E. M. Parsons

A Summer Woman, a Child of The Devil, With a Hunger for Men... and ViolenceMarie is a power-hungry adultress who lives in a world of men -- and enemies. Her heart is a raging furnace fueled by greed and desire. Her passion is to inflame and consume men, leaving behind her the ashes of dead loves. In the summer resort where she reigned, man-after-man felt the touch of her fire, woman-after-woman shriveled up in her fierce glow...and the human debris mounted. Then the stranger came among them, a man on-the-run with a past too heavy to carry, with a granite heart and hands to tear the world apart... or snuff out a life. And so they met, fire beat against unmelting rock, and the air of summer was charged with the stifling heat ...and the chill of impending death.

Texas: 1869. When man wearing Yankee blue returns home, he's a walking target... even for his own brother. When news of Fort Sumter reached Two Trees, Texas, Coy Quillen was one of the first to sign up. Not many people under stood his decision to join the Union forces, but Coy Quillen was a man who lived by his beliefs, everybody else be damned. Now the long, bloody years of fighting were over and Quillen comes home, a useless saber-scarred hand at his side. But that's not his biggest burden. He's a hated man, resented for helping whip the South. Not even his own brother will speak to him. And while he was away, Quillen's father died and their ranch was lost. There's nothing left in Two Trees for Quillen. Another man migth turn around and go... leaving the town for good. But not not Quillen. He's going to stand his ground....and raise some hell.

They call him Johnny Berlin and he has an instinct for cards... for trouble...and for women.KILLER TAKE ALL He'd dealt at all the biggest tables in Reno and Vegas. He'd told the head of the gambling syndicate to go to hell-and repeated the message to his hired killers. He'd had women throwing themselves at him at every turn... and he loved it. That was Johnny Berlin. Who would have thought he'd find the dice loaded against him in a peanut-sized town off a back road in northern California? Who would have thought he'd fall for a nice girl? And who would have thought he'd risk his life for her? Nobody...least of all Johnny Berlin himself.On his way from San Francisco, Johnny gets lost in the fog while driving the costal route to Portland, Oregon. Stopping to get directions from a stranger turns out to be deadly, when that stranger-a dangerous racketeer-turns up dead... and Johnny is pegged as the killer. Now it'll take all his smarts and toughness to save himself and the woman he loves.

"Until Death Do Us Part," She Promised -- With Murder in her Heart and Larceny on Her Mind Johnny Babcock was the name on the life insurance policy for $100,000. Johnny Babcock was the name on all the identification found on the crumpled, burnt body found at the bottom of a ravine. Johnny Babcock's grieving widow gratefully accepted the cashier's check from the insurance company. And all the while, Johnny Babcock lived on Skid Row, doubled-crossed by the wife he loved...and facing murder charges if he ever revealed his true identify. Is there a way out for Johnny that doesn't put him in the grave...or behind bars?"Packs plenty of punch...you will thrill to this master of mystery."Brooklyn RecordABOUT THE AUTHORElmer Merle Parsons was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1926. In 1949, when he was 23 years old, he was convicted of burglary and grand theft for stealing a car from a Phoenix used car lot and leading police on a wild chase that ended in a crash. He served three years in Chino State Prison...but didn't stay free for long. In 1955, he was arrested in Pasadena, CA for passing 22 stolen checks, which he told the court he needed to "tide him over" while awaiting money for a script he claimed he'd sold and because he couldn't get a job due to his prison record. He was sentenced to five years in prison, which he served at San Quentin, where he became editor of the prison newspaper and sold his first novel, "Self Made Widow," to Fawcett for $3500 advance under the pen-name "Philip Race." He wrote wrote & published two more novels, "Killer Take All" and "Johnny Come Deadly," under his pen name. After his release in 1960, he wrote one novel ("Dark of Summer") and several westerns under his own name and also contributed scripts for many TV series, including Sea Hunt, Cheyenne, Ripcord, Bonanza, The Dakotas, The Virginian and Flipper.