In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

The first time the Donovan twins, Lucas and Jamie, saw a Canadian Northwest Mounted Police officer, they knew that's what they wanted to be when they grew up. Years later, Lucas Donovan, now a member of the force, is on a mission to bring a ruthless serial killer to justice. For years, Jack Emerson has eluded capture in the vast Canadian wilderness, but now Donovan has vowed that nothing on earth will stop him from seeing this man caught and punished. The oath is both personal and professional, since one of the men Emerson killed was Constable Jamie Donovan, Lucas' twin brother.

In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.

When Conrad Browning's wife disappears in the untamed frontier, Conrad finds himself assuming the identity of his famous gunslinging father, Frank Morgan, to find her. But his hopes of rescuing Rebel are swiftly shattered - and now he's burning for vengeance, the old-fashioned way. So he fakes his own death and starts calling himself The Loner, becoming the deadliest gunfighter this side of his own father - ready to settle the score in blood and bullets....

The crooked, the greedy, and those with a checkered past - they all came to Leadville with the same purpose: Get in, get rich, get out. As 1879 draws to a close, silver fever burns hot in the Rocky Mountain boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Unfortunately for Joe Rose, an assayer of precious metals, death stakes its own claim. Joe’s body is found trampled into the muck behind Inez Stannert’s saloon. Inez already has much more to deal with than pouring shots of Taos Lightning.

After spending an unknown number of days caged, chained, and tortured by men wearing hoods in the darkness of a root cellar who insist he robbed a bank and killed several women, 25-year-old Ben Hawthorne is rescued by four men. But who are these men and why were they looking for him - the son of Eli and Cora Hawthorne, born on a ranch outside of Nacogdoches, Texas, orphaned at 10 when his parents were killed by Comanches, and then taken by the Comanches who gave him his Indian name, Newcomer?

Once, Frank Morgan had a wife and a future on the land — until a rich man with a grudge drove him out of Colorado. Since then, Morgan's taken up the one skill that always came easy — gunfighting — and drifted to a mining town in the New Mexico Territory. But there's nothing easy about two vicious gangs descending on the town and threatening to wreak havoc. With his reputation preceding him, Morgan is elected to stand in the outlaws' way.

On a cold, gusty night in Circle City, Alaska, Sammy Day walks into Nagle's Bar. He is only 22, but he has been on his own for 10 years. He has worked cattle from Montana to Chihuahua, but a little "accident" at a poker table in Montana sent him on a forced march to Alaska to avoid a posse. He is down to his last 50 cents.

1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on as ranch hands at the secretive Bar-VR cattle spread, they're not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which they can enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harper's Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes.

Orphaned at the age of seven and adopted by Indians, Jami Ian MacCallister grew into a man more at ease in the wilderness than among men. But when the westward strike drove him across the Arkansas Territory into Texas, he finally found himself a home — in the middle of a bloody war. Texans like Jim Bowie and Sam Houston were waging a fierce struggle against Santa Ana’s Mexican army and Jami MacCallister made the perfect scout for the fledgling volunteer force.

The Dolan brothers live by their wits, jumping freight trains, and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While 16-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar, and who introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: A wealthy mining magnate who will stop at nothing to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Mac Jones had been searching for a refuge for seven years and had finally found it in the mountains of Colorado. Then, as soon as his cabin was built, he was presented with two fellow refugees who would turn his peaceful sanctuary into a killing ground.

The Scottish Highlands, 1885. Two men, brandishing knives, attack a young woman outside a pub. Duff MacAllister steps in and saves her - killing one of the assailants. Big mistake. The attacker was the sheriff's son, and now MacAllister is marked for death. His only hope: America. Here, in the sprawling land of dreams, Duff hopes to start a new life with his American cousins. Unfortunately, the sheriff's deputies are tracking him down - with nine of the deadliest cutthroats money can buy.

On nothing more than a lark, he leaves his family and begins a journey from Ohio westward. Along the way, he runs up against badlands and bad men, loses his freedom, gains his freedom and learns the first rule of the frontier: Do whatever it takes to survive. With ruthless enemies after him - both White men and Indians - he’ll head for a place as brutal as it is beautiful - the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.

If anyone knows the road to purgatory, it's Red Ryan. As a stagecoach guard, he's faced holdups, ambushes, and all-out attacks from every kill-crazy outlaw, Indian, and prairie rat. But even he's a bit reluctant to take on his next job: riding shotgun with his driver Buttons Muldoon on a stage bound from Fort Concho, Texas, to Fort Bliss.