Coming Soon! Allingham ~ Desperate Ride
Man is the cruelest animal.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Allingham and his crew are back, forced to confront an evil unlike anything any of them have ever known or dreamt possible. Redheaded women are dying. Will Rebecca Allingham, nee Halsted, be next? The great sleuth-hound, Allingham, will have to summon all his skill and guts to overcome a horrific monster that has come to disrupt the peace and quiet of his retirement in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
There are challenges enough for all: Rosario and Hobbs, once again pressed into service as deputy US Marshals to track down a bloodthirsty revenge killer; Mr. Singh, bent on protecting the most precious thing on earth to him; and Rebecca Allingham, both huntress and hunted.
Ride with them on this desperate journey as new characters are introduced into the tumultuous world of the Allingham clan. Meet the Mexican lawyer turned hacendado, Ramon la Garza; Hilola, a woman as wild and unpredictable as the Colorado River on which she and the young mestizo, Ramon, must travel to get home back to old Mexico; tough as nails, Old Pop, and gentle Pierce Hall, the stalwart protectors and avengers, desperately working to purify and rectify a damaged family legacy.
Time is running out. The murderers are bearing down. Will Allingham pull it off and be able to find the monster in time? Will La Garza and his wild companion escape the clutches of the deadly bully and cutthroat, Thad Hall?
Find out in Desperate Ride.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Allingham and his crew are back, forced to confront an evil unlike anything any of them have ever known or dreamt possible. Redheaded women are dying. Will Rebecca Allingham, nee Halsted, be next? The great sleuth-hound, Allingham, will have to summon all his skill and guts to overcome a horrific monster that has come to disrupt the peace and quiet of his retirement in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
There are challenges enough for all: Rosario and Hobbs, once again pressed into service as deputy US Marshals to track down a bloodthirsty revenge killer; Mr. Singh, bent on protecting the most precious thing on earth to him; and Rebecca Allingham, both huntress and hunted.
Ride with them on this desperate journey as new characters are introduced into the tumultuous world of the Allingham clan. Meet the Mexican lawyer turned hacendado, Ramon la Garza; Hilola, a woman as wild and unpredictable as the Colorado River on which she and the young mestizo, Ramon, must travel to get home back to old Mexico; tough as nails, Old Pop, and gentle Pierce Hall, the stalwart protectors and avengers, desperately working to purify and rectify a damaged family legacy.
Time is running out. The murderers are bearing down. Will Allingham pull it off and be able to find the monster in time? Will La Garza and his wild companion escape the clutches of the deadly bully and cutthroat, Thad Hall?
Find out in Desperate Ride.
There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. ~ Louis L'Amour
The place was a giant cesspool turned whirlpool that pulled all the badness of the land into it, until the vortex contained the giant soup of decadence and evil, contained the worst of human kind.
But Hell Street has a new enforcer, a lawman who has honed his skill in Hell’s Kitchen, the meanest of the Five Points district of Manhattan. Will it be enough?
Allingham is the story of one man’s struggle to face down his demons along with the meanest and most degenerate of human kind in the worst town in the last frontier of the West, Canyon Diablo, Arizona Territory.
"Allingham is for anyone who likes the suspense and action of a western, who enjoys the intrigue and mind games of a detective story, and who is interested in psychological drama - seeing how a man, forced to step up to the existential plate, can change the direction of his life." Patrick Smithwick, Author
Available at Amazon.com
The place was a giant cesspool turned whirlpool that pulled all the badness of the land into it, until the vortex contained the giant soup of decadence and evil, contained the worst of human kind.
But Hell Street has a new enforcer, a lawman who has honed his skill in Hell’s Kitchen, the meanest of the Five Points district of Manhattan. Will it be enough?
Allingham is the story of one man’s struggle to face down his demons along with the meanest and most degenerate of human kind in the worst town in the last frontier of the West, Canyon Diablo, Arizona Territory.
