Frontier Stories

 Man Riding West

by 

Louis L'Amour

Frontier Stories #2

The third tale in this collection follows Jim Gary—the man who once gunned down Miguel Somona—as he rides toward Pleasant Valley. On the trail he encounters a crew driving cattle, and, unaware the herd is stolen, he signs on to help push them to their destination.

It doesn’t take long for everything to fall apart. Gary is seized, accused of murder, and finds himself staring at a noose while a furious bunch clamors for justice. But in the final, thunderous showdown, the truth bursts into the open, halting the violence in a cloud of gunsmoke.

Classic L’Amour: memorable characters, a clean, fast-moving story, and a landscape painted so vividly you can almost feel the dust and smell the gunsmoke in the air.

Bad Company

 Bad Company

Damien Hunter #4

by

Nathan Best

When nations clash and cartels bleed, only Taipan One Six can cut through the chaos.

The world’s dirtiest war just got personal.

Damien Hunter, commander of Taipan One Six, is pulled from the heat of Oman and thrown into a global firestorm. A Guatemalan drug lord’s family has been hijacked by Japanese operatives in a brutal power play. The target: his defiant daughter, Isabella. The stakes: control of the global narcotics trade.

From African swamps to Ukrainian war zones, Damien’s mission spirals into a high-risk pursuit across continents. The hijackers crash-land behind Russian lines. Japanese mercenaries parachute into the combat zone. Ukrainian special forces join the fight. And in the shadows, every side wants blood.

Outgunned and outnumbered, Taipan One Six must slice through mercenaries, militants, and missile fire to bring Isabella out alive. But when the mission ends, a new enemy rises – and he wants revenge.

In the world of black ops, survival is never guaranteed.

Strap yourself in...this one is going to be bloody!

Damien Hunter returns alongside the rest of Taipan One Six, and from the very first page there’s absolutely no easing into it. The book detonates straight into high‑octane action and never lets up.  

After the explosive opening, One Six is sent to extract the wife and daughter of a cartel boss from the clutches of the Japanese Yakuza. From that moment, it’s a relentless sprint—action, blood, and tension—driving all the way to a brutal climax in Ukraine.

Nathan once again delivers at the top of his game. His writing is sharp, fast, and lean, with no bloated detours—just pure story muscle. Exactly the kind of storytelling I love.

In my review of the last book, Long Surrender, I said it went from 0 to 100 in the space of a gunshot. This one starts at 100 the moment you crack it open.

Now the wait begins for the next instalment.

My thanks to Nathan and Big Sky Publishing for providing a review copy.

Larry & Stretch

 Drift!

Larry & Stretch

by

Marshall Grover

(Len Meares)

With amiable drifters Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson as her escort, a beautiful redhead ran the gauntlet of death, travelling many a violent mile to give her testimony in court. Only the boss-outlaw had been captured. The rest of the Sharkey gang was still at large ... and gunning for her! Here was a test of nerve and strength, a challenge no Texan could ignore. When the danger was greatest, the drifters battled on, out-shooting the lawless and thumbing their noses at law and order!

According to several sources, this story marks the very first appearance of Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson — the pair who would become known throughout the West as The Texas Troubleshooters. Fittingly, when we meet them for the first time, they’re behind bars.

After the mistaken murder of a woman, their fine is unexpectedly paid on one condition: they must escort a young lady to Nash City to testify in a murder trial. Her testimony will send Curt Sharkey to the gallows, but his brother Gil and the rest of the Sharkey gang have no intention of letting that happen. What follows is a tense game of wits and a gun-blazing showdown at the end of the trail.

I grew up reading these books. Len Meares was incredibly prolific, and his long‑running Larry and Stretch series was always a favorite of mine. In this early entry, the Texas Troubleshooters are still finding their footing, but the trademark banter between the two friends is already firmly in place. The tone here is grittier than many of the later stories.

Overall, it’s a solid, well‑written read. The publication date of this particular edition is hard to pin down — early titles were reprinted multiple times — but it likely comes from somewhere in the 1960s.

It’s also available in eBook form if you want an easier way to revisit it. 

Find it here!

Shane and Jonah

 The Death Riders

A Shane and Jonah Western

by

Cole Shelton

(Roger Norris-Green)

Twenty years earlier, Dan Eckert had been an outlaw with a desire to go straight. By selling out his companions, the notorious McCabe gang, he earned himself a full pardon. There was just one problem. Two decades later, the McCabe gang broke out of prison and came looking for revenge. Eckert, now the respected town marshal of Sweetwater, knew he couldn’t fight them by himself, so he hired Shane Preston and Jonah Jones to help even the odds. But the one thing nobody anticipated was the actions of Sweetwater itself. Fearful of the McCabe gang and what they might do if crossed, the locals decided to offer up Eckert as a sacrificial lamb … and there was no way on earth that Shane and Jonah could buck an entire town!

It had taken twenty long years, but McCabe was finally ready to claim his revenge—and he meant for it to be sweet.

Shane Preston and Jonah Jones never wanted the job, but they took it anyway: protecting Dan Eckart from the McCabe gang after their breakout from the pen. Eckart, once an outlaw and now a marshal, needed their guns not only to save his own skin but to keep his young son alive.

Sweetwater didn’t want them, and the townsfolk made that clear from the moment they rode in. So when a letter arrived demanding Eckart be handed over or an innocent family would die, the good people of Sweetwater were suddenly eager to comply. Shane and Jonah warned them not to trust McCabe, and when the inevitable betrayal came, the two riders were left to carve a bloody trail of justice across the frontier, determined to stop McCabe and his killers once and for all.

Like all Cleveland Westerns, this is a lean, hard‑riding 97‑page novella packed with gunsmoke and grit. Roger Norris‑Green (writing as Shelton) is a seasoned storyteller who knows how to keep the pages turning right up to the final showdown.

