasslands and towering mountains. He also found that one of the most ruthless men in the territory had set his sights on both Rodney’s ranch and his daughter. But Rafe Caradec had given his word, and once he’d looked deep into Ann Rodney’s eyes, nothing short of death would stop him from keeping the promise he’d made.

A WORD FROM LOUIS L’AMOUR “Almost forty years ago, when my fiction was being published exclusively in ‘pulp’ western magazines, I wrote several novel-length stories, which my editors called ‘magazine novels.’ In creating them, I became so involved with my characters that their lives were still as much a part of me as I was of them long after the issues in which they appeared became collector’s items. Pleased as I was about how I brought the characters and their adventures to life in the pages of the magazines, I still wanted the reader to know more about my people and why they did what they did. So, over the years, I revised and expanded these magazine works into fuller-length novels that I published in paperback under other titles. “These particular early magazine versions of my books have long been a source of great speculation and curiosity among many of my readers, so much so of late, that I’m now pleased to collect three of them in book form for the first time. “I hope you enjoy them.”

Milo Talon knew the territory and the good men from the bad. He had ridden the Outlaw Trail and could find out things others couldn’t. That was why a rich man named Jefferson Henry hired Milo to hunt down a missing girl. But from the moment Milo began his search, he knew something wasn’t right. Three people had already died, an innocent woman was on the run, and a once sleepy town was getting crowded with hired guns. Suddenly, Milo Talon realized that there were still things he had to learn—about the woman he was trying to find, the man who had hired him, and the murderer who wanted him dead. But most of all, Milo had a few things to learn about himself. And he would have to work fast, because one mistake could cost him his life.

"Following a friend's suicide in 2003, I faced my own suicidal depression and a choice. Dwell in grief or run gonzo crazy and free in the opposite direction, blazing bright and deep in the jungles of America, hiking and writing until my feet and fingers bled with a pure, honest, screeching love for life." Lending levity to tragedy, author Rick McKinney loads readers into his backpack for a 2000-mile Appalachian Trail odyssey, dealing a passionate, endorphin-fueled gonzo blow to suicidal thinking. Dead Men is a deeply empathic, unorthodox prescription for a nation depressed. It delivers an endorphin charged blow to a Prozac-dependent world.

BOWDRIE, TEXAS RANGER Lawman, manhunter, peacemaker—it takes a hard breed of man to survive as a Texas Ranger, but Chick Bowdrie stands head and shoulders above the rest. The rough trails are his home, from the Big Thicket to the Pecos to the border. He’s dried by the desert sun and wind, scarred and toughened by uncounted gun battles, and when you look into his black eyes it’s like looking down the barrels of two .44s with their hammers drawn back. He rides in the name of justice, but he lives by his own law—Bowdrie’s Law. And if you’re thinking about walking on the wrong side of Bowdrie’s Law, you’d better start running. Fast.

When Major Frank Paddock and Barnes Kilrone were dashing young officers in Paris, they both fell in love with the same woman. But now they are men in exile in one of the harshest territories of the American West. It is against this inhospitable backdrop, where survival itself is a day-to-day struggle, that Paddock makes a fateful decision that will plunge both men into a headlong battle for their lives and the lives they’re sworn to protect. As Paddock leads his company of soldiers in pursuit of a Bannock war party, Kilrone is left behind to guard the post’s women and children. And before the day is over, one of them, outnumbered and outgunned, will be trapped in a fight to the finish.…