"Allingham is for anyone who likes the suspense and action of a western, who enjoys the intrigue and mind games of a detective story, and who is interested in psychological drama - seeing how a man, forced to step up to the existential plate, can change the direction of his life." Patrick Smithwick, Author
Available at Amazon.com
The Mule Tamer Trilogy
"A mighty fine, meandering Western" ~ Kirkus Reviews
"This is a fairy tale for cowgirls. Love the story, love Chica. Read and ride away on a tall, tall tale. Yahooooooooo!"
Patrick Smithwick, Author of Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing and Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend:
"Reading The Mule Tamer reminded me of the same adrenalin-pumping experience I had when watching the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove. Every night after dinner, I looked forward to the next episode of Larry McMurtry’s novel, and every night I did not want it to end. Indeed, I can see The Mule Tamer’s Arvel Walsh being played by Robert Duvall and Dick Welles being played by Tommy Lee Jones. On the other hand, many of the sharply, crisply written scenes – whether of shoot-outs, killings, drug-induced deliriums, or lust – brought back memories from Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy which began with All the Pretty Horses.
Being a painstakingly researched novel, some of its most graphically etched scenes taken right out of the pages of 1890’s newspapers, The Mule Tamer will interest readers of historical novels as well as of American history. Also, all of us who love classic Western movies will be drawn to the challenges facing Walsh and Welles. Yet, author John Horst has set his sights higher than the creating of a stereotypical and rehashed Western plot. Walsh not only embodies the classic traits of a Western hero – he’s stoic, laconic, an excellent marksman, has a mysterious and tragic past, and is desirable by a young, sexy, fast-shooting, hard-riding, free-spirited woman – Walsh is also introspective, a character who changes and develops as he searches for answers to the questions in his life. Available at Amazon.com
"This is a fairy tale for cowgirls. Love the story, love Chica. Read and ride away on a tall, tall tale. Yahooooooooo!"
Patrick Smithwick, Author of Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing and Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend:
"Reading The Mule Tamer reminded me of the same adrenalin-pumping experience I had when watching the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove. Every night after dinner, I looked forward to the next episode of Larry McMurtry’s novel, and every night I did not want it to end. Indeed, I can see The Mule Tamer’s Arvel Walsh being played by Robert Duvall and Dick Welles being played by Tommy Lee Jones. On the other hand, many of the sharply, crisply written scenes – whether of shoot-outs, killings, drug-induced deliriums, or lust – brought back memories from Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy which began with All the Pretty Horses.
Being a painstakingly researched novel, some of its most graphically etched scenes taken right out of the pages of 1890’s newspapers, The Mule Tamer will interest readers of historical novels as well as of American history. Also, all of us who love classic Western movies will be drawn to the challenges facing Walsh and Welles. Yet, author John Horst has set his sights higher than the creating of a stereotypical and rehashed Western plot. Walsh not only embodies the classic traits of a Western hero – he’s stoic, laconic, an excellent marksman, has a mysterious and tragic past, and is desirable by a young, sexy, fast-shooting, hard-riding, free-spirited woman – Walsh is also introspective, a character who changes and develops as he searches for answers to the questions in his life. Available at Amazon.com
The Mule Tamer II, Chica's Ride
"When does the movie come out? Could not stop reading it! Thought my Kindle would start cheering and grinning like me during my read. Chica is awsome - she fills your imagination with envy and might I add - a little lust! John C. Horst should continue to write westerns."
Nineteen-hundred is a new century and a new era, yet the fearless Chica and her beloved Arvel Walsh have an old score to settle. Sombrero Del Oro is back and he has stolen something that will unleash a fury that neither he nor his gang have ever known.
She was once wild, and now tame, once vulgar and now refined. The bride of a blueblood Easterner, a loving mother, a devoted wife, but it quickly becomes apparent that she has not lost her edge. Chica has everything to lose and is more terrifying and ruthless than ever. The beautiful devil (or angel) can battle the worst of the worst and get what she’s after.
