The Ysabel Kid

The Floating Outfit was too busy smuggling guns to notice the Civil War was over. But when they run into trouble passing the Henry repeaters over the border to Juarez, they call Comanche fast and Texas tough Ysabel for help.

In this exhilarating, moving novel set in modern and ancient Provence, Guy Gavriel Kay casts brilliant light on the ways in which history – whether of a culture or a family – refuses to be buried.

Inspired by the glory of Tang Dynasty China in the eighth century, Guy Gavriel Kay melds history and the fantastic into something both powerful and emotionally compelling. Under Heaven is a novel on the grandest narrative scale, encompassing the intimate details of individual lives in an unforgettable time and place. Shen Tai is the son of a general who led the forces of imperial Kitai in that empire's last war against their western enemies from Tagur, twenty years before. Forty thousand men on both sides were slain beside a remote mountain lake. General Shen Gao himself has died recently. To honour his father's memory, Tai has spent two years of official mourning alone at the battle site among the ghosts of the dead, laying to rest their unburied bones. One spring morning, he learns that others have taken note of his vigil. The White Jade Princess in Tagur is pleased to present him with two hundred and fifty Sardian horses, given, she writes, in recognition of his courage, and honour done to the dead. You gave a man one of the famed Sardians to reward him greatly. You gave him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Tai starts east towards the glittering, dangerous imperial capital and gathers his wits for a return from solitude by a mountain lake to his own forever-altered life.

Bloodlands . . . It seems when a lady's called "Calamity," chaos follows wherever she goes -- even to the mostly peaceful railroad town of Mulrooney, Kansas. Martha Jane Canary's always been free as the prairie wind, tied to no place or person, so she never expected to inherit a hardscrabble ranch that other folks have been working. She might have even ignored the legal summons to claim her property . . . if someone hadn't tried to kill her first. Now, whether she wants the spread or not, Jane's going to fight for what's hers -- taking on bushwackers, crooked lawyers . . . and a woman with a cold and greedy heart, and a plan to steal Jane's land with bullets and brutality. But Calamity's got an ally -- a baby-faced Texas gun called the Ysabel Kid -- not to mention stony courage, a strong and sure whip hand . . . and a mule-stubborn willingness to lay down her life for what's right.

The corrupt Yankee state police were terrorizing Texas, and only the lightening guns of the Floating Outfit could stop them.