The Buntline Special

Welcome to a West like you've never seen before, where electric lights shine down on the streets of Tombstone, while horseless stagecoaches carry passengers to and fro, and where death is no obstacle to The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo. Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

Welcome to a West like you've never seen before, where electric lights shine down on the streets of Tombstone, while horseless stagecoaches carry passengers to and fro, and where death is no obstacle to The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo. Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

Tie into two Wyatt Earp movies--Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, and Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid--with the definitive account of this American legend. Earp's life story reads like a movie, and now readers can experience his exploits in this classic account, originally published in 1931.

Edward Zane Carroll Judson aka Ned Buntline (1821–1886) was responsible for creating a highly romantic and often misleading image of the American West, albeit one that the masses found irresistible in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Some scholars estimate that he wrote at least four hundred dime novels over his lifetime, and perhaps as many as six hundred. While he is best known for discovering William Frederick Cody (Buffalo Bill) and making the irrepressible scout a star, Judson—by that time—had already lived five lifetimes himself: he had fought Seminole Indians in Florida; started and bankrupted three newspapers; published dozens of successful novels; agitated for the Know-Nothing party; and fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. Along the way, the fiery redheaded, gray-eyed writer lectured extensively about temperance between drinking bouts. He married eight women, seduced at least one other, and cavorted with prostitutes, one of whom beat him physically and legally. It wasn’t until 1869 that, en route home from a temperance speaking tour in California, he met Cody in Nebraska, while trying to make contact with another Western star, “Wild Bill” Hickok. Judson’s time with his last three wives overlapped his time with Cody. Their subsequent fight over Judson’s Civil War pension provides not only a unique glimpse into the mind of a narcissistic genius, but also a panoramic view of America’s past forcibly displayed by white, Protestant manhood. The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline captures the likeness of a man whose life was a landscape littered with contradictions--a man whose readers often forgave his Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior because of his inventive portrayal of a country trying to subdue the last of its natural landscapes and make sense of its teeming cities. It will be, at last, an open-eyed look at the man who sparked an American legend but whose own scandalous life somehow escaped history's limelight.

Welcome to a Steampunk wild west starring Doc Holliday, with zombies, dinosaurs, robots, and cowboys. The time is April, 1885. Doc Holliday lies in bed in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado, expecting never to leave his room again. But the medicine man and great chief Geronimo needs him for one last adventure. Renegade Comanche medicine men object to the newly-signed treaty with Theodore Roosevelt. They are venting their displeasure on two white men who are desecrating tribal territory in Wyoming. Geronimo must protect the men or renege on his agreement with Roosevelt. He offers Doc one year of restored health in exchange for taking on this mission. Welcome to the birth of American paleontology, spearheaded by two brilliant men, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two men whose genius is only exceeded by their hatred for each other's guts. Now, with the aid of Theodore Roosevelt, Cole Younger, and Buffalo Bill Cody, Doc Holliday must save Cope and Marsh not only from the Comanches, not only from living, breathing dinosaurs, but from each other. And that won't be easy.

Finalist for the 2014 Weber-Clements Book Prize for the Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America In popular culture, Wyatt Earp is the hero of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, and a beacon of rough cowboy justice in the tumultuous American West. The subject of dozens of films, he has been invoked in battles against organized crime (in the 1930s), communism (in the 1950s), and al-Qaeda (after 2001). Yet as the historian Andrew C. Isenberg reveals in Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life, the Hollywood Earp is largely a fiction—one created by none other than Earp himself. The lawman played on-screen by Henry Fonda and Burt Lancaster is stubbornly duty-bound; in actuality, Earp led a life of impulsive lawbreaking and shifting identities. When he wasn't wearing a badge, he was variously a thief, a brothel bouncer, a gambler, and a confidence man. As Isenberg writes, "He donned and shucked off roles readily, whipsawing between lawman and lawbreaker, and pursued his changing ambitions recklessly, with little thought to the cost to himself, and still less thought to the cost, even the deadly cost, to others." By 1900, Earp's misdeeds had caught up with him: his involvement as a referee in a fixed heavyweight prizefight brought him national notoriety as a scoundrel. Stung by the press, Earp set out to rebuild his reputation. He spent his last decades in Los Angeles, where he befriended Western silent film actors and directors. Having tried and failed over the course of his life to invent a better future for himself, in the end he invented a better past. Isenberg argues that even though Earp, who died in 1929, did not live to see it, Hollywood's embrace of him as a paragon of law and order was his greatest confidence game of all. A searching account of the man and his enduring legend, and a book about our national fascination with extrajudicial violence, Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life is a resounding biography of a singular American figure.

It’s August 19, 1884. The consumptive Doc Holliday is preparing to await his end in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado, when the medicine man Geronimo enlists him on a mission. The time the great chief has predicted has come, the one white man with whom he’s willing to treat has crossed the Mississippi and is heading to Tombstone—a young man named Theodore Roosevelt. The various tribes know that Geronimo is willing to end the spell that has kept the United States from expanding west of the Mississippi. In response, they have created a huge, monstrous medicine man named War Bonnet, whose function is to kill Roosevelt and Geronimo and keep the United States east of the river forever. And War Bonnet has enlisted the master shootist John Wesley Hardin. So the battle lines are drawn: Roosevelt and Geronimo against the most powerful of the medicine men, a supernatural creature that seemingly nothing can harm; and Holliday against the man with more credited kills than any gunfighter in history. It does not promise to be a tranquil summer.

Things that Go Bump at High Noon! Tales of the Weird Wild West from Charlaine Harris, Mike Resnick, D.J. Butler, Stephen Graham Jones, and more. Baen’s Bestselling Western Fantasy and Horror Anthology Returns for Another Showdown! Once again, we return to the Old West with a new posse of top authors spin tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. We take no prisoners as they explore what really was, and mix in what might have been. Charlaine Harris [The Sookie Stackhouse Series, Midnight, Texas] shows us a glimpse inside her new series as a tormented gunfighter faces a true demon of her past. Mike Resnick [The Buntline Special] reveals what Doc Holiday thought was so funny on his last day. Jeffrey Mariotte [Desperados, Graveslingers] introduces us to a man who specializes in pictures of the dead who won’t stay dead. Jane Lindskold [The Firekeeper Saga, The Star Kingdom Series (with David Weber)] teaches us not to underestimate a schoolmarm when her students are in jeopardy. And Shane Hensley [Deadlands] cooks up a stew that threatens to send every famous lawman in history to their graves! Plus, a dozen more stories of how the west was wilder than any history book could contain, such as a new Native American legend by Stephen Graham Jones and a Mormon troubleshooter straddling the line between his faith and the supernatural by D.J. Butler. The west that was rides again with west that could have been in this follow-up to Straight Outta Tombstone! Contributors: Mike Resnick D.J. Butler Jane Lindskold Shane Hensely Jeffrey J. Mariotte Steve Ransic Tem Stephen Graham Jones Derrick Ferguson Frog and Esther Jones Cliff Winnig Jennifer Campbell-Hicks Alex Acks Marsheilla Rockwell Mario Acevedo Betsy Dornbusch Travis Heermann At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Straight Outta Deadwood: "Cross-genre fans will find this anthology enjoyable . . ."—Publishers Weekly About Sequel Straight Outta Tombstone: “The authors were having fun. Even when they are not playing the stories for laughs, they are taking an opportunity to enjoy an opportunity to tell a story with a fresh twist, and expand out of their expected boundaries. Straight Outta Tombstone is a change-up pitch, which will leave readers laughing on occasion, spooked at times, and entertained throughout.”—Daily News of Galveston County