American Mountain

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island.

The American mountain man, with his myriad of practical skills, could endure isolation in a way most could not. He lived in constant peril from the extremes of nature and from the hostilities of cultures unlike his own. Given the illiteracy rates of the day, few tangible accounts of such journeys have survived, but one glaring exception is that of James Pierson Beckwourth, the only known African American mountain man to leave behind a detailed, if somewhat sensationalistic, account of his travels.

Comprised of four heroic crowns of sonnets, Alicia Mountain’s Four in Hand is both formal and experimental, ranging from lyric romantic and familial narratives to blank verses of reconfigured found text pulled from financial newsletter emails.

Frontier Tales is an online ezine dedicated to bringing new Western short stories into view. Each month, readers vote on their favorite Tale for that month. At the end of the year, there are 12 stories they have selected as the best. The editor then picks one more to make a total of thirteen, a baker's dozen. These are the winning stories from the fifth year of the ezine's production. Enjoy!

*A vicious corrupt candidate faces trial. *For murder… among other crimes. *It will take a miracle to take her down. *Enter Calian Begay. Against the odds, Calian Begay, the arrogant Native American sheriff arrested Secretary of State Whitney Chabot and her wealthy political cohorts. In addition to underwriting a human trafficking cartel, it doesn’t help that Whitney’s choice of lovers is a tad too close to home. Now all Cal has to do is get the reprobates convicted. Given who is leading the prosecution, success is far from a certainty. When the corrupt attorney general is thrown off ...

In the booming frontier city of Denver, 1873, U.S. Marshal Sam Slick finds himself on high alert as the arrival of the railroad has transformed the town, swelling its population to 25,000 and bringing an influx of newcomers, opportunity, and peril. Amid this surge of strangers, a darkness stirs in Denver’s streets. Amid the bustling chaos, a new terror grips the city—a twisted serial killer who calls himself the Rocky Mountain Reaper. Cold and calculating, the Reaper targets not only innocent women but seems fixated on Sam and his family, leaving gruesome clues and cryptic warnings. ...

Six linked short stories of the American Southwest. A Regular Evening at Eddie C's The Cold Hard Facts of Life The Proper Ritual Two Cowboys Standing With Horses in a Small Indian Village Ten Shots Quick The Katsina Cool, funny, sympathetic, and gritty. The dialogue in these stories is pitch-perfect.

John Hardin is the WITSEC identity of a pilot who runs a small aerial photo business flying his Cessna out of Asheville, North Carolina.He's restoring a log home on a ridge overlooking the Great Smokies village of Maggie Valley, and does house repairs to bolster his income. He shares his place with octogenarians Hank and Hattie Gaskill, and has an independent Cherokee girlfriend who rides her own lipstick-red motorcycle.Brandon Doyle, a burly biker friend of theirs, runs afoul of a drug lord who sells synthetic equivalents of cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy. John and Kitty try to help Doyle, ...

Hotshot pilot John Hardin has a dark history. He and his beautiful Cherokee girlfriend, Kitty Birdsong, are enjoying life in the Great Smoky Mountains when Nolan Rader, a former BATF agent, emerges from John’s violent past and demands help to save his younger brother, Clint Rader, from the vengeance of the Satan’s Ghosts outlaw motorcycle gang. A warped genius called Brain controls the Satan’s Wraiths, an elite cadre of trained hitters within the worldwide gang, and Brain is privately conducting psychological research on Clint prior to killing him. John must agree to help Nolan Rader ...

Indian lore of the Cuyamaca Mountains and surrounding region in San Diego County, California, abounds in myths and legends handed down from generation to generation by tribal song and squaw-tale. Yet so swiftly has the hand of civilization wiped out the old traditions and customs, that but few Indians remain who remember them, and fewer still are those willing to divulge them. Only when one comes into intimate contact with them is one accorded the privilege and honor of hearing the tales of their ancestors.

