NCW Libraries

Missouri, 1860. Rumors of war between the North and South are spreading across the land. In rural Green County, many of the farmers are already choosing sides. But not John Zachary. His loyalties lie with his family first--and his heart is telling him to go west. Hoping to build a new life in the fertile valleys of Oregon, he convinces his best friend, Emmitt Braxton, to pack up their families and join him on a wagon train across the Oregon Trail....

When logger Decker Galloway sets his sights -- and axes and saws -- on a lakeshore village inhabited by Norwegian settlers, Preacher and his friend, the warrior Tall Dog, remind the Norwegians of their Viking ancestry and declare war on Galloways' gang of bloodthirsty gunslingers.

After a wagon train ambush, Preacher is hired by a St. Louis businessman looking for justice, and he must face off against the biggest, baddest frontiersman of them all to get the gold - and save a young woman caught in the middle of an all-out war. "Preacher is no hired killer. When a wagon train is brutally ambushed on the Sante Fe Trail though, he can't say no to the St. Louis businessman willing to pay him for justice. It's not the stolen gold...

"A cattle ranch stalked by the ultimate predator. A heiffer gutted and beheaded by razor-sharp claws. A ranch hand crushed and shredded by powerful jaws. According to legend-foretold by Sioux Chief Red Otter-the attacks are an omen of terrible things to come. When a grizzly attacks a man or his property during a blue moon, it is a sign that the bear has been sent from someone on the other side seeking revenge against the man that killed him. And that...

"There is more to the history of the transcontinental than connecting the United States. Most of the workers were of Chinese descent and were treated unfairly. Learn how workers protested for better treatment"--

"At long last, U.S. Marshal Aaron Mackey and Deputy Billy Sunday will see crime baron James Grant and his kill-crazy cronies stand trial for the mayhem and suffering they unleashed on the people of Dover Station. But as Montana Territory's statehood is approaching, murdering devils like Grant can no longer be tolerated in positions of political power. Or can they? Montana's capital of Helena follows its own set of laws--laws that not only set Grant...

"In the pantheon of American icons, the cowboy embodies the traits of 'rugged individualism', independent, solitary, and stoical. In reality, cowboys were grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal workers, who responded to the abuses of their employers in a series of militant strikes. Their resistance arose from the rise and demise of a "beef bonanza" that attracted international capital. Business interests approached the market with the expectation...

"A revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made. The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, and the dawn of the conservation movement. It inspired legends, such as that icon of rugged individualism, the cowboy. Yet this extraordinary...

The author of "Lonesome Dove" offers a brilliant and searing history of the bloody massacres that marked the settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. Photos & illustrations throughout.

Young colt Sky was born with the urge to run. Alongside his band, he moves across the range searching for fresh water and abundant grazing. But humans have begun to encroach on Sky's homelands. With fewer resources to share, Sky knows that he must leave if his family is to survive. He hopes that one day, he'll be strong and brave enough to return and challenge the stallion to lead the herd. Being a lone wild horse in a vast landscape is not easy,...