Gary McCarthy

National award winning western and historical novelist Gary McCarthy brings together the cast from two of his most popular and long running series - The Horsemen and The Derby Man.Several years have passed since Ruff, Dixie and Houston Ballou fled Civil War-ravaged Tennessee with two of their great thoroughbred stallions and a handful of mares. The displaced Ballou family has been looking for a place to build a horse ranch and racetrack when a series of events take them to the beautiful Prescott Valley, home of Fort Whipple and Arizona's new Territorial capital.In a blinding snowstorm, Darby Buckingham is racing from Santa Fe to Prescott in order to help his longtime love, Miss Dolly. Almost at his destination he helplessly rages at his drunken stagecoach driver to slow down, but the coach overturns and leaves him in desperate circumstances until the Ballou riders and their thoroughbreds appear.And so begins a friendship and adventure in Prescott that will change the lives of these famous characters.

After many years of lonely prospecting in Arizona's Superstition Mountains with his ornery mule, Maggot, Bruin Henry finally discovers a rich vein of pure gold. Filled with the heartfelt intention to use his newfound fortune for redemption after a life of wild and sinful living, Bruin Henry rushes off to Prescott to file his claim. But in Arizona's territorial capitol, he discovers that his long-lost daughter is dying and that he has a spirited fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Ophelia. Wanted posters offering reward money claim that Bruin Henry is a murdering stagecoach robber whose last job resulted in a cold-blooded murder of innocent passengers. Only Bruin knows that it wasn't him who did the killing, but instead Ophelia's father. If Bruin Henry honors his daughter's dying wish to find and re-unite Link Cochran and Ophelia, he is almost certain to die at the killer's hand. But how can he refuse his daughter's death-bed wish and his very last chance for redemption? Formerly published as "Restitution."

In the lobby of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum hangs the legendary VIN FIZ which made the first transcontinental flight across America in 1911 piloted by Galbraith Perry Rodgers. This SCRIPT STORY is based on that amazing story. It was a hot summer afternoon in Washington D.C. when I entered the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and first witnessed the famous VIN FIZ, hanging from the ceiling and looking small and frail inside the massive entry hall. It was a Wright Brothers' Model B biplane fitted with two worn wicker seats.I read the information about the famous biplane and how it had crashed so many times that there was almost nothing left of the original that crossed America except for a few struts. The VIN FIZ seemed so insubstantial I could not get my mind around how such a contraption could fly all the way across the United States battling winds and fierce storms. But with Cal Rodgers as its pilot, it had become a part of American aviation history.I had never heard the epic story of the first transcontinental air crossing or of the famed flier. Aviation was in the very earliest stages of its infancy...but when Cal Rodgers finally set down in Pasadena, California, people all across our country were staying close to their radios waiting for news of his arrival and over ten thousand people were waiting anxiously at the landing field.I have chosen to call this a SCRIPT STORY because it combines the best elements of a novel AND a script. As such, the format is quick and easy to read and should prove especially satisfying to those who enjoy visualizing scenes while fully immersing themselves in story, setting and character development.

A ragged Hualapai boy who plays beautiful flute music is torn from his family and sent to a harsh Indian school where he falls in love with the headmaster's daughter. Banished by racial prejudice, River Thunder learns to fly a biplane over the Grand Canyon and later becomes a legendary WWI aviator winning the hearts of his people and his childhood sweetheart.Many years ago while researching a big historical on the Grand Canyon, I became acquainted with "The People of the Tall Pines." . .the Hualapai. They have a large but sparsely populated reservation on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon just west of their ancestral neighbors, the Supai. During many conversations with the Hualapi, I came to learn about "Indian Schools" and their very serious and often detrimental effect on Native Americans. Moved by these stories, I decided to write a tribute to the thousands of children who attended American Indian boarding schools during the latter part of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. While it is true that some students voluntarily came to these institutions, typically they were forced into leaving their families, friends, culture, and reservations.I repeatedly heard heart-wrenching stories of how families were torn apart and boarding school students were often changed in ways that prevented them from being comfortable adults either in the white society...or even in their own Native American societies. Today, many older Native Americans still recall their years in boarding schools with deep bitterness.WIND WARRIOR is an adaption of the novel RIVER THUNDER which was the recipient of the prestigious Western Writers of America's 2009 Spur Award for Best Western Audio Book.I have chose to call this a "SCRIPT STORY" because it combines the best elements of a novel AND a movie script. As such, the format is quick and easy to read and should prove especially satisfying to those who enjoy visualizing scenes while fully immersing themselves in story, setting and character development.

Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you are sure to find entertaining. "The Roadrunner - Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked "Calamity Jane" lived up to her reputation as the West's most infamous outlaw woman. If she'd have gone before "'Hanging' Judge Parker", Calamity would almost assuredly have been the sixty-first person to meet "The Prince of the Hangmen" a gentle fellow who never understood why people would not smile when they met his gaze. This volume describes one of the most memorable events in the history of the American West: "The Donner Party - Frozen Horror" and describes the horror that led to cannibalism. The fabulous "49'er Gold Rush" ruined the lives of two ambitious and well-intentioned men, "John Augustus Sutter" and "John Marshal" and just a few years later, the largest strike ever to occur in America - "The Big Bonanza" took place deep under Nevada's mighty Sun Mountain. Out on the untamed Texas frontier, a terrified twelve-year-old girl, "Cynthia Ann Parker", watched Comanche slaughter her family and was taken captive; over the years she become so loyal to those people that she never wanted to return to the white culture, even preferring death. The debate will always rage over who was the most deadly gunman on the western frontier, but "John Wesley Hardin" makes a good case for that infamous distinction - it's almost a shame that he never had to face the likes of the deadly shootist "Wild Bill Hickok" in a stand-up gunfight. "Geronimo" was a great Apache chief who sought vengeance and not without good reason while the "People of the Shining Mountains" wanted only peace and to remain in their beautiful forest hunting grounds. Once upon a time in the West, someone came up with the hare-brained idea of importing a strange-looking and not especially friendly animal to cross the vast southwestern deserts; in "Camels - A Really Bad Experiment" you'll likely shake your head and then laugh out loud. From start to finish, expect to be entertained and enlightened by this fine collection of stories written by a national award-winning author and master storyteller who clearly loves the myths and legends of OUR AMERICAN WEST.

"Our American West, Volume 2" begins with America's first colonizers, the 'prairie dogs', and how out on the ranges they were so hated by ranchers that they were almost made extinct. 'Conestoga Wagons' were once called "prairie schooners" crossing America long before the famed 'Pony Express'. The indomitable courage of 'Sarah Winnemucca', the "Paiute Princess" rivals that of a tall Swede named 'Snowshoe Thompson' who skied the snowy winter passes of the Sierra Nevadas for over twenty years packing the mail and saving lives. Almost no one knows of Esther Hobart Morris, but Wyoming proudly claims her as its 'Mother of Women's Suffrage'. In this exciting volume you will marvel at the 'transcontinental railroad race' between the Union Pacific's Chinese laborers and the predominantly Irish Central Pacific Railroad crews and about how a one-armed Civil War hero named 'John Wesley Powell' was the first explorer to run the mighty Grand Canyon deep within its corridors of stone. Doctors were often called "sawbones" and not without good reason as they struggled to save their patients with little more than poultices and prayers. 'Tom Horn' was a tall and handsome hired gun, but did he hang for a killing he did not even commit? And how about the often ridiculed 'mules' - are they really smarter than horses? 'Billy the Kid' was a natural born killer, however 'Clay Allison' was every bit as deadly and you'll hear some stories about the famed fast draw was it a case of 'Myths but Mostly Misses'? Few tales of our Native Americans are more moving that the Cherokee and their "Trail of Tears" and the great 'Chief Sitting Bull' was one of the last of the America's storied Native American "Horseback Fighters of the Plains" to surrender. The United States Army's 'Buffalo Soldiers' did more than prove their worth on the lawless frontier and 'The Ghost Dancers' had nothing less than extermination on their minds. 'Mark Twain' survived a perilous stagecoach ride to the West then went on to fame as did 'Frederick Remington', yet both returned to the East. Why? 'The Infamous Bandit Queens' were Belle Starr, a wild and wicked woman and Pearl Hart, who robbed the last stagecoach in the West and was sent to the dreaded Yuma Territorial Prison then disappeared forever, only to reappear on these pages of "Our American West Volume 2".

"Joaqu n Murieta Was My Friend" is the story of an unlikely friendship forged in the days of the historic 1849 gold rush when California's population exploded with dreamers and rogues. Among the former is Michael Callahan who has survived a perilous ocean voyage around Cape Horn with equally ambitious Paddy Ryan. Both Irishmen are determined to strike it rich in the swift, cold rivers that flow down the western slopes of the High Sierras. During a dramatic chance encounter, Michael Callahan will meet the legendary outlaw Joaqu n Murieta who vows vengeance against those who had raped and beaten his beautiful wife to death. "Joaqu n Murieta Was My Friend" is about love, courage and above all, an enduring friendship that transcends racial hatred. Historically accurate, told by Michael Callahan who has also become known as "The Gringo Amigo" this is a novel that not only is sure to entertain, but also carry its readers into those wild times of early Gold Rush California.