John D. Nesbitt Knihy

Blue Is Not the Word Rick Lemoore is drinking beer when he recognizes a backhoe operator named Tragg Tustin, who was said to have left town years earlier with Lynette Cole, a girl both of them had been dating. Seeing Tustin in town again, with a different woman, makes Rick wonder what ever happened to Lynette. Rick's curiosity picks up when he sees Tustin out driving the unpaved roads in the grasslands where Rick goes antelope hunting. Rick follows him for a while and watches from a distance. The next time Rick is out hunting, he is sure that Tustin is following him. Rick has a hunting rifle in the gun rack, but he is glad he has his pistol when something prompts him to take a look inside an old implement shed in the lonely ranch country. Buckskin Trail Tag Benson is looking for a lost packhorse when he finds the body of a man in the grassland. His trail leads him to the dead man's widow, who is very reserved and says she doesn't need any help. When his trail takes him to a neighboring ranch, he meets a hardcase who tells him to watch where he is going. Benson's search for the lost horse leads him next to an eccentric sheep queen and from there to a box canyon in a maze of buttes. He crosses paths again with the deadly ranch hand and then has to settle things at the ranch itself before he meets with the dead man's widow one more time.

A Jimmy Clevis Novel Jimmy Clevis is out of work and needs some money. So when an old man named Tull asks him to do a quick job for him, Clevis agrees. All Clevis has to do is head south to Paloma Springs to find Tull's son. Sounds like easy money, right? Wrong. Clevis isn't just riding into Paloma Springs-he's riding straight into a tangled net of lies, stealing, blackmail, hidden identities . . . and murder.

"An aspiring Ohio transplant's dream of owning his own spread in turn-of-the-century Wyoming is put on hold due to a series of inconvenient murders. Earl Miner, who owns the Pick, makes no bones about insisting that every man who works for him file a claim to 160 acres under the Homestead Act and then sell it to him so he won't be troubled by competing ranchers in the Decker Basin. As soon as cowpuncher Reese Hartley bridles at that arrangement, foreman Dick Prentiss gives him his walking papers, and Hartley packs his gear. Lacking any particular plan or destination, Hartley wanders off, encountering what seems to be virtually every woman in town: Pick hand Ben Stillwell's sweetheart, Bess Ackerman, niece of grain broker Mike Ackerman; Muriel Dulse, a grass widow who also dreams of owning a place despite the tight rein Doyle Treece and the Hudson family, the cousins with whom she lives, keep on her; and Nancy Wisner, a young and flirtatious cousin of the Hudsons. As Nesbitt (Dusk Along the Niobrara, 2019, etc.) shows, however, his most fraught encounters are with aggressive local men who challenge his plan to secure his own land, get physical with him, and invite him to get out of town. While Hartley, who's a good deal less confrontational than either his adversaries or most Western heroes, is still pondering what to do next, Ben Stillwell vanishes and then turns up choked to death, followed by Nancy Wisner. When Treece accuses Blue, a mysterious newcomer to the community, of killing Nancy, blacksmith/marshal Jock Mosby arrests and jails him, but Hartley doesn't think that's the end of the story, and of course he's right. The slight mystery offers a handy peg for Nesbitt's latest valentine to the Wyoming frontier he clearly loves"-- Provided by publisher

If you have grown weary of SEX and VIOLENCE-- If you feel you have overdosed with accounts of TAWDRY LUST, POLITICAL CORRUPTION, and BRUTAL MURDERS-- Try a refreshing change. Sip from the cup of comedy, parody, and satire, laced now and then with poetry and song, topped with a dollop of pristine ROMANCE. Yes, gentle reader, you may fortify yourself against the VILE DEGRADATION and CRUEL INJUSTICES of the modern age by sampling from the medicinal tonic of the ADVENTURES OF THE RAMROD RIDER!

This collection contains seven works of fiction ranging in length from short story to novella. The stories take place in rural California from 1964 to 1970, and they continue the mystery/noir style in which John D. Nesbitt has gained recognition. The world of these stories is born out of a vision of hard-edged realism, in which decent characters struggle with the circumstances of a hard-working life as well as with amoral drifters, opportunists, and criminals. The romance is spare, and the sex is not always pristine. But the main characters persist and survive. John D. Nesbitt's work is consistently praised for its achievement in character, setting, prose style, and story line subtlety. This collection includes the short story "At the End of the Orchard," which won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for best short fiction in 2010.

Owen Felver was on his way from the Wolf River country to the Laramie Range, hoping to earn summer wages, when he stopped off in Cameron, Wyoming. As a fellow who enjoyed his pleasures, he had a beer in the saloon, but then he got sidetracked sticking up for a girl. Her name turned out to be Jenny Quoin, and one of the bigwigs in town didn't want to leave her alone. Felver didn't like to be told to move along, and he and Jenny developed a mutual interest, so he pitched camp near town and took a look into things. Soon enough, he had thugs trying to rough him up. So he looked closer. As he did, he discovered a web of theft, invasion of privacy, blackmail, and eventually murder.

Travis Quinn doesn't have much luck picking friends. First, a friend gets him fired from a ranch. Then he heads down the Powder River, meeting another "friend" who puts in a good word and gets him hired at the Lockhart Ranch. And, if the rumors are true, this friend might just get Travis killed.

Tom Atkins is out of work. So when the Norden brothers ride into his camp one night and offer him a job, he figures he might as well accept. The Norden boys are nice enough and they just bought a small ranch nearby. All things considered, Atkins could do worse. But gradually, as time goes by, Atkins begins to notice things. Small things, but troubling. Some of the folks in town don't seem too friendly to anyone from the Norden ranch. And some of their neighbors are downright rude and insulting. Small things have a tendency to become big things, though, and it won't be long before Tom Atkins realizes exactly what he got himself into when he hired on to work for the Norden boys.

A Jimmy Clevis Novel Clevis always says that when he sees a pretty girl walking down the street and looking over her shoulder, he pays attention, especially if she is walking fast. From the time he sees Helen hurrying down the street, Clevis knows she is in some sort of trouble. First he is curious. Then he wants to help. But helping Helen is no simple matter, as he soon finds out. She is trapped in a dark web of lies, deceit . . . and murder. And the more he tries to help her, the more the sticky strands of that web snare Clevis too. Clevis knows there has to be a way to free both of them. He just has to find it while they are still alive.

A Jimmy Clevis Novel This is the third in a mini-series about Jimmy Clevis, the good-natured narrator who appeared earlier in Rancho Alegre and Red Wind Crossing. In this novel, Jimmy sets out to find a missing man. His travels take him to Wyoming, where he comes to the small town of Raven Springs and a couple of roadside inns. People seem to disappear in this place, and in the course of Jimmy's stay, he has to untangle the threads of missing persons, altered identity, greed, and murder.