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.