Veterans in rural communities face unique challenges, who will step up to help? Beginning with a brief scenario of a more gentle view of rural life, the book moves through learned information about families, children, and our returning National Guard and Reserve civilian military members. Return experiences will necessarily be different in rural and frontier settings than they are in suburban and urban environments. Our rural and frontier areas, especially in Western states with more isolated communities, less developed communication and limited access to medical, psychological and social ...

As the 1950s' Mau Mau war breaks out in the foothills of Mt. Kenya, Wambũi, a 14-year-old girl, leaves her besieged village to join a prestigious boarding school, a half day’s journey away by train. There, she becomes aware of her extraordinary mathematical abilities discovered by her teacher Eileen Atwood. Initially, Wambũi views Eileen’s attentions with suspicion and hostility, but over time, the two grow close and form a lifelong friendship.

An American Giallo short story series consisting of three connected stories: "Street Stalker", "Macabre Motel", and "Ghost Town 2012: Graveyard" with colorful characters, violence, and a strange motel in the small town of Elkmont, Tennessee.

Finn Ziegler is on schedule to live the American Dream. He means to claim a homestead and start the Lazy Z Horse Ranch on the rugged frontier prairie in the shadow of the Mineral Hills. But a golden-haired nursemaid from the orphanage home has caught his eye and stolen his heart. From the rooftop he declares he'll marry Iris Renke: he means to make that promise stick. Iris Renke is done with men and the trouble they cause. Only one little man can hold her heart, a tender-hearted orphan boy called Joe Saturday. She'd do anything to keep him in her charge, to hold him close. All was well in ...

Since liquor was easily transportable and widely desired, saloons were one of the first businesses to arrive on the Rocky Mountain mining frontier. The earliest establishments were crude tents or haphazardly constructed shacks. Over time, saloon owners upgraded to more permanent facilities and added ornate decorations, expensive mirrors, and billiard tables imported from the East. In, The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, Elliott West stated, “The physical evolution and diversification of the drinking house . . . paralleled the growth of the mining town and its search for a ...

Reagan Dawes doesn't want a man, but she's about to get one--the hard way. Kidnapped by her only kin, she soon finds herself at a fur trappers Rendezvous in the Rocky Mountains. Her stepfather figures to find her a husband, and to fill his pockets in the bargain. Yet, instead of a nightmare ending, Reagan finds herself in the middle of her own private fairytale, complete with a handsome benefactor with a host of problems of his own. Jackson Broussard is a man with a scar on his face and a turbulent past. Accused of murdering his brother, estranged from his father, he must now prove his ...

"SOMETIMES BEING BEHIND BARS IS BETTER THAN BREAKING OUT!" When two murderous cop killing cons doing life sentences at New York's Dannemora Maximum Security Prison decide to make dramatic, almost Hollywood style prison break, Jack Marconi, a private investigator and former prison warden, is called in to locate the two killers. But during the course of their investigation in Upstate New York's thick woodlands, what Marconi and his trusted sidekick, Blood, discover going on inside in the basement depths of the maximum security prison, is nothing less than shocking and deadly. For fans of ...

Voted the favorite stories of readers around the world! This baker's dozen of short stories with a Western flavor is the anthology of the third year's Readers Favorites from Frontier Tales, the online magazine of frontier and Western yarns. Join with others who've said these are some of the best short stories about the West that they've seen.

Combining historical anecdotes, scientific knowledge, and personal stories, Harvesting American Ginseng celebrates the heritage of the Smoky Mountains while providing an indispensable resource for botanists, herbalists, and nature enthusiasts.

Take the Water to the Mountain explores the journey of a young woman who yearns for personal freedom while struggling to hold onto her strong familial bond and Native American heritage she has left behind. It tells the tale of Lily Brownwood,a young Native American from the Arapaho nation. Lily sets out on a personal quest of discovery which takes her from her native home in Oklahoma to the shores of South Texas. There she finds a new world of enlightenment that is full of unique, colorful, and quirky characters. All of which help guide her along the true path of self-purpose and the ...