This segment includes the following four categories:
     (To view a category, just click its name. Click "top of page" to return here.)

The American West
Short Story Collections
Collaborations
Other Publications

Forge Books (May 30, 2006)

From Booklist: Starred Review
Johnny Vermillion, operator and featured performer of the Prairie Rose Repertory Company, travels the Wild West putting on plays in towns like Lockjaw, Diablo, and Purgatory. But that's just his cover: in fact, he and his small troop are bank robbers. And when a determined Pinkerton agent tips to what Johnny has been up to, an all-out pursuit results, culminating in a wickedly clever trap. Once again, Estleman proves why he is among the best of our contemporary western novelists (he is no slouch as a mystery author, either). Johnny and his merry band of thieves are thoroughly delightful characters, a bunch of good-natured rogues, colorful without being cartoony. Estleman's tone is light and adventurous (there is definitely a touch of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid here). This jaunty air is heightened by Estleman's mastery of a very dangerous narrative device--self-referential storytelling. By frequently breaking the wall that separates reader from writer--he refers, for example, to one character as "a fixture in outlaw tales of this type"--Estleman manages to bring us into the fun, as coconspirators (rather than simply jarring our narrative sensibilities). Set in "a West that should have been, but never quite was," this is, hands down, one of Estleman's best novels. As such, it will engage not just western devotees but readers of more meaty historical fiction as well.

THE UNDERTAKER'S WIFE

Forge Books (2005)

BLACK POWDER, WHITE SMOKE

Forge Books (October 2002), ISBN: 0-765-30189-X

Two men. One black and one white. In New Orleans, the black man, Honey Boutrille, saves a prostitute's life by killing her attacker. In San Francisco, the white man, Twice Emerson, kills a Chinaman because he likes killing.
Honey and Emerson rage through an authentic West drawn with a fierce and gleeful truthfulness, leaving trails of bodies, pursued ever more relentlessly, and moving always toward a central and inescapable meeting place: Denver, Colorado.

THE MASTER EXECUTIONER

Forge Books (June 2001), ISBN: 0-312-86970-3

Oscar Stone is a hangman. Everything he does, he does impeccably. He is more bloodless than bloodthirsty. He is a profound student of his art, completely versed in its traditions over the centuries. For more than a quarter of a century he has worked to create a reputation as a man peerless in his craft: the master executioner. He is also utterly alone with his craft. Suddenly, one day, on a single piece of knowledge, Oscar comes to a moment of devastating truth and for the first time knows himself.

        THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN MOVING PICTURE ASSOCIATION

(Forge Books; April 1999; ISBN: 0-312-86676-3)

To read Chapter One, click here

Award-winning novel!

JOURNEY OF THE DEAD won two national awards: The Spur from the Western Writers of America and The Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Forge Books (April 1998), ISBN: 0-312-85999-6

Two witnesses to this turbulent evolution tell their stories. One is an ancient Spanish alchemist searching for the philosopher's stone from his hut in the New Mexico desert. He devotes his long life to hunting for the secrets of the old gods. But will they give him the answers to his quest for meaning? The other is the fabled Pat Garrett, the man who killed his poker buddy, Billy the Kid. Haunted by Billy for the rest of his life, Pat Garrett searches for peace. Together and separately, Garrett and the alchemist journey through time and history searching for answers to their ancient questions.

Click here for the first chapter of Journey of the Dead.

  BILLY GASHADE: AN AMERICAN EPIC
Forge Books (April 1997), ISBN: 0-312-85997-X (hardcover)
ISBN: 0-812-54915-5 (paperback)

Billy Gashade is a wandering piano player who crosses paths with the notorious, the legendary, the unheralded. Billy’s song is lyrical and at times elegiac, but never sentimental. And his anchoring refrain remains true to this day: that most folks were neither as bad nor as good as they seemed, and they did the best they could with what they had. From the ravages of the Civil War to the early innovations of the twentieth century, the piano player who came to be known as Billy Gashade sang for his supper in saloons and bawdy houses from New York to New Mexico. Starred review in Publishers Weekly!

    THE HIDER
Reprint published by Berkley Books
In 1898, the last buffalo hunter tracks the last buffalo through what remains of the frontier. (Original publication: Doubleday, 1978)

Reprint published by Berkley Books
SUDDEN COUNTRY (Doubleday, 1991): In a frontier retelling of Treasure Island, a boy and an old bandit search Dakota’s Black Hills for a fortune in buried Confederate gold.

BLOODY SEASON
Reprint published by Berkley Books
A novel of the gunfight at the OK Corral. (Original publication: Bantam, 1988)

GUN MAN
Reprint published by Berkley Books
John "Killer" Miller: outlaw at 12, lawman at 23, gunfighter at 30, dead at 38. His violent story. (Original publication: Doubleday, 1985)

  THIS OLD BILL
Reprint published by Berkley Books
A novel of the life of Buffalo Bill Cody: Indian scout, showman, adulterer, American legend. (Original publication: Doubleday, 1984)

MISTER ST. JOHN
Reprint published by Berkley Books
In 1906, Irons St. John – failed businessman, defeated politician, aging hero – gathers his old posse for one last manhunt. (Original publication: Doubleday, 1983)

THE WOLFER
Reprint published by Berkley Books
A callow journalist and a half-wild wolfer set out in pursuit of a wolf who’s as smart as they are. (Original publication: Pocket Books, 1981)

  
ACES & EIGHTS (Paperback available from Forge Books. Original publication: Doubleday, 1981. ) The life of Wild Bill Hickok, presented from both sides during the trial of his killer.  Winner of the 1981 Spur Award for Best Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America!

                                                  top of page

THE BEST WESTERN STORIES OF LOREN D. ESTLEMAN: A baker’s dozen of frontier gems, selected by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg. Includes "The Bandit," which won the 1986 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction from the Western Writers of America.

PEOPLE WHO KILL: Nine offbeat tales of murder, written and introduced by Estleman.

THE BLACK MOON (Lynx Books, 1989): Estleman joins forces with other writers to solve a 40-year-old art theft.

  LEGEND: Estleman saddles up with others to relate the adventures of two men whose lives spanned half a century in the Old West.

PEEPER (Bantam, 1989): Sleazy P.I. Ralph Poteet is too dumb to dislike and too unlucky to win. In this hilarious sendup of hardboiled mysteries, he reaches for the fast buck over a dead priest in a hooker’s bed and falls flat on his aspirations.

THE WISTER TRACE (Jameson Books, 1987): A leader in the western genre takes aim at 29 classic frontier novels in a series of penetrating essays.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HOLMES (Doubleday, 1979; reprint by iBooks Publications): Robert Louis Stevenson burned the first draft of his chiller about dual personalities. Here for the first time is the full story.

SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. DRACULA (Doubleday, 1978; reprint by iBooks Publications): London in 1890 was the biggest city in the world, but the town wasn’t big enough to contain these two adversaries. An epic battle.

THE OKLAHOMA PUNK (Major Books, 1976): Estleman’s first novel, based on the violent life of Wilbur Underhill, 1930s Public Enemy No. 1.**

** Available now in paperback as RED HIGHWAY(Carroll & Graf; ISBN 0-7867-0178-1)

Amos Walker Series  Author Profile Detroit Series
Home On The Circuit
Page Murdock Series Peter Macklin Series
  Praise For Estleman Related Sites Valentino