Chica and her Arvel will not do it alone. The old gang is back! The men, the women, the horses and mules you learned to love so in The Mule Tamer have returned. Dick Welles the stalwart Arizona Ranger, Dan George the imitable lawyer and longtime family friend, Billy Livingston the aborigine healer, Will Panks the dynamite wielding prospector, Ging Wa the gentle servant girl turned physician and Pilar, the real mistress of the mule ranch. All have one purpose, to help the beloved Walsh family travel through the wilds of Mexico to bring justice as they battle the worst evil known to man.
It is a new millennium, talk of the end of the world, the second coming of Christ, the grand eclipse of nineteen-hundred; will it herald the apocalypse, the end of days, the new beginning? Is Chica the chosen one, the one sent by God to enact vengeance, purge the world and prepare it for the great conflagration? Or is it just a great hoax conjured up to scare Gold Hat and his men out of their wits? Find out in The Mule Tamer II, Chica’s Ride. Available at Amazon.com
Nineteen-hundred is a new century and a new era, yet the fearless Chica and her beloved Arvel Walsh have an old score to settle. Sombrero Del Oro is back and he has stolen something that will unleash a fury that neither he nor his gang have ever known.
She was once wild, and now tame, once vulgar and now refined. The bride of a blueblood Easterner, a loving mother, a devoted wife, but it quickly becomes apparent that she has not lost her edge. Chica has everything to lose and is more terrifying and ruthless than ever. The beautiful devil (or angel) can battle the worst of the worst and get what she’s after.
Chica and her Arvel will not do it alone. The old gang is back! The men, the women, the horses and mules you learned to love so in The Mule Tamer have returned. Dick Welles the stalwart Arizona Ranger, Dan George the imitable lawyer and longtime family friend, Billy Livingston the aborigine healer, Will Panks the dynamite wielding prospector, Ging Wa the gentle servant girl turned physician and Pilar, the real mistress of the mule ranch. All have one purpose, to help the beloved Walsh family travel through the wilds of Mexico to bring justice as they battle the worst evil known to man.
It is a new millennium, talk of the end of the world, the second coming of Christ, the grand eclipse of nineteen-hundred; will it herald the apocalypse, the end of days, the new beginning? Is Chica the chosen one, the one sent by God to enact vengeance, purge the world and prepare it for the great conflagration? Or is it just a great hoax conjured up to scare Gold Hat and his men out of their wits? Find out in The Mule Tamer II, Chica’s Ride. Available at Amazon.com
The Mule Tamer III, Marta's Quest
"The women in the Mule Tamer series are not your usual sweet, niave, damsels in distress that I find in most Westerns. Nope, they can out ride, out shoot, out drink, cuss and chain smoke with the best and worst of the guys. These are women you DO NOT want to meet in a dark alley."
Nineteen-eleven is the year our two beauties, Rebecca Walsh and Marta del Toro leave the comfort and safety of their boarding school back East, under the watchful eye of their grandmother Abuelita and Madame Boutin, headmistress of Stonefields School for Young Ladies. They’re headed to Smith College in the fall, to continue on the path of the blueblood debutante. But something is rotten in their beloved Mexico. The Revolution has started; Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa are on the move. Adulio, their faithful servant and overseer of the Del Toro ranch has come to fetch them. They are needed in Mexico.
Follow the girls on an adventure, a road to discovery where they will have to summon their courage and call upon their talents, their loyalty, their faith in each other to overcome the challenges facing them as they search for inner and outer peace, battling the old demons, greed, lust, vanity, self-doubt and a new one, likely the most difficult of them all, maturation into adulthood. The people of Mexico need them, need their help fighting the minions of a greedy oil company and the totalitarian thugs held over from the Díaz Regime, with the father of Yellow Journalism thrown in for good measure.
Read the story of these strong and intelligent young women as they respond to first love, romance, intrigue and betrayal. Will they defeat the dragon, or will it consume them, take them down and make them just one of the many victims in the sad and tragic life story that is Mexico?
