Fiction Literature Dramatized

Police Chief Delaney Reed thinks she knows all of Ordinary, Oregon’s secrets. Gods on vacation, lovelorn ghosts, friendly neighborhood monsters? Check. But some secrets run deeper than even she knows. To take down an ancient vampire hell-bent on revenge, she will have to make the hardest decision of her life: give up the book of dark magic that can destroy them all, or surrender her mortal soul.

An ambush by a roving group of mutant Stickies puts Ryan and Krysty Wroth in the clutches of a tyrant who plans a human sacrifice as a symbol of his power. The execution is set to take place at the new moon — one night away. Ryan devises an escape plan but is betrayed by another prisoner. As they break for freedom, the Stickie leader unleashes a team of hunter-trackers among the maze of narrow canyons of the Southwest. For Ryan and Krysty, there's nowhere left to run....

"South of Deadwood": Take the stagecoach into Deadwood with Ranger Chick Bowdrie to bring a notorious killer back to Texas - and justice. "Too Tough to Brand": Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie was called to the O Bar O Ranch when the foreman, Bert Ramey, disappeared with $15,000. But from what Bowdrie can tell, Ramey is no thief. "A Gun for Kilkenny": A dusty stranger comes into the town of Boquilla in search of a drink after many hard weeks riding the trails. He enters the saloon, and within minutes the town bully is dead on the floor. Who is the stranger? Is he John Wesley Hardin? Or the legendary Marshal Kilkenny?

But the future in a world shrouded in the radioactive red dust clouds of a generation-old global nuclear war depends on finding hidden caches of food, weapons and technology - the legacy of a preholocaust society - stashed in lonely outposts known as redoubts. When Ryan Cawdor discovers a redoubt in the bitter freakish wasteland that now passes for Alaska, he also uncovers a new threat to a slowly reemerging America.

He was raised by the mountain man called Preacher, and he was said to be the fastest gun alive. Until he hung up his gunbelts to raise a family. Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and a force of nature. But Lee Slater and his gang of low life desperadoes didn’t know that. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble for the retired gunslinger was Slater’s first mistake. Shooting Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally was his second.

The Amazon Basin remains a land of primordial beauty and primitive people. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists emerge from a gateway into an abandoned US military complex, now a native shrine to the white gods of pre-blast days. Here, the group is given royal treatment, only to discover that privilege has a blood price.

As they blunder towards doom, Warlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson find themselves inconvenienced by a variety of eldritch beings. Christmas brings a goose that doesn't let being cooked slow it down; they meet an electricity demon, discover why being a redhead is even trickier than one might imagine, and Holmes attempts an Irish accent. And, naturally, Moriarty is hanging around...in some form or other.

Frank Morgan has one son he knows of - and Kid Morgan has become famous in his own right. But in Montana, Frank comes face-to-face with a young man with a deadly swagger and a stunning claim: that he's Frank's son, too. And he's here to gun his old man down. For Frank, the first thing to do is find out if Brady Morgan is truly his own flesh and blood. That means tracking down a woman he once loved, and then untangling her lies, lust and a scheme to steal prime Montana ranch land.

Allen Ring won the Red Rock Ranch in a poker game. But a man was shot in the back there a couple of years back. The murder is still unsolved, but someone seems convinced that Allen Ring has the missing answer. Ross Bilton was one of the men who found the body, and now he's the town marshal. Ring finds himself in the middle of a mysterious conflict - and maybe headed for a showdown with the marshal.

Purgatory, Arizona, is the last place you'll ever cross the law. Because in this town, the law is the personal fiefdom of an evil man - as Matt Jensen discovered on his first day in town, when an unavoidable gunfight and a dead deputy landed him in jail, sentenced to hang at Yuma Prison. But when the train from Purgatory to Yuma is violently derailed, Matt is set free amidst the carnage - with a choice to make. He can run for his life and live like an outlaw or take a chance with the determined U.S. Marshall who must hunt him down.

