The Oklahoma Territory was a bleak, brutal place in 1894, and Speer Morgan's compelling novel begins, appropriately enough, with a botched public hanging. Witnessing this unsettling ritual is Tom Freshour, a striking half-Indian who knows nothing of the world beyond the orphanage where he's been raised by a sadistic minister. But Tom is about to get a bracing education, thanks especially to two people: Jake Jaycox, an aging hardware salesman who takes Tom under his wing, and Samantha King,...

Certain facts about Belle Starr are known and recorded. When she was young the outlaw Cole Younger seduced her, got her pregnant, and abandoned her. Dressing in plumes and Stetson, she took on the role of a fallen woman, theatrically and publicly. Yet in the manner of all true rebels, she took on part of the role and rejected part, evolving an unheard-of style of living that sparked the imagination of generations of people. In the borderland of Arkansas and Oklahoma stories are still told ...

A coon hunter stumbles onto a trailer full of brightly lit computer terminals… and one electrocuted corpse. A cop stops a car with the drug-wired daughter of the president of DataForm — a transplanted Silicon Valley security firm.There is something rotten in Dubois, Arkansas.An estranged husband-and-wife detective team temporarily rejoin forces, following a bizarre trail to big bucks and murder… as schemes, scams, and a seemingly superhuman computer turn a sleepy southern t...

(Winner of a 1999 American Book Award and 1999 Oklahoma Book Award finalist.)Tom Freshour needs a vacation. It’s the dusty, hot summer of 1934, and he’d like to escape both the heat in western Arkansas and his cases at the county prosecutor’s office for the calm and solitude of a fishing trip. But his old Ford won’t start, and while it’s being repaired, an eccentric and enigmatic collector of Indian artifacts is brutally murdered.It doesn’t help matters that the executor of...

War is never more horrifying, and perhaps never more compelling, than when experienced firsthand. The personal accounts collected here — diaries and memoirs written by men on the front lines — constitute a little-known history of American wars. Seven individual narratives cover seven different wars, from the Revolution to the Gulf War:A young man joins the Continental Army in 1776 because it calls to his restless spirit. He soon learns that soldiers are treated with condescension a...

The God Pocket as a collection grapples with issues of light and dark, mortality, and epiphany. In “The Fool-Killer,” a teenager encounters adolescent heartbreak for the first time, while in “The Girl,” a troubling moment of intimacy catalyzes a man’s haunting obsession. “The Big Bang” shows passionate romance becoming something quite different. In “Turbulence,” a Silicon Valley millionaire faces an unlikely problem in his troubled love life; and in “The God Pocket,” grace confronts death ...

Speer Morgan shares his powerful memories through short fiction that moves from the sloughs of mid-Arkansas to the fifth floor of a wholesale hardware company that overlooks Indian Territory, to a house haunted by a bad cat, to the living room of a woman suffering the worst headache of her life, to a sewage pond where two good ole boys are hunting for frogs. The contemporary freestyle narration Morgan uses is suspenseful, humorous, natural, and conversational. In some of the tales he weave...

Tom Freshour needs a vacation. It's the dusty, hot summer of 1934, and he'd like to escape both the heat in western Arkansas and his cases at the county prosecutor's office for the calm and solitude of a fishing trip. But his old Ford won't start, and while it's being repaired, an eccentric and enigmatic collector of Indian artifacts is brutally murdered.

Hailed as one of the year's top five novels by Time, and selected as one of the best books of the year by nearly all major newspapers, national bestseller Peace Like a River captured the hearts of a nation in need of comfort. "A rich mixture of adventure, tragedy, and healing," Peace Like a River is "a collage of legends from sources sacred and profane -- from the Old Testament to the Old West, from the Gospels to police dramas" (Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor). In "lyrical, op...

The Greatest Western Writer Of The 21st CenturyIn the booming mining town of Doubtful, Wyoming, Cotton Pickens is the law. And in William W. and J.A. Johnstone's rollicking new Western, the law is in a fight for its life. . .Making Of A MassacreCotton Pickens is feeling about as low as a man can get. Held up, robbed and fired from his job as sheriff, things get even worse when someone murders Cotton's horse Critter. And it's all hap...

A cajun cop infiltrates the mob...but is he too close?A Morning for Flamingos is a classic Dave Robicheaux Louisiana mystery by New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke.Clutching the shards, of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force.His partner is dead -- slain during a condemned prisoner's bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded and reawakened the ghost of his ...

In this Edgar Award-winning thriller, former Louisiana homicide cop Dave Robicheaux is trying to start a new life after the murder of his wife — but he can't escape his past forever.Dave Robicheaux was once a Louisiana homicide cop. Now he's trying to start a new life, opening up a fishing business and caring for his adopted girl, Alafair.Compared to Louisiana, Robicheaux thought Montana would be safe — until two Native American activists s...