Marta’s Quest is the final chapter in The Mule Tamer Trilogy, chronicling the exploits, trials and tribulations of this remarkable and heroic family. Available at Amazon.com
Nineteen-eleven is the year our two beauties, Rebecca Walsh and Marta del Toro leave the comfort and safety of their boarding school back East, under the watchful eye of their grandmother Abuelita and Madame Boutin, headmistress of Stonefields School for Young Ladies. They’re headed to Smith College in the fall, to continue on the path of the blueblood debutante. But something is rotten in their beloved Mexico. The Revolution has started; Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa are on the move. Adulio, their faithful servant and overseer of the Del Toro ranch has come to fetch them. They are needed in Mexico.
Follow the girls on an adventure, a road to discovery where they will have to summon their courage and call upon their talents, their loyalty, their faith in each other to overcome the challenges facing them as they search for inner and outer peace, battling the old demons, greed, lust, vanity, self-doubt and a new one, likely the most difficult of them all, maturation into adulthood. The people of Mexico need them, need their help fighting the minions of a greedy oil company and the totalitarian thugs held over from the Díaz Regime, with the father of Yellow Journalism thrown in for good measure.
Read the story of these strong and intelligent young women as they respond to first love, romance, intrigue and betrayal. Will they defeat the dragon, or will it consume them, take them down and make them just one of the many victims in the sad and tragic life story that is Mexico?
Marta’s Quest is the final chapter in The Mule Tamer Trilogy, chronicling the exploits, trials and tribulations of this remarkable and heroic family. Available at Amazon.com
Maria's Trail, The Early Adventures of Chica, Heroine of The Mule Tamer Trilogy
"The earthy dialogue fits the tone of the story perfectly. There is a great cast of characters again. Maria will captivate the reader as easily as she does so many in the story. There is a lot of action and drama in the story to go along with the great plot. There is even some philosophy thrown in that will be relevant to most people...The only problems with this book are that you will probably stay up too late reading it and you will want to reread the entire series when you get done."
Prequel to The Mule Tamer trilogy, Maria’s Trail chronicles the first adventures of Senora Arvel Walsh. Chica, Artemis, the beautiful devil, she is the great tragic heroine of The Mule Tamer saga. Follow this remarkable woman as she journeys through the first adventures of her life, suffering hardship and pain, loss and danger, betrayal and first love. Her exploits are legendary and it soon becomes evident why everyone who comes under her spell can only love her. Maria’s Trail is a long and tumultuous one, essential to make the glorious Maria the remarkable creature that we’ve come to know and love.
The child was beautiful and exotic and Maria had never seen such lovely hair on anyone, like corn silk or spun gold and the little one looked on at her mother. “Ist sie unser Schutzengel, Mutter?”
Her mother smiled as she worked and looked on at Maria reverently. “Ja, mein Liebling, das ist sie.”
Ulla came over and smiled at Maria. “She wants to know if you are our guardian angel.”
Maria's Trail is now available at Amazon.com
Prequel to The Mule Tamer trilogy, Maria’s Trail chronicles the first adventures of Senora Arvel Walsh. Chica, Artemis, the beautiful devil, she is the great tragic heroine of The Mule Tamer saga. Follow this remarkable woman as she journeys through the first adventures of her life, suffering hardship and pain, loss and danger, betrayal and first love. Her exploits are legendary and it soon becomes evident why everyone who comes under her spell can only love her. Maria’s Trail is a long and tumultuous one, essential to make the glorious Maria the remarkable creature that we’ve come to know and love.
The child was beautiful and exotic and Maria had never seen such lovely hair on anyone, like corn silk or spun gold and the little one looked on at her mother. “Ist sie unser Schutzengel, Mutter?”
Her mother smiled as she worked and looked on at Maria reverently. “Ja, mein Liebling, das ist sie.”
Ulla came over and smiled at Maria. “She wants to know if you are our guardian angel.”
Maria's Trail is now available at Amazon.com