Max McCoy Sampler

Max McCoy, the Spur Award-winning author of Damnation Road, continues his American Western saga of the Ghost Rifle as the violence and bloodshed the weapon caused return to haunt the man who created it . . . THE WEAPON AND THE WILDERNESS Ten years have passed since Jack Picaro lost his Ghost Rifle—the firearm he invented, the one that never missed its target. The loss of the rifle calmed the hellraiser in his soul. Instead of returning to the gambling halls and whiskey bars of St. Louis, Jack has spent the last decade as a fur trapper in Wyoming’s Wild River Range, married to Sky, the daughter of an Arikara war chief. Then, after helping rescue U.S. soldiers captured by Crow Indians in the Rocky Mountains, Jack hears the familiar bell-like report of his Ghost Rifle. Determined to retrieve his deadly property, he travels deep into Lakota territory, facing down old enemies—and resuming old sinful habits—unaware of what awaits him when he eventually returns home to his family. “Few Western writers today can spin a tale with style, wit, and rawness better than Max McCoy.” —Johnny D. Boggs, Western Heritage and Spur Award-winning author of West Texas Kill

American Odyssey

In the Old West, murder is a way of life. But psychic detective Ophelia Wylde is dealing out her own brand of justice by talking to the victims. . .after they're dead. Ghost in the machine. It's one of the strangest trials in Colorado history. A "spirit photographer" is accused of fraud, and Ophelia Wylde agrees to examine the man's ghostly portraits and testify in court. In a sealed room, she is presented with five photographs. Four are obvious fakes. But one photo--featuring a powerful politician, Jackson Miles, with a sorrowful ghost in chains behind his shoulder--is the real McCoy. When Ophelia makes contact, the spirit is in such agony that she's unable to learn anything but his name: Angus Wright. Intrigued, Ophelia sets out to learn more about the wronged Mr. Wright and discovers he was murdered nearly twenty years ago during the Gold Rush. The politician is somehow involved, and Ophelia has to watch her step. Because the living are much more dangerous than the dead.

The Spirit Is Willing

Bloody Bill Quantrill, one of the most notorious and brutal guerrilla fighters for the South in the Civil War, relates his side of the story, detailing his many murderous exploits, including his hell-raising days with Frank and Jesse James. Original.

I, Quantrill

Federal trooper Zach Thomas goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of outlaws and take down the ruthless, killer Alf Bolin.

Hellfire Canyon

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF SONS OF FIRE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Once mortal enemies, Frank and Patrick Fenn join forces to protect their family from the Union Army that has taken all they have in the bloody Missouri-Kansas war. Following the path of Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill and his outlaw raiders, the brothers seek sanctuary in Texas. Carrying all their possessions in a stolen military wagon, the Fenn brothers set out with their feisty sister, Caitlin; Frank's loyal wife, Jenny; a courageous half-breed named Trudy; Frank's young son; and an ailing infant. But harsh weather, horse-thieving refugees, and Yankee patrols are the least of their enemies. Across the frontier, the Fenn brothers find themselves wanted men. They are hunted by a ruthless Union commander and a murderous Osage tracker armed with the superior firepower of the repeating rifle. Their chase will end in an explosive showdown between those who kill for glory—and those who fight to survive. “Max McCoy is one of the finest of today’s new crop of western writers.”—Don Coldsmith, author of Runestone

Home to Texas

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SIXTH RIDER SONS OF FIRE ON THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR THREE BROTHERS FIND THEMSELVES DEADLY ENEMIES.... BROTHERS-IN-ARMS On the eve of the Civil War the hardworking, hard-fighting Fenn family is caught in the middle of a bloody guerrilla war along the Missouri-Kansas border. While Frank marries a pretty abolitionist and goes east to serve the Union cause, hotheaded Zachary joins the guerrilla chieftain William Quantrill and rides with such future outlaws as the Younger brothers and Frank and Jesse James. Patrick—who is unsure of his loyalties—heads for the Rockies in an attempt to escape the war, but finds there is no escape from his blood ties. Meanwhile, their Missouri farm is burned to the ground and the rest of the family, led by their strong-willed sister, Caitlin, is left to fend for themselves in a ravaged land. Fate has taken them down different paths, but before the war comes to a close, the Fenns are destined for one last fiery reunion that will force them to choose between honor and blood. "Personal struggles and enduring family ties form the emotional core of[this] novel...very readable." —Publishers Weekly "Max McCoy is one of the finest of today's new crop of western writers."—Don Coldsmith, author of Track of the Bear

