Showing results by narrator "Eric Messner" in All Categories

Hewey Calloway and his brother Walter are young men looking for work. Their first job puts them in the middle of a territory war between two powerful ranchers, C.C. Tarpley and Eli Jessup. It's a tough trail for two green cowpunchers and the forks in that trail may lead the brothers in different directions.

Hewey Calloway is between a rock and a hard place: The open range and simple life of his childhood are disappearing. He can't live a cowboy life whose time has passed and he's not ready yet for the new challenges of the 20th century, like automobiles, telephones, and barbed wire fences. He and his friends, all of them good old boys, must learn that even the best choices involve some kind of sacrifice.

After crossing the dry Arizona desert — and missing six meals in a row — Sam Flintlock is flat-out desperate. For food. For work. For lodgings. Luckily, he finds all three in the high timber country east of the Mogollon River. A very young and pretty heiress, Lucy Cullen, has an unusual proposition for the bounty hunter. She will pay him cold, hard cash to spend one full week in the gothic mansion of her murdered uncle. What’s the catch? The place is haunted....

Sam'l Flintlock has been hired to protect an innocent man who narrowly escaped the noose but everyone still seems to want dead. The murder of a school teacher sets in motion a battle to the death that pits Flintlock against the hidden man who pulls the strings in the town of Open Sky. But first Flintlock must find out who that man is, what he wants and why. As people start dying, the pieces start to fall together and Flintlock knows that for every evil deed there must be a reckoning....and Flintlock is that reckoning.

They ride after sundown. Black robed figures with skulls for faces, terrorizing the town of Recoil like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the sheriff hopes to defeat this hellish band of outlaws, he'll need back-up. Enter Colonel Shamus O'Brien. The seasoned ranch hand and patriarch has fought off more than his share of horse thieves and marauders. But he's never seen anything like these ornery devils.

Bounty-hunter turned "businessman" Rafe Kingston is the fastest gun in the west...and the last person you want to see on your doorstep. So you can imagine how the O'Brien brothers feel when this vicious vermin shows up at their ranch with a letter, signed by a US Senator, claiming he's the rightful owner of their land.

A landmark feat of innovation is about to change the American West forever. With electric cables stretching from the Colorado River to Gallup, New Mexico, a new telegraph system will connect the settlers of the Arizona Territory to the rest of the country — a dream come true for rancher Chet Byrnes and his family. But laying 400 miles of steel wire can be a deadly task. Chet has to face off with hired henchmen who would kill to sabotage the project. Chet’s nephew JD has his hands full with cutthroat rustlers on the Mexican border.

From a woman who lays claim to Chet's heart to a land ripe for grazing, the Arizona territory begins to open its arms to the dauntless determination of the Byrnes family. But with every success there comes a rising danger. There’s a sheriff who refuses to do his job. Trigger happy outlaws competing to kill them. And a mysterious rancher who’s hell bent on running a herd across Chet's land - and forcing the Texan into a war...

The Byrnes family came to Texas and carved out a place on the land. Three generations who paid in blood and treasure. Children carried off by Comanche. A brother lost to war. Lives shattered. Chet Byrnes was trying to hold the ranch together through one more winter for one more cattle drive when he hanged three horse thieves this side of the Red River - and a blood feud erupted....

Jack “Jackknife” McCabe is through with Special Ops. But in an America where politicians, pundits, and the president care more about polls than securing the borders of the Nation, “Jackknife” finds himself sucked back into the terror wars. To stop a nuclear holocaust in the heart of the country, he leads his family and fellow citizens in the battle against fanatic evil hiding behind Islam.

Bizarre murders are taking place in a fertile farming community, and the locals are quick to point fingers at Ryan and his companions. But they know another culprit is responsible. A colony of mutants has been driven from its underground home, forced to find sustenance in the light of day. And only human flesh will satisfy their hunger. Caught between a rock and a horde of hungry cannibals, Ryan and the companions face an ultimatum — help the cannies reclaim their territory, or risk becoming the next meal.

On the coast of what used to be Maine, the group's armorer, J.B. Dix, lies dying from a gunshot wound. Having no other choice, Ryan makes a deal with a local baron and his strangely beautiful wife. J.B. will get the surgery he needs when Ryan and crew rescue the couple's daughter, abducted by slavers. But the cold, deep Atlantic waters harbor predark secrets, including the terrifying specter of a USSR nuclear submarine...and its descendants.

New Hampshire is rich with big game, more than enough to feed Ryan and his hungry companions. But claims to a fallen elk get ugly and Ryan is forced to kill another hunter, the self-proclaimed king of the Granite Highlands, over the meat. Soon the hunters become the hunted as the dead man's widow gives chase, armed with predark tanks and heavy artillery. As the kill zone widens across cannibal-ridden lava fields, Ryan and his group search for leverage in the merciless landscape.

A civil war raging in the Des Moines River valley forces Ryan and his companions to take sides, or die. Because somewhere in the middle of the generations-old conflict is a lost redoubt. But Snake Eye, the deadliest gunslinger in Deathlands, stands between them and the way out. And the mutie contract chiller won't step aside until he has Ryan's head.

Searching for an operational redoubt, Ryan and his companions go up against a ruthless band of coldhearts. The shock of seeing Ryan's long-lost son as the band's point man puts the group on a new mission — rescue Dean at all cost. But when Dean shoots and wounds his father in a firefight, the strange turn of events leads the travelers deeper into the shifting sands of their own destiny. And father and son, each committed to the laws of decency and fair play, will confront an uncertain legacy.

St. Louis is a concrete jungle of fetid heat, acid rains, and cutthroats. With JB Dix gravely wounded, Ryan and his group become captive guests of a local barony. Freedom lies in the success of a deal: Recapture a runaway teen, daughter of the ailing baron. But the dangerous power behind the throne rests with a self-proclaimed holy man. His gruesome manipulation of life and death are about to put the group in a race for their own salvation. Every day is a devil's bargain in Deathlands.

In the nuke-altered America of the 21st century, time conspires against survival, especially for a legendary group of warriors led by Ryan Cawdor. Born and bred in Deathlands, Ryan dares to unlock the secrets buried deep in the wreckage of a planet. Time may be the enemy in the daily struggle to stay alive, but perhaps it can reveal something better....

Roots, once suffocating under cement, tear through the streets of London to throttle buildings. Vegetable homunculi hold up banks with automatic weapons. There is a green and blooming world beyond our own, fighting back against the human pollutant. We will launch a rescue mission to this Otherworld. But it is cruel and unknowable, and should we become tangled in its vines, more than cities will fall.

For 17 years, Ty Mattson never knew if his father survived the Mexican War. But when he receives news that his father is alive - and he's joined the Confederate forces of General John Morgan - Ty leaves home to enlist with Morgan's Raiders. Owen Mattson turns out to be everything Ty imagined he would be: a good man, a true mentor, a great soldier. But a Confederate assassin's bullets nearly divide father and son yet again.

American Leftovers is the story of Heidi, Eric, and Shaun, three children who follow their parents through eastern Europe on Bible-smuggling adventures in the early 1970s. When they return to the States, they face third-culture questions of home and identity. They also deal with sexual situations and abuse, while settling into an evangelical bubble with their parents who pastor a fast-growing church.