Chap O'Keefe

Misfit Lil Rides In 01/08/2015

by Chap O'Keefe

$4.09

"Anyone who ever said the Wild West was no place for a lady clearly never met Misfit Lil!" -- Pulp Serenade
A band of Apache bucks led by a charismatic hothead abandons reservation life to go on a bloody rampage. In pursuit with Lieutenant Michael Covington’s cavalry detail is civilian scout Jackson Farraday. But a showdown looms between the pair when Jackson is misled by Lilian Goodnight, a harum-scarum youngster who boasts the handle “Misfit Lil, Princess of Pistoleers.” After a clash with the Apaches and the slaughter of an Army paymaster and his escort, Jackson is fired. But his troubles are only just beginning when he’s framed for murder by crooked Sheriff “Wheezer” Skene. Can Misfit Lil make amends by saving her reluctant hero?
BONUS FEATURE: Heroines of the Wilder West

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Ghost Town Belles 24/12/2014

by Chap O'Keefe

$3.99

Drift Garrity followed a grueling cowboy life. Working the grub line, poorly fed and without prospects, he determined to unravel the mysteries of the deprived past that had made him what he was. His objective brought him within a trigger-squeeze of death from Mad Dungaree Dan, a reclusive ex-miner who lived in a mountain ghost town where he kept captive his two beautiful daughters, Melissa and Isabella. Also to be tackled was Zack Emmett, vicious range boss and one- time gunfighter. The trail would lead Drift to dirty tricks, accusations, and finally to deadly gunplay amongst the ghost town ruins.
“Highly recommended as an old-fashioned western thriller for fans everywhere.”
– MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

The Lawman and the Songbird 12/11/2014

by Chap O'Keefe

( 1 )

$3.99

Pinkerton detective Joshua Dillard went undercover to a lawless Montana boom-town peopled by avaricious gold prospectors, ruthless bandits, fancy-pants rogues, and scheming dance-hall girls. In Cox City, he set his sights on arrogant, skull-faced Blackie Dukes and his bunch. But Alvin "Aces" Axford's safe at the Magnet saloon was robbed right under Joshua's nose. Who had spirited away Axford's haul of gold? Joshua had to buy that plucky songstress Kate Thompson had double-crossed the dangerous Dukes gang, luring him into a futile dance in a raging blizzard across the Bitterroot Mountains. It was one of luckless Joshua's most conspicuous failures. Not until seven years later did he return to Cox City, as town marshal. The time had come to solve the mysteries ... and to lay the ghosts of failure with a blazing six-shooter!

Other Formats:: Paperback

See purchase options

Peace at Any Price 17/02/2014

by Chap O'Keefe

( 1 )

$3.99

Jim Hunter's and Matt Harrison's Double H ranch thrived ... till their crew marched away to war's glory, and rustlers burned them out and murdered their last hand, harmless oldster Walt Burridge. When the war ended, the two H's started over. But for Jim, the Civil War had wrought changes beyond endurance. So he rode out and into the arms of his wartime love, the gun-running adventuress Lena-Marie Baptiste. Trapped by a vow to avenge Old Walt, he had to choose between enmity and love, life and death....
BONUS FEATURE: "The Heart of a Western" explores what has and will preserve the genre's relevancy for fresh generations of readers, writers, and movie-makers.

"... the quintessential action-packed Western.... Sparsely written and at times frantically-paced, it introduces the characters with a few broad strokes and then wastes no time in pitting them against all sorts of challenges." -- Saddlebums Western Review

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Ride the Wild Country 28/11/2013

by Chap O'Keefe

( 2 )

$3.99

San Francisco was hot. Too hot for troubleshooter Joshua Dillard after a vice lord drew a gun on him in a ritzy Russian Hill parlor house and he was obliged to blast him down with his Peacemaker. So Joshua brought forward a railroad trip to the wilds of Colorado where he had a job lined up for him by a mysterious Leigh Jordan, of New York City. In Colorado he was soon embroiled in more bloody mayhem, this time with hostile attorney Walt Sloane and his thugs. Enter a femme fatale needing his unorthodox services, take a ride into the rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and Joshua was soon neck-deep in deception, deviancy, and murderous gunfire. The facts that emerged concerning an abusive father, his adopted daughter, and a contestable Manhattan inheritance fell into place to tell an ugly story...
What reviewers have said:
"Dillard is a great character, almost a frontier Mike Hammer... He's a standup guy who's looking out for those who can't look after themselves, the classic tough/tender sleuth in a stetson and duster."
"Chap O'Keefe's series character Joshua Dillard is nothing if not a hardboiled private eye in the Old West ... these books would have made good Gold Medal paperbacks or Double D hardbacks."