Sons of Fire

RIDE ON THE WILD SIDE They came of age in a lawless land—former cowboys and wage earners who'd found another way of life. Now they were the most famous outlaws in the West: the Wild Bunch, led by' Gentleman Bill Doolin and sparked by the nerve of Sam Dalton, known as the Choctaw Kid. The Wild Bunch held up banks and trains across the Territories and Kansas. But the boys lived by their own code, proud that they'd never killed during a robbery— no bank clerk, train crew member, lawman, nor bystander. The Oklahoma Territory town of Ingalls turned a blind eye to the outlaws, who spent their money in the saloons and whorehouses. But while Sam Dalton wavered between giving up the outlaw life to marry a pretty teenaged prostitute and busting his brother Emmett out of federal prison in Kansas, the U.S. Department of Justice was massing an army of lawmen to raid the outlaw town...and shut the Wild Bunch down for good. "Max McCoy is one of the finest of today's new crop of western writers."—Don Coldsmith. author of Runestone THE SEQUEL TO THE AWARD-WINNING NOVEL THE SIXTH RIDER THE WILD RIDER HE WAS ONE OF THE LAST SURVIVORS OF THE INFAMOUS DALTON GANG… NOW HE’S RIDING TO DESTINY WITH THE WILD BUNCH

The Wild Rider

WINNER OF THE MEDICINE PIPE BEARER’S AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL FROM WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA THE MAKING OF AN OUTLAW They were kin to the infamous James and Younger clans—the hard-riding, hard-shooting Dalton boys of Kansas, sired by a drunk, raised by a Bible-believing mama, scratching to survive in a West being tamed by the law. Samuel Coleman Dalton was the youngest, and at the age of thirteen he had dreams of an honest life. But one day an older brother was gunned down in cold blood, and Sam vowed to track down the coward who'd pulled the trigger. The trail of vengeance led straight into Indian Territory, and young Sam grew up fast, gaining a reputation and a name: the Choctaw Kid. When at last he rejoined his other brothers, the legendary Dalton Gang was born, cutting a violent trail in search of riches and renown that led to a last-stand showdown in the Daltons' hometown, where the outlaw band—surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned—faced death by hanging...or death from flying lead. "I grew up in Coffeyvilie, site of the Dalton raid. I have put my fingers in the bulletholes in the storefronts. This book is real. Max McCoy is one of the finest of today's new crop of western writers." —Don Coldsmith, author of Track of the Bear THE AWARD-WINNING NOVEL BY MAX McCOY The Sixth Rider THE DALTON BOYS ON THE OUTLAW TRAIL FOR GLORY AND GOLD…

The Sixth Rider

A psychic brings killers to justice in this historical mystery: “McCoy has a gift for capturing the Old West in all its colorful and outrageous glory” (Margaret Coel, New York Times-bestselling author of the Wind River Mysteries). From sea to shining sea, the invention known as the telegraph would tame the American frontier. But for psychic detective Ophelia Wylde, the wild west is about to get wilder . . . Messages from Beyond? When telegraph keys across the country begin bursting into flames—and chattering ghostly nonsense—the terror and turmoil is enough to bring the railways, banks, and news industry to a standstill. There’s only one person they can turn to: Mrs. Ophelia Wylde, a young widow turned detective who has famously brought murderers to justice—by speaking to their victims on the other side. Are the recent telegraph mishaps a message from beyond? Ophelia’s not sure, but the fact that the key’s last operator, Lightning “Hapless” Hopkins, has been poisoned is enough to raise her darkest suspicions. It’s up to Ophelia to unravel the riddle of the ghostly wire tap, solve the murder of Hapless Hopkins, and expose the secret history of the telegraph’s little-known co-inventor . . . before her own life is on the line.

