Genre: Western

Shadow Reels

Shadow Reels

Shadows Reel by C.J. Box
Published by Recorded Books on March 8, 2022
Series: Joe Pickett, #22
Format: audiobook
Genres: Fiction, Western, Suspense
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett’s job has many times put his wife and daughters in harm’s way. Now the tables turn as his wife discovers something that puts the Pickett family in a killer’s crosshairs in this thrilling new novel in the best-selling series.
A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Marybeth Pickett finds an unmarked package at the front door of the library where she works. When she opens the package she finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why did they leave it with her?
She learns that during World War II several Wyoming soldiers were in the group that fought to Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat in the Alps - and one of them took Hitler’s personal photo album. Did another take this one and keep it all these years? When she finds the name of a deceased local man who was likely in the unit, Joe visits the man’s son - only to find him brutally tortured and murdered. Someone is after the photo album - but why? And when a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face a new question: How will they figure out the book’s mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls?
Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for a younger and more ruthless version of himself - the man who stole Nate’s falcons and attacked his wife. Using a network of fellow falconers, Nate tracks the man from one city to another, learning that his target is an agitator and a financier of anarchists. Even as he grasps the true threat his quarry presents, Nate swoops in for the kill - and a stunning final showdown.
©2022 C.J. Box (P)2022 Recorded Books

The Bitterroots

The Bitterroots

The Bitterroots by C.J. Box
Published by Macmillan Audio on August 13, 2019
Series: Cassie Dewell, #4
Format: audiobook
Genres: Mystery, Western
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Former police officer Cassie Dewell is trying to start over with her own private investigation firm. Guilty about not seeing her son and exhausted by the nights on stakeout, Cassie is nonetheless managing...until an old friend calls in a favor: she wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young girl from an influential family.

Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out in the Big Sky Country of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against the ghosts of her own past that threaten to pull her back under.

With The Bitterroots, master storyteller C.J. Box delivers another novel that will keep you turning pages, featuring fan favorite Cassie Dewell from the Highway Quartet.

News of the World

News of the World

News of the World by Paulette Jiles, Grover Gardner
Published by Brilliance Audio on June 20th 2017
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

National Book Award Finalist—Fiction
It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.
In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.
Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.
Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

News of the World, a National Book Award nominee is a delight.  Janet Maslin in her New York Times review  of  News of the World called it a painfully simple story.

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd is an older gentleman, who travels around Texas reading the news.  A friend asks Kidd to take a 10 year girl who the indians kidnapped when she was 6 years old and return to her family in Southern Texas.  What ensues is a trek fraught with danger from highwaymen, raiding Kiowa and the unforgiving desert. As Kidd and Johanna, as the Captain has named her, travel together they grow closer. 

In this 24/7 news cycle world, it is hard to image that a traveling news reader, the wonder of it all. I was enchanted by this book and would highly recommend it.

El Paso

El Paso

El Paso by Winston Groom
Published by Recorded Books on October 4, 2016
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Three decades after the first publication of Forrest Gump, Winston Groom returns to fiction with this sweeping American epic.
Long fascinated with the Mexican Revolution and the vicious border wars of the early 20th century, Winston Groom brings to life a much-forgotten period of history in this sprawling saga of heroism, injustice, and love. An episodic novel set in six parts, El Paso pits the legendary Pancho Villa, a much-feared outlaw and revolutionary, against a thrill-seeking railroad tycoon known as the Colonel, whose fading fortune is tied up in a colossal ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico.
But when Villa kidnaps the Colonel's grandchildren in the midst of a cattle drive and absconds into the Sierra Madre, the aging New England patriarch and his adopted son head to El Paso, hoping to find a group of cowboys brave enough to hunt the generalissimo down.
Replete with gunfights, daring escapes, and an unforgettable bullfight, El Paso, with its textured blend of history and legend, becomes an indelible portrait of the American Southwest in the waning days of the frontier.

I have to say I love the cover for this book. It really draws you in, I could hardly wait to listen to this book. Expecting the second coming of Edna Ferber’s Giant I settled in for a good listen.

Take a fading railroad tycoon from Boston, an adopted son trying to hold together his fathers railroad,two small children and Mexican Revolutionary and you have the makings for EL Paso. I have to say it is a great story line, rich gringos with their multi million acre ranches with hundreds of thousands head of cattle and one desperado out to prove to the world just how notorious he is should make a great read. I just couldn’t take the book seriously, there wasn’t the depth needed to make this a serious work of historical fiction. Simply put the characters lacked depth, and that detracted from the story.