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Sons and Gunslicks 27/08/2013

by Chap O'Keefe

( 3 )

$3.99

Where was Emily Greatheart? The pretty young lady from Denver had gone to Arizona to meet her dead fiancé's mother and vanished. Only a bloodstained jacket was found in an abandoned spring buggy hired from the Pike's Crossing livery stable. Emily was the daughter of Big Jack Greatheart, ex-marshal and one-time tamer of brawling boom-towns. But Big Jack lay in his bed in Colorado, frustratingly crippled by arthritis and a skeleton of his former self. So he called on ex-Pinkerton detective Joshua Dillard. Joshua followed a cold trail and hot impulses into battle against ambitious cattleman Bart Waller and his gun-handy, womanizing son, Vincent. No wonder he was soon up to his reckless neck in two-fisted, lead-slinging trouble!
BONUS FEATURE: "Detectives in Cowboy Boots." A wide-ranging look at the history of mystery and western fiction crossovers. Frank Gruber, William Ard, John Creasey, George G. Gilman, John Harvey, and more.

Other Formats:: Hardcover , Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Shootout at Hellyer's Creek 17/06/2013

by Chap O'Keefe

$3.99

Paid to mind other folks’ business, Joshua Dillard did it with a .45 Colt Peacemaker. But he also had a mission of his own, and when Butch Simich and his bunch stuck up the stage from Tucson he swung into vengeful action. Stirring it along came Dorothy-May Pennydale, spirited daughter of a whiskey-soaked way station boss. And in the thick of it from the start was Clement P. Conway from New York City, hack writer of dime novels – a greenhorn with guts plunging out of his depth. The fight led into treacherous territory, up against rogue marshal Virgil Lyons and saloonkeeper Dice Sanders, whose greed for women and money produced mayhem ... and the most violent gun battle the one-horse town of Hellyer’s Creek had ever seen!
*Texas writer James Reasoner, prolific author of westerns under several names, has said, “Joshua Dillard is a very likable hero, tough and competent enough to handle just about any situation, despite his occasional self-doubts, but not a superman by any means.... He has turned into one of my favorite Western characters. I’m ready to read more about him right now.”

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

The Outlaw and the Lady 23/02/2012

by Chap O'Keefe

$3.99

When ex-Confederate guerrilla Tod Larraby was tricked into shooting a crooked gambler in a Colorado mining town, a scheming town marshal set a dubious price for his freedom. Lord Buckhampton, a bull-headed British capitalist with investments in the state, could use Larraby to guide him to his delinquent son who'd vanished into the wildest part of the Rockies. The n'er-do-well had been sent to America to make good. Instead he'd "liberated" a half-breed whore from a Leadville bordello and taken to the owlhoot trail. Against Larraby's advice, Buckhampton insisted they take along his second wife, Julia. Then the abused and unhappy beauty fell for Larraby and shared his hotel bed, adding further complications to a quest that already looked like ending in disaster.
"Locating universal emotions in his characters is what makes O’Keefe’s West so compelling.... He doesn’t treat the West as some static, dusty entity, but engages with the emotional and moral issues the way real people would have." -- Cullen Gallagher, Pulp Serenade

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Doomsday Mesa 20/09/2011

by Chap O'Keefe

$3.99

Ex-cavalryman Yale Cannon rode to Antelope for two very different reasons – in search of an old sweetheart and to bring out Red Effingham, a gunslinging killer the sheriff had locked up in the ranch town's jailhouse. Cannon arrived on the outskirts to a confrontation with two cowpuncher brothers, proddy over rustled beef. After his blazing six-gun talked louder than words, he moved in warily, using one mission as cover for the other. His delving for old time's sake quickly met opposition, but introduced him to suffragist schoolteacher Kate McDowell. Resourceful Kate revealed that hatred between the cowmen and a settler community led by Abel Pryor, a religious fanatic, was coming to a showdown. With Effingham busted from jail, the clash was set to be violent and bloody!