"Strange Pursuit": Bowdrie wants Charlie Venk. Shrewd and intelligent, Venk is riding hard on the sorrel he's stolen right out from under another man. "The Marshal of Sentinel": Tough and vicious, the Fred Henry Gang had been robbing banks all along the stage route from Santa Fe to Tularosa. It was only a matter of time before they hit the sleepy town of Sentinel, and Marshal Fitz Moore knew that day had come. "Booty for a Bad Man": Tell Sackett knew that gold spelled trouble faster than anything except a woman, and he had a lot of gold. Problem was, none of it was his.

Cattle rancher Ben Kerr wants Jim and Jack Casady's prime farmland real bad. He's offered them good money, but they won't sell. When the Casady brothers find Kerr's cattle grazing on their land, surrounded by broken fences, anger rises up like bile in Jack Casady's gut, and tempers flare.

In the harsh territory near what used to be the Western badlands, Ryan Cawdor and his crew join the search for the wreck of a crashed space station. But in the ruins of Las Vegas, he falls prey to a maelstrom of violence. Hostage in a bitter war between regional barons, Ryan finds that even his best effort is an odds-even gamble and that his son's life may depend on the whims of destiny.

"McNelly Knows a Ranger": From the day Chick Bowdrie rode up to Noah Whipple’s ranch gravely wounded, Whipple had treated him with kindness - almost like a son. When Whipple is shot by a notorious gunfighter, Bowdrie swears vengeance. "A Job for a Ranger": There were bullet holes in the bank window and blood on the hitching rail. Five bandits and 10,000 dollars had ridden out of town. "Desert Death Song": Powder Basin - the rugged country at the edge of a dry, forbidding desert - holds more hiding places than most men could find. Nat Bodine knows most of them....

Crater City, New Mexico, is a bustling mining town brimming with the stench of men hungry to get rich the old fashioned way - killing the competition. Dennis Conroy is the owner of the biggest saloon in town, and he needs a few good sharpshooters to help protect surveyors laying out a route for a spur rail lie before his rival Hugh Thornton beats him to it. Jo Buckhorn’s handy with a gun so he takes the job.

The town of Bury took up a piece of Idaho Territory that was still raw, untamed frontier. It was no place for the cowardly or faint-hearted, but Smoke Jensen was neither. Nor were Stratton, Potter and Richards, the three bloodthirsty outlaws who came there to live. Or, if Smoke had his way...to die! It had been years since hired gunhands had murdered Smoke’s wife and son, but the pain was as fresh as yesterday. And so was Smoke’s need for revenge. He's come a long way to find the bandit trio responsible for his family's brutal massacre.

"The Road to Casas Piedras": In the midst of a lively country dance, gunshots ring out at the stagecoach station and Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie finds the station's master sprawled in a pool of his own blood. "More Brains Than Bullets":Banker Tom Lindsay made a bad decision when he decided to do business with Ross Yerby. Yerby convinced Tom to print a few extra greenbacks to help him trade some cattle in exchange for half the profit. "West of Dodge": Where the real frontier begins... A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt....

Rock Bannon is a man bred to the Colt and the rugged law of frontier survival. But to a group of naive homesteaders, his reputation as a gunfighter marks him as an outcast among decent folk. So when a smooth-talking scoundrel comes to camp, no one is ready to listen to Bannon's warning. He alone knows that Mort Harper's route leads to certain massacre. Now it is up to Bannon to protect the greenhorn settlers - especially the beautiful Sharon Crockett - and convince them of the truth about Harper before it is too late. For even if the wagon train survives the hostile Indians and desert ahead, it is bound for Bishop's Valley and a vicious land war.

Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk — from way back East. What is he doing out here? The Mountain Man’s former neighbor, Humbolt Puddle, has died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir, just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron is circling the Humbolt ranch like a ravenous vulture. Poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap. Smoke is the not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke’s neighbor is his enemy, too.

Smoke Jensen has a good woman by his side. Now all he needs to make Sugarloaf the best cattle ranch in Colorado is John Chisum's prime steer. But a cattle war has turned the landscape into a battleground, and a ruthless gang of rustlers is hot on Smoke's trail. The bullet-proof mountain man is determined to get what he wants - even if he has to blast every one of the dirty desperadoes back to hell!