Giving Up the Ghost

From Max McCoy, the Spur Award-winning author of Damnation Road, comes a powerful new novel in the acclaimed Ghost Rifle series—the epic Western saga of a man who made a gun, and a gun that triggered vengeance. . . . A RIFLE’S LEGACY, A KILLER’S QUEST It is 1849. More than twenty years since Jack Picaro invented the legendary Ghost Rifle. Ever since, he has been a man on the run. Haunted by his past, plagued by his debts—and wanted for murder—Jack fled to the mountains, unaware that his name has been cleared of all charges. Now there is only one person hunting him down. The son he never knew he had. A son who vows to find him—and kill him—as revenge. . . . Gus Picaro is only twenty-four, but has blazed a bold trail across the American West. From fighting in the Mexican War to prospecting for gold in California, he has sought his own fortune. From the Mosquito Range in Colorado to the open plains of Montana and Utah, he has searched for the father who abandoned him. Finally, arriving at a remote pony express station—with his finger on the trigger of his father’s Ghost Rifle—Gus will meet the famous Jack Picaro face to face. And together, the two men will meet their fates. For better or worse. Dead or alive. . . “Few Western writers today can spin a tale with the style, wit, rawness better than Max McCoy.” —Johnny D. Boggs, Western Heritage and Spur Award-winning author of West Texas Kill

The California Trail

The Daring And The Doomed. . . It's the last chance for Jacob Gamble, Rough Rider, outlaw and man of a few principles. Nearing 50 and flat broke, Jacob bends his own rule about robbing trains. But by the time he reaches the payroll safe on a Rock Island train, he finds another thief there first with a bullet in his head. Jacob is caught holding the bag--and turned into hero. A broke hero. In A Place Called Damnation Road. . . Shackled by unwanted fame, running from a life gone wrong, and raising the suspicions of a Pinkerton detective, Jacob listens to a woman: beautiful and tattooed by the Indians who seized her as a child. Olivia Weathers knows of a treasure hidden in a cave along the Jornada del Muerto--a merciless hundred mile stretch of hell on earth guarded by Apache warriors. Now, Jacob will follow Olivia into the most savage and deadly territory in the southwest--where few ever come out of Canyon Diablo alive. "Max McCoy is a masterful storyteller. A force of fascinating characters and unexpected plot twists create a can't-put-it-down story." --Cotton Smith, author of Spirit Rider

Damnation Road

A gripping investigation of the violent murder of two women at the hands of religious, anti-government extremists in the Oklahoma Panhandle--and a profound search for the nature of good and evil in one of the most fiercely independent and traditionally conservative corners of America. On the day before Easter in 2024, Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley went missing. Butler, 27, was embroiled in a custody battle for her children with their paternal grandmother and Kelley, 39, was a court-approved supervisor for the day's visitation. They were on their way from rural Kansas to the Oklahoma Panhandle to celebrate Butler's daughter's sixth birthday. But they never arrived. Family members found Butler's blue Kia on a lonely dirt road south of the state line. Blood, broken glasses, a pistol magazine, and a shattered hammer littered the scene, but the women were gone. Weeks later, the children's grandmother and Butler's legal antagonist, along with four others, were arrested on suspicion of murder. All were members of a religious, anti-government group that called themselves "God's Misfits." Authorities later recovered the bodies of Butler and Kelley from a chest freezer buried deep in a cow pasture. The murders shocked the conscience of the panhandle community and left many asking how such violence could occur in a place with a proud tradition of faith and fair play. A riveting blend of true crime and moral inquiry, God's Misfits goes far deeper than the sensational headlines. Through rigorous, exclusive reporting and fast-paced storytelling, Max McCoy peels back the layers of a rural community steeped in conservative politics, deep faith, and generational distrust of government--fertile ground for the sovereign-citizen ideology, conspiratorial thinking, and violent imagination that gripped God's Misfits. In his tireless search for the nature of good and evil, McCoy reveals how devotion warps into zealotry, how patriotism is weaponized, and how backroads communities quietly incubate extremism. God's Misfits forces us to confront the fault lines of our society and ask what these murders tell us about the soul of the heartland.

God's Misfits

“An instant Old West classic! Max McCoy writes about mountain men and the fur trade with passion.” —Stuart Rosebrook, editor True West magazine Three-time Spur Award winner Max McCoy combines fast-paced action, frontier history, and powerful family drama in this epic saga of life, love, and death in the American west. SEARCHING FOR A GHOST, A LEGEND, AND A DREAM . . . Descended from a long line of ramblers and rogues, Jack Picaro came to America to seek his fortune. But after killing his best friend in a drunken duel, the apprentice gunsmith flees westward, leaving behind children he does not know, Gus and April. As Jack ventures up the Missouri River, he finds an unspoiled land where a man can live free—and also be attacked by an Arikara war party. His rifle stolen in the bloody skirmish, Jack sets out alone to reclaim it. His wild escapade ends in a fight to the death with a legendary Crow warrior named Standing Wolf. So begins a fateful epic search across the last frontiers of the untamed West. From the muddy banks of the Mississippi to the shining peaks of the Rockies, Jack Picaro will leave a trail of clues for an abandoned son, Gus, to find him: a famous gunsmith who will make history with a weapon of his own design—and forged a legend that would be passed down for generations. This is the story of . . . THE GHOST RIFLE