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

The Sandhills Shootings 25/07/2011

by Chap O'Keefe

( 1 )

$3.99

Ex-Pinkerton detective Joshua Dillard was a gun for hire. He was also a man given to doing only what he had a mind to do. So he refused the presumptuous Omaha financier Fergus O'Callaghan's money, but rode the trouble-busting trail to the Sandhills region of Nebraska anyhow. In that country were his dead wife's brother Tom Holley, a tenderfoot deputy unversed in frontier life's wicked ways, and beautiful Ruth Swain, gutsy widow of a murdered homesteader. Both were up against the odds. Their obvious enemy was salty rancher Stella Tinwald, who cracked the whip for the cattlemen's association -- when she wasn't corraling likely young studs of the two-legged kind. Joshua was set to take on Tom's and Ruth's fights. The odds were stacked against Joshua and a drygulcher's bullet pushed him to death's brink ... but he was a mighty hard man to kill.

James Reasoner: "Joshua Dillard is a very likable hero, tough and competent
enough to handle just about any situation, despite his occasional self-doubts, but not a superman by any means. I’m ready to read more about him right now."

David Whitehead aka Ben Bridges: "Joshua Dillard once again emerges as a wholly credible and eminently likable protagonist."

includes tax, if applicable

The Sheriff and the Widow 06/06/2011

by Chap O'Keefe

$1.03

As dangerous as unstable dynamite . . . that was Sheriff Ross Kemp's assessment of Jessica Blackwood. She was darkly beautiful, and she was married to the richest rancher around. Mysterious notes, a bizarre accusation and the bushwhack murder of her madly jealous husband shoved Kemp into the biggest trouble of his life.Tried and convicted on a trumped-up charge, Kemp was sentenced to ten years of living hell in the state pen.His only hope was Jessica's lovely stepdaughter, Ellen, but as Ellen began to uncover the truth she fell into deadly danger from Orson Rymer, gambler and blackmailer, and Snake McClay, evil-minded gunslick. It looked as if justice would never be done!
David Cranmer, aka author Edward A. Grainger and editor of Beat To A Pulp, writes: "There's nothing about this I didn't enjoy ... I have two O'Keefe novels on the way and this has whetted my appetite for them.... I'm loving this western. I was travelling today and The Sheriff and the Widow was my book for the trip."
James Reasoner, author of many a Longarm and Trailsman book, writes: "If reprinting Chap O'Keefe's book goes over well (and I can't see how it wouldn't!), maybe you can do some more classic Black Horse Westerns in the future."

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Liberty and a Law Badge 06/06/2011

by Chap O'Keefe

$3.99

Crazy Bob McGill played Peeping Tom at Devil's Lake and his old heart was pierced. The young woman Sheriff Dan Vickers had brought to share the isolation of his fishing retreat was McGill's sweet daughter, Liberty. What McGill didn't learn was that Liberty had been blackmailed. Her self-sacrifice was to preserve the dubious security of marriage to spineless rancher Tom Tolliver, caught changing a cattle brand with a running-iron.
Meanwhile, Joshua Dillard, ex-Pinkerton agent and range detective, came to Montana working undercover for Vickers' boss, cattle baron Barnaby Lant. He quickly clashed with Vickers' deputies, supposed allies, and Vickers' wife Sophie, on her own vengeance trail.
Then lynching and gunplay muddied the picture. Could Joshua bring justice to the range and save Liberty?

James Reasoner writes, "This book is a lot of fun, pulpish but with a
sharp, contemporary edge. The dark, complex plot, the emotional angst, and the gritty storytelling remind me very much of many westerns published in the fifties by Gold Medal, by authors such as Lewis B. Patten, Dean Owen and William Heuman. The pace is very fast, the action scenes are handled well, and Joshua Dillard is a very likable hero, tough and competent enough to handle just about any situation, despite his occasional self-doubts, but not a superman by any means. I’m ready to read more about him right now.... If you’re a fan of hardboiled action westerns,I definitely think you’ll enjoy it."

Other Formats:: Paperback

includes tax, if applicable

Similar authors to follow