Out on a ranch in the foothills, Jim Lander is trying to get his life in order. He's trying to put his divorce behind him so he can develop a relationship with Dusty, a nice young woman who lives in town. Things get complicated, though, when he doesn't resist temptations at the Trail's End, his favorite honky-tonk bar. To sort things out, he goes to the mountains. But even then, it takes the right combination to get things into balance. Nothing comes easy, but it is possible to find a good camp, up and away from it all, where the best light comes from the moon and the campfire. This is John D. Nesbitt's second novel about life in the contemporary West. As in his other work, Nesbitt gives a realistic treatment to his materials. His characters are less than perfect, having been through divorce or similar mistakes and giving a hesitant try at romance. They live in a setting that Nesbitt writes about the best-small-town life, farm and ranch country, and the big outdoors where everyone has the right to look for a good camp. This is a lean, trim novel with a graceful prose style that will remind us of why we like to read.
Vance Coolidge always said a man should have a chance to get even when he's been done wrong. And he's certainly been done wrong in his life. So when his friend Tip asked for his help in going after the men who killed Tip's brother, Vance agreed to join him. But Vance doesn't completely trust some of the other men riding with them, and as the chase wears on he'll find out that vengeance and righting wrongs can be a tricky—and dangerous—business.
Stories of a Golden West Somewhere between John Steinbeck and Merle Haggard, these short stories are about people who work in the fields, sleep in cars and bunkhouses, and sort out the problems that life hands them. One character remembers the day Marilyn Monroe died; another runs off with an underage girl; and another finds a hidden rifle in a dead man's house. These people live in a world of young hopes and sad memories, pretty girls and hard work.
With a lot of rustling going on in the area, tensions are high and rumors are flying. Word is going around that some of the larger ranchers have hired a gunman named Wolf Carlton to stop the rustling and protect their cattle. And now a couple of the small ranchers have been found shot to death. Unfortunately for Spencer Prescott, some of the rumors are about him. Some people think that Spencer, not Wolf, is the one killing the competition. Even worse, some folks think Spencer is behind the rustling—and that means trigger-happy Wolf will be looking to put a bullet in his back.
This is a book of hard-crafted fiction set in the contemporary West, stories about life and love, loss and death, with a few laughs along the way. In selections such as “Cowboy Heart,” “Ice on the Doorstep,” “Chokecherries Are Free,” “Drunk on Christmas Day,” and “Dusk on the Rangeland,” the book captures the spirit of people who tough it out in a world both modern in its problems and timeless in its landscape. This collection has all the fine features that have won praise for John D. Nesbitt’s earlier novels and short stories.
Monte Casteel hadn’t planned on staying long when he rode into the small Wyoming town of Eagle Spring. He was just a ranch hand with no work between seasons. But even before he got into town, someone warned him it might be better for his health if he kept on riding, and Monte hated to be told what to do. It got even tougher to leave when he saw Dora in the street. She was the girl he’d pined after for so long, though she never seemed to care much for him. They may not have been the best reasons to stay around, but they were good enough for Monte. He didn’t know—yet—that he had one great reason to ride out of town fast—a range war was brewing, hired guns were coming in, and before long Monte would find himself caught right in the middle.
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.
Trouble's brewing. Big trouble. A couple of the big ranchers in the area have been pushing around the smaller ones, bullying them, and a few of the smaller ranchers aren't going to take it anymore. Tom Fielding runs a string of packhorses and works for the big outfits, but that doesn't mean he's ready to stand by and do nothing. Lots of folks have warned him not to take sides, not to make powerful enemies. But Tom knows when something is just plain wrong, you have to stand up against it ... even if that means putting yourself in the middle of an all-out war. “Spur-winner Nesbitt doesn’t write traditional novels or routine shoot-em-ups. Gather My Horses is an emotional story, full of believable people with rich detail and a sense of purpose. Nesbitt breathes life, rich in characterization, to this beautifully written novel.” —Roundup Magazine
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.
Antelope Sky: Stories of the Modern West Here is a world of sky and sage, dust and rain, horses and saddles, pickups and gun racks—where the wild roses bloom in springtime and the wild geese fly in winter. This is a world where men and women meet, or separate, or have a drink somewhere in between, as they sort out their pasts and try to remake the present.
In Walking Corpses, Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt contextualize reactions to leprosy in medieval Western Europe by tracing its history in Late Antique Byzantium, which had been confronting leprosy and its effects for centuries. Integrating developments in both the Latin West and the Greek East, Walking Corpses challenges a number of misperceptions about attitudes toward the disease, including that theologians branded leprosy as punishment for sin (rather, it was seen as a mark of God's favor); that Christian teaching encouraged bans on the afflicted from society (in actuality, it was Germanic customary law); or that leprosariums were prisons (instead, they were centers of care, many of them self-governing). Informed by extensive archival research and recent bioarchaeology, Walking Corpses also includes new translations of three Greek texts regarding leprosy, while a new preface to the paperback edition updates the historiography on medieval perceptions and treatments of leprosy.
A novel of the contemporary American West, Keep the Wind in Your Face takes place in the big outdoors. It features men and women, horses and big-game hunting, and a strong sense of landscape as a presence in the action. It portrays adventure that is realistic to the modern West, with a healthy absence of television melodrama. This novel has a spare but eloquent prose style that matches its subject.
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!
When Tip Creston comes to the town of Greenwood, he learns of the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old Romanian girl ten years earlier. Before long, a neighboring wheat farmer is found dead. Suspicion falls on a rancher who has been carrying on with the farmer’s wife, but there is no compelling motive. Then Tip learns that the wheat farmer was in collusion with the owner of the grain elevator to embezzle wheat. The disconsolate boyfriend of the missing girl is obsessed with the case and begins to meddle. Not much later, the housekeeper for the grain merchant’s mother is found dead on the open range. In town, Tip follows the crowd to the grain elevator, where the disconsolate boyfriend has gone after the grain dealer in the offices on the second story. He pursues the grain dealer out onto the roof and has a confrontation. Many of the townspeople are reluctant to take the initiative to know more, but Tip feels a need to continue to push for the truth about what happened to Rosina Petrescu, the rose of Greenwood.
With more than 10,000 hours of flying in over 100 different types of aircraft, John Nesbitt-Dufort had a varied and unusual career as a pilot and instructor in the RAF and with civil airlines.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.