The Ghost Rifle

Andy Kelsey is a reporter who may have just stumbled on the story of a lifetime. He's infiltrated a white separatist group in the Ozarks, an underground organization ready to fight and die-and kill-for their extreme beliefs. The deeper Kelsey gets in the group, the more he's trusted, and the bigger his story becomes. Until he realizes the shocking extent of their scheme... The separatists have finalized plans for a spectacular cataclysm that they hope will bring about Armageddon. What terrifies Kelsey is that they have the weapon and the means to achieve their mad goal. Will he be able to fight them from the inside without being discovered? Or has he gotten in too deep to ever get out?

Hinterland

Everybody knows that on April 3,1882, Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford. Or was he? What if Jesse somehow cheated the assassin's bullet and survived to tell his remarkable tale to Missouri's other famous son, Mark Twain? Max McCoy, an award-winning novelist and investigative reporter, presents a captivating story of switched identities and fractured morality that puts a surprising new spin on the legend of America's Robin Hood.... JESSE: A NOVEL OF THE OUTLAW JESSE JAMES Civil War guerrilla. Notorious bank robber. Outlaw hero. Most of Jesse's life remains a mystery, obscured by the dubious "facts" that have gathered upon his grave. But the curious manuscript at the core of this book-found recently in a southeast Kansas junk shop-claims to be his never-before-published autobiography, as told to the famous author of Huckleberry Finn. Consistent with historic record, it presents a compelling scenario for Jesse's survival-without disputing the DNA evidence recovered from the outlaw's grave in 1995. Vivid and engaging, Jesse brings to life the fictional meeting of America's most celebrated folk hero and its most beloved author-in their own words. Praise for Max McCoy "Not only has McCoy captured Twain's voice with consummate skill, his account of Jesse's life is more compelling than the outlaw's manufactured legend. A brilliantly crafted look at two of our best-known icons." -Fred Bean, author of Black Gold and Eden

Jesse

A Breed Apart

The upper Arkansas River courses through the heart of America from its headwaters near the Continental Divide above Leadville, Colorado, to Arkansas City, just above the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Max McCoy embarked on a trip of 742 miles in search of the river’s unique story. Part adventure and part reflection, steeped in the natural and cultural history of the Arkansas Valley, Elevations is McCoy’s account of that journey. Going by kayak when he can—by Jeep, on foot, or by other means when he has to—McCoy takes us with him, navigating the Arkansas River as it reveals its nature and tests his own. Along the way, and when he isn’t battling the current for his overturned kayak; braving a frigid Christmas Eve along the river; or joining the search for a drowning victim, he steps out to explore the world beyond the river’s banks. Here for instance is Camp Amache, where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Here is Ludlow, where thirteen women and children died in a standoff between striking coal miners and the militia in 1914. Farther along we find Sand Creek, site of a massacre by US soldiers in 1864, and, uncomfortably close, Garden City, where white supremacists were charged with planning a terror attack on Somali refugees in 2016. Whether traveling back in time, pausing in the present, or looking forward, Elevations captures the Arkansas River in its thrilling moments and placid stretches, in its natural splendor and degradation at human hands. The book shows us the river as a flowing repository of human history and, in the telling of this gifted writer, as a life-changing experience.

Elevations

It is the most coveted of all ancient artifacts. In it is written the history--and the fate--of every human being. And he who owns it writes his own destiny. Now Indiana Jones follows a trail of danger, magic, and archaeological mystery through the war-torn Orient, from Rangoon to the Egyptian desert, searching for the secret underground hiding place of the all-powerful Omega Book. But with a beautiful woman seeking her missing magician husband, and a vengeance-crazed Japanese spymaster hot on his heels, Indy is running out of time. If the Omega Book falls into the wrong hands, not only his own fate but the fate of the world will be at the mercy of a madman bent on writing humanity's final chapter