The tale sits within a sprawling 27‑book series, the first 26 following Shane Preston’s relentless hunt for the scar‑faced man who murdered the woman he loved. Each entry stands on its own, delivering a complete, satisfying yarn.

When I was young, Cleveland Westerns were my escape from the everyday world—and for what they were, they were the finest, most gripping stories I could get my hands on.

Stories like this are why I love writing westerns.

Arizona Justice

Arizona Justice

by

Gordon D. Shirreffs

In Arizona Justice, when Rowan Locke rode into Llano with a marshal’s badge in his pocket and the iron will to bring back a killer, all he heard talk of was the terrible Donnigans, those five wild-tempered brothers who thought they were above the law.

Rowan Locke, once a Cavalry sergeant and now a United States Marshal, rides into Llano hunting the yellow‑belly who gunned down his friend and partner. He finds a town ruled by the Donigans—five hard, storm‑fighting brothers and a father twice as mean. They don’t need guns to make their point. Joan Donigan is another matter entirely, and Locke feels the pull.

But John Ripsey, a land‑hungry rancher with a taste for getting his way, stands in Locke’s path. And behind it all, a hidden killer watches and waits. Llano is full of lies, and Locke may be the next man to fall.

Shirreffs delivers again: lean prose, fierce characters, and a story that grabs hold. The Donigans nearly walk off with the book. Definitely worth adding to your TBR.

Dirty Creek Gang

 The Last Ride of the Dirty Creek Gang

by

William J. Johnstone

and

J.A. Johnstone

In this explosive new series from the bestselling Johnstones, a once-notorious gang of retired bank robbers reunite for one last ride—and one last shot at glory . . .

Clay Carson thought his outlaw days were behind him. Years ago, he rode with the fearsome Dirty Creek Gang—and robbed half the banks in Texas. But then a fatally bungled heist in Fort Worth brought it all crashing down. The gang broke up, went their separate ways, and that was the end of that. But today the past came calling for Carson in the form of a telegram. It’s from Lemuel Jones—his old gang leader—who asks him to do something reckless, stupid, and downright crazy: round up the old gang for one last ride.

Jones says he hid away the gang’s biggest payday from their boldest bank job, and he just needs Carson and the gang to help him get it. Carson assumed his old boss gambled it away—and has doubts about his old gang members, too. All but one of them has gone straight, with respectable jobs like store clerk, ranch hand, and even banker. The only outlaw left has been captured and sentenced to hang. Which means the crew would have to bust him out of jail and ride off with a posse on their tail. It’s crazy, all right. But the Dirty Creek Gang is just crazy enough to give it a shot—even it’s their last . . .

An old crew is pulled back together by their dying leader for one last mission: recover the cash from their biggest bank job. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan.

The book is well‑written and packed with action, but it just didn’t hook me the way I hoped. I found my attention drifting, and I struggled to stay fully engaged. That said, every reader connects differently with a story, so others may enjoy it far more than I did.

Give it a try and decide for yourselves.

Thank you to Kensington and Net Galley for providing an ARC.

Johnny Colt

Blood on the Wire

Johnny Colt #1

by

James Reasoner 

The open range is dying, strangled by fences, greed, and men willing to slaughter homesteaders for what was never theirs. Johnny Colt rides into the middle of that bloody battleground carrying a reputation he didn’t ask for—and a gun he knows how to use. He’s fast, deadly, and determined to live by his own rules, but fate has other plans for him.

When rustlers, hired guns, and merciless land barons take over land and cattle, Johnny finds himself pulled into a brutal struggle as sharp as the barbed wire cutting across the plains. Every fence post hammered into the ground leaves another body in the dust. And the powers behind it believe killing and intimidation will clear the way for their empire.

Problem is, they’ve underestimated Johnny Colt.

As the killing escalates and alliances fracture, Colt is forced to choose between riding away clean or standing his ground against enemies who won’t stop until the range is flowing with the blood of innocents. With towns caught in the crossfire and lives at stake, Johnny discovers that survival in the new West demands more than speed—it demands an immunity to fear and terror. And Johnny Colt can deliver both to his enemies.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and steeped in classic Western grit, Blood on the Wire launches a hard-driving series about a man forged by violence and driven by his own unrelenting code of honor.

The story opens with Johnny Colt and his friends riding out to cut the wire Vince Atkinson’s Flying A hands have strung across open range. Instead of a simple night job, they ride straight into an ambush. Gun‑thunder rips the dark wide open, Johnny is wounded, and suddenly he’s running for his life.

Just when it seems he’s finished, salvation comes out of the shadows in the form of his uncle—Captain Esau Parker, known to his men as Captain Brimstone for the fire and brimstone he can sling from a Bible. Before Johnny can catch his breath, he’s sworn in as a Texas Ranger and sent straight back into the rattler’s nest. His mission: learn who murdered his friends and, if the trail leads that way, haul Verne Atkinson in to face the law.

What Johnny doesn’t expect is Atkinson’s sharp‑tempered daughter, or the foreman, Blake Trask, a man with secrets of his own.

Something’s rotten on the Flying A, and Johnny Colt will need every ounce of grit and gun‑sense he’s got if he aims to stay alive.

James Reasoner delivers a terrific opening chapter to the Johnny Colt series. It has the flavor of the classic westerns of the ’50s and ’60s—very much in the spirit of Bradford Scott’s Walt Slade—backed by a strong cast of characters.

I enjoyed every page, and by the end I was already eager for the next installment. Hopefully it’s the first of many. The story is action‑packed, fast‑moving, and Reasoner’s prose goes down easy—like slipping into a well‑worn shirt and settling in by a warm fire.

Left me wanting more. 5/5.