Patrick
Dearen

Halloween 1860 — wolves howling, bats crossing the moon. Eleven-year-old Bird and his twin brother ride a Butterfield stagecoach into Texas. The dark woods may hide headless horsemen, glowing tombstones, and wandering spirits. When the brothers meet Zeb, a slave boy, they venture into the wilderness searching for buried treasure — enough to buy Zeb his freedom.

For nineteen years, Wash Baker has been haunted by firing in darkness at what he thought was a grizzly — only to kill his own young son. In 1899, confirmed grizzly tracks emerge in the Davis Mountains, drawing together Wash, his daughter Grace, and Trey — the now-adult survivor of that terrible night. A twelve-year-old Mexican boy, Rosindo, also seeks the bear, hoping its death will free his dead father's wandering soul. Based on the actual 1899 hunt for the only documented grizzly ever found in Texas.

1917. The Mexican Revolution has the Big Bend aflame. Disillusioned reporter Jack Landon flees to Esperanza — a small Mexican-heritage village on the Rio Grande that Texas Rangers Company B has unjustly branded a bandit den. Jack befriends a teenage boy and his teacher sister, Mary. When a day of reckoning descends, the entire village is engulfed. Based on the darkest moment in Texas Rangers history: the Porvenir Massacre of January 28, 1918.

In 1870, Jake Graves made an impossible choice he's been tormented by for decades. Now in 1917 on an isolated Texas-Mexico border ranch, he learns his daughter wants to marry his Apache foreman. Before Jake can process the news, Mexican bandits — possibly led by a shape-shifting tlehuelpuchi — kidnap both young women. Jake and the Apache man he despises must ride together through a mysterious, haunted desert to bring them home. Based on actual events.

1881. Texas Ranger Sam DeJarnett lives only for vengeance after Mescalero Apaches killed his wife and unborn child. He leads a ten-man pursuit deep into the bitterly cold Sierra Diablo. In the Apache band rides Nejeunee — a twenty-year-old widow with a baby, burning with equal hatred of white men. High in the Diablo snows, the two are fated to meet. What follows will shatter everything each has believed about the other's people — and about themselves.

1869. Clay Andrews rides to the Pecos River searching for answers about his dead sister — but in a dead man's boot he discovers a map to rumored gold in the Guadalupe Mountains. When Comanches approach, he flees to find Lil Casner — long abused in an arranged marriage — at a lone wagon. Her obsessed husband hunts the same map. What follows is Comanche attacks, kidnapping, and a harrowing chase through Apache country all the way to Skeleton Cave and the Guadalupes, where Indian spirits may guard a golden hoard.

West Texas, December 1884. A blizzard drives hundreds of thousands of cattle south in the most catastrophic drift in history. Zeke Boles — a Black former slave — is running from a hangman's noose when he finds Will Brite, a white cowhand trapped under his horse in barbed wire. Their unlikely bond through blizzards, lawless gunmen, and the secrets haunting each man becomes a searing journey about guilt, redemption, and the impossibility — or possibility — of forgiveness. "The very essence of what great fiction should be." — Richard S. Wheeler, six-time Spur Award winner.

Texas, 1886. Three men haunted by the past, a girl haunted by the present — all on a collision course for Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos. When Mexican bandits abduct Liz Anne, young cowhand Tom joins four riders pursuing them across 79 miles of merciless desert. The haunting memories each man carries prove as deadly as the outlaws ahead. Texas itself is the primary antagonist — pitiless, with no hope of rain or mercy. "A classic, well-told Western — a book you can't put down." — San Angelo Standard-Times.

The Great Depression, 1932. Thousands of desperate people ride the rails searching for jobs, homes, and hope. For Ish Watson, grabbing the rungs of a passing freight train bound for a dying relative on the Texas Gulf Coast becomes a harrowing journey through hunger, hardship, violence, and unexpected grace — a portrait of human endurance at its rawest and most real.

Central Texas, 1934. Fourteen-year-old Josh and his friend Shan face the worst the Dust Bowl can offer — black blizzards destroying crops, drought cracking the earth, wild animals spreading deadly rabies. From a terrifying rabid animal attack to a deadly flood to a barreling freight train, Josh is in for an adventure that will push him and everyone he loves to their absolute limits.

A 19th century cowboy, entirely out of place in the 20th century. Pushed out by a modern world that has no room for him, Charlie Lyles steals a horse and saddle and rides into rugged canyon country in search of the lost Old West — setting off a manhunt that pits old-time cowboy instincts against helicopters, radios, and assault weapons. A story about dreams that should never die. "An instant classic that deserves a place on anyone's list of Best Western Novels." — Roundup Magazine, WWA.

Ricardo has known only poverty in Mexico but dreams of a better life across the Rio Grande. He enlists a coyote to smuggle him over into a West Texas world of hardship and prejudice — but endures it all to support his family. The novel also follows Ann Rawlings, a widow fighting to preserve her ranch; a troubled Border Patrolman; and a bigoted foreman who considers Mexican workers less than human. "A vivid description of what a common man goes through seeking work in a different country." — San Angelo Standard-Times.

Texas, 1867. Eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings crosses the state on a wagon train. Riding alongside it on his first war trail is eleven-year-old Hunting Bear — a Comanche boy taught to hate white people, as Fish has been taught to hate Comanches. When fate throws the two together, they must bridge that hatred and find a way to prevent their peoples from fighting. Lone Star Heroes Series, Book 1.

Spring, 1868. Fish Rawlings has always dreamed of being a cowboy — and now his uncle's cattle drive will take him all the way to legendary Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. But the roughest stretch of trail in Texas will either make a cowhand out of a boy or break him entirely. Stampedes, river crossings, rustlers, and the brutal Texas sun await him on a trail where only the toughest survive. Lone Star Heroes Series, Book 2.

Big Bend, Texas, 1869. Legend speaks of a lost gold mine deep in the Chisos Mountains — and when Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid discover a dying Apache in the desert, they realize the legend is real. Now they alone know the way to the mine. But a journey through Apache country won't be easy, even with an Apache boy guiding them, and the desert keeps its own deadly secrets. Lone Star Heroes Series, Book 3.