THE ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY VERMILLION

Johnny Vermillion is one of the most entertaining rogues ever to turn a dishonest dollar. Any audience will love a troupe that can transform
A Midsummer Night's Dream into grand larceny.

THE UNDERTAKER'S WIFE

The Wild West claimed many lives; it was Richard Connable's job to bury the dead. From St. Louis to Denver to the Barbary Coast, we follow his story, told in fascinating technical and emotional detail by his wife Lucy.

BLACK POWDER, WHITE SMOKE

Two men. One black and one white. In New Orleans, the black man, Honey Boutrille, saves a prostitute's life by killing her attacker. In San Francisco, the white man, Twice Emerson, kills a Chinaman because he likes killing.
Honey and Emerson rage through an authentic West drawn with a fierce and gleeful truthfulness, leaving trails of bodies, pursued ever more relentlessly, and moving always toward a central and inescapable meeting place: Denver, Colorado.

THE MASTER EXECUTIONER

Oscar Stone is a hangman. Everything he does, he does impeccably. He is more bloodless than bloodthirsty. He is a profound student of his art, completely versed in its traditions over the centuries. For more than a quarter of a century he has worked to create a reputation as a man peerless in his craft: the master executioner. He is also utterly alone with his craft. Suddenly, one day, on a single piece of knowledge, Oscar comes to a moment of devastating truth and for the first time knows himself.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN
MOVING PICTURE ASSOCIATION

Los Angeles, 1913: Director Buck Bensinger is desperately trying to hold together the fledgling Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association when aspiring writer Dmitri Pulski walks out of the snowy Sierra Nevadas and onto the set. Soon, Dmitri has become screenwriter "Tom Boston," and the Association begins to produce a Yukon adventure film starring an actor who can't ride a horse as a cowboy, and a villain cast fresh out of San Quentin.

JOURNEY OF THE DEAD

Two witnesses to this turbulent evolution tell their stories. One is an ancient Spanish alchemist searching for the philosopher's stone from his hut in the New Mexico desert. He devotes his long life to hunting for the secrets of the old gods. But will they give him the answers to his quest for meaning? The other is the fabled Pat Garrett, the man who killed his poker buddy, Billy the Kid. Haunted by Billy for the rest of his life, Pat Garrett searches for peace. Together and separately, Garrett and the alchemist journey through time and history searching for answers to their ancient questions.

BILLY GASHADE: AN AMERICAN EPIC

Forge Books . April 1997
hardcover ISBN 031285997X . paperback ISBN 0812549155

Billy Gashade is a wandering piano player who crosses paths with the notorious, the legendary, the unheralded. Billy’s song is lyrical and at times elegiac, but never sentimental. And his anchoring refrain remains true to this day: that most folks were neither as bad nor as good as they seemed, and they did the best they could with what they had. From the ravages of the Civil War to the early innovations of the twentieth century, the piano player who came to be known as Billy Gashade sang for his supper in saloons and bawdy houses from New York to New Mexico.
Starred review in Publishers Weekly.