Showing results by narrator "Eric G. Dove" in All Categories

At first, Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson think it must be a mirage. If real, the willow trees they see on the horizon mean that water is nearby, and in this dusty stretch of the Southwest, water is rarer than gold. They rub the grit from their eyes, yet the sight remains. There really is water up ahead - and death just around the corner. Someone has opened a sluicegate, allowing all the precious liquid to drain into the dirt. When Twister and Chuckaluck close the gate and the roaring stops, a woman screams, "Don't let him get away! He was going to kill me!"

Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson are making their way through a West Texas canyon when they smell death. Finally, the two emerge onto the mesa, where they encounter the site of a massacre. A whole family of deer lies dead around a small pond, their skeletons bleached by the Texas sun. Someone has poisoned the water hole. Then a rider comes around the corner, rifle in hand, and gets the drop on Twister and Chuckaluck.

Sheriff Stevens should be the happiest man in Powder Valley. After a shootout with a gang of outlaws nearly cost him his life, he promised Sally he would hang his guns up for good. But trouble is coming to the Valley. In nearby Dusty Canyon, a troop of hooded killers menaces the honest miners who toil in the local goldmines. The local sheriff has already been wounded once trying to stop them, but he continues the fight - and begs for Pat's help.

Three years ago, the sheriff of Chapparell, Arizona, was shot dead. Eighteen-year-old Hugh Aiken was falsely accused of the murder and forced to ride south with a lynch mob hot on his trail. He spent the time since hiding out in Mexico, growing from a fresh-faced Texas youth into the hardened gunman known far and wide as the Rio Kid. Now his exile is over. Chapparell has changed since the Kid last set foot on its dusty streets. Most of the ranchers are dead broke, save for one bloodthirsty scoundrel, Henry Pelham.

After three years in exile in Mexico, the Rio Kid slipped back into the United States, evading the clutches of a Texas Ranger, a crooked rancher, and a gang of desperadoes. Now he's ready to press on to Arizona to clear his name and find his fortune. There may be a $10,000 price on his head, but the Kid is unafraid - he has his gun, his horse, and his freedom. When a scream splits the black Texas night, the outlaw rides toward it. In a godforsaken cave, four men are beating a terrified young boy. The Kid draws two .45s and steps into the line of fire.

After being run out of Arizona on a trumped-up murder charge, the Rio Kid spent three years in Mexico, learning how to shoot quicker than any man on the range. Now he's headed home to clear his name. But before he reaches Arizona, the Kid will have to pass through the deadliest border region in the West. Nestled snugly in a bend of the Rio Grande, Hell's Half Acre is a lawless outpost claimed by both Mexico and the United States, and belonging to neither. There, justice comes from the barrel of a six-gun, and the only sentence is death.

A lone rider stops at the border, preparing to return to the United States for the first time in three years. When he left for Mexico, the Rio Kid was 18, a terrified youngster fleeing a fraudulent murder charge. He returns a grown man, with blood on his hands and twin .45s on his hips. His destination is a small town in Arizona, where he plans to clear his name and reclaim his legacy. But there is a lot of trail between here and there. Wanted signs paper every border town, offering $10,000 for the Rio Kid - dead or alive.

Carved into the rugged landscape of the Big Bend region by the hoofs of galloping horses bearing desperate men, it crosses the muddy waters of the Rio Grande into Mexico, where freedom - of a kind - can be found. Ten years ago Jim Markle rode the trail south, fleeing for his life. Now he's coming home with a new name: Stormy Knight. For years young Jim had chafed under his stepfather's whip. Everything changed the night he gunned down the evil old man.

The Vietnam draft is removing the staff of a rural Wisconsin bar one by one. Dishboys, bouncers, and a bartender named Roger are the latest to get induction notices, each showing a proud face while secretly terrified to face the medical examiners who will determine their fate. When help comes from an unexpected place, new problems arise. Shortlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015, Larson's intimate psychological portrait of fear takes the familiar and turns it into something utterly original.

Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson can't catch a break. All they want is a trail to follow straight through to Mexico, where a ranching job offers honest work, peace, and quiet. But no matter how fast they ride, trouble keeps hot on their heels. A gunshot breaks the silence of the lonely wagon road. By the time Twister and Chuckaluck reach the corpse, the killer is long gone. In the victim's pocket they find a letter from a woman begging for help, a woman whose savior now lies dead in the alkali dust.

Do spirits return? Houdini sneaks into the Winchester Mystery House to find out. Set in 1915 during the San Francisco World's Fair, King of Chains looks back at the mad passions of the first half of the 20th century.

Vacaville layabouts Constantine and Ralphie get a rude awakening when the rodeo hits town. Constantine has been getting by managing his late father's photo shop until he meets sisters Allison and Lisa, itinerant rodeo ticket-takers who end up moving into his life and his bed. But things can't stay the same after Ralphie's addiction issue forces them to make a choice about what they're willing to give each other as they grapple with issues of identity, leadership, and sexuality.

Forty years after her son's tragic death, Betty tells the story to a fellow traveler in Ireland. Interspersed with her version of events, we hear her son, Stephen, telling us his own story of longing and loss and about the lunge at life that became his undoing.

It's 1980 on Florida's Gulf Coast. Sun, drugs, gambling debts, and dirty deals push navy-prison parolee Scotland Ross deeper into the life of crime he never wanted. His sister's life, a potential newfound love, and his own freedom are all on the line as he tangles with a redneck gangster intent on becoming the state's next governor.

Vicky Clay awakens with chills. She's still glowing from her victory in last night's steeplechase - the genteel form of horseracing for which the Virginia gentry lives and dies - but that's not why her skin tingles. She has been poisoned, and within seconds she's as useless to the world as a thoroughbred with a broken leg. The stakes are high in the world of Virginia horseracing, where fortunes are won and lost by a hair.

The lands of the Five Duchies are in chaos. They are leaderless, and each land stands alone. Besieged by barbarians, savages, fell beasts, and infighting, few doubt that the end times are upon them. Yet all is not lost. In the East, Lady Katarina Emberhill has begun an uprising against the Usurper and those who follow her carry relics from the time of the High Kings.

Tara Pierpont has had it with her interfering parents who want her to find a rich guy to marry just like her older sister did. She’s ready to rebel against them, and a chance for her rebellion appears in the form of a handsome waiter at an exclusive Hampton’s party.

Tragic events unfold in a snowy, sleepy Colorado town. From the first scene, in which a man sits alone in the cold, watching a father and son in a diner, you know something is about to go horribly wrong.

In Eoriel, the High Kings are legend: rulers who once stood against the darkness and ruled the world for two thousand turns of peace and prosperity. In the long turns since their fall during the Sundering, Eoriel's civilization has faded. Dark men and darker beings have torn down and destroyed the old works. While some have held out against the grind of history, other places have been reduced to primitive tribes of savages, worshiping dark spirits and demons as their gods.

Despite that outrageous threat, plantation owner Boyd Jardine buys Caleb and puts him to work in the fields. But soon Jardine discovers that his new slave is both better educated and more widely traveled than himself. When Jardine's pregnant wife dies and Caleb saves the unborn child, Jardine grows increasingly dependent on him not only as a servant but also as a companion - and so their relationship as master and slave begins to change.