#13: Long Blows the North Wind By Owen G. Irons

A young trapper sees his friend and mentor murdered, but on the revenge trail stumbles across two orphans and finds his path diverted in Long Blows the North Wind by Owen G. Irons.

Irons was Paul Lederer, who burned up a lot of typewriters writing westerns under multiple names.

This is an entertaining oater that hits good beats as the trapper befriends the kids against nefarious distant relatives and guns-for-hire.  Value added with a memorable cattle drive in a snow storm and a drunken but still deadly railroad detective.

I will definitely dip my toe into Irons' deep pool of writing again.  This one I got in a big lot of vintage westerns from eBay and read quickly.

#12: The Border Guidon by Gordon D. Shirreffs

A remote Arizona fort is racked by disease and surrounded by hostile Apaches, with the Confederate Army approaching and a religious zealot on the loose; so it is up to one lone soldier to carry off an impossible mission in Gordon D. Shirreff's The Border Guidon.

This was a surprisingly tough, unusually spare western with a pretty interesting plot (and a high body count).  An exciting third act, with a frontier cult hunkered down in an abandoned series of caves (and hiding a couple of field howitzers), adds value.

I have heard about Shirreff's writing but had never come across one of his paperbacks in the wild until I saw this for under a dollar at a used bookstore.  I will keep my eyes peeled for more by him.

Recommended for western fans.

#11: Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

Karl is coasting along with a Chicago bar he owns, and dwells on his past success in a moderately successful 90s rock band; but when a wormhole opens up in his closet, his life dramatically changes in Mo Daviau's Every Anxious Wave.

Karl and his slacker friend Wayne, naturally, decide to use the wormhole to visit concerts in the past they really want to see, name-checking tons of 80s and 90s bands. 

But when Wayne gets stranded in the distant past, and Karl recruits an astrophysicist named Lena to help rescue him, the plot boomerangs in all kinds of new and surprising directions.

Every Anxious Wave feels like what might happen if Nick Hornby took over showrunning Doctor Who.  Not for fans of hard science--being in love can trigger time travel, and an inconvenient double somehow evaporates--but enjoyable on every other level.  A pretty cool and thought-provoking novel.  Recommended.

I listened to a good audiobook version of this novel on loan from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library.

#10: Ride of Fury by Tim Kelly

A veteran tracker follows the rumor of a young woman who may have survived as an Indian captive in Tim Kelly's Ride of Fury.

This was Tim Kelly's first novel, and the flip side of an Ace Double with Reese Sullivan's The Blind Trail that I got at a goodbye price in an eBay lot.  For such an inauspicious start, this was a nicely surprising western, grim and mature with some pretty bleak passages that I think even Cormac McCarthy would approve of.

I believe this is the same Tim Kelly who was mostly a playwright and didn't write too many pulp paperbacks; which is a shame, because this was a really solid western that I truly enjoyed.

A welcome find to western fans who might come across it.

#9: The Indian Incident by Matt Chisholm

The unlikely-named Joe Blade is a manhunter for hire, but decides to hunt for free when he stumbles over a gang of outlaws who slaughter a band of Indians in Matt Chisholm's The Indian Incident.

Chisholm was an incredibly busy western writer with multiple series characters; I have read several of his McAllister books and enjoyed them. 

Where McAllister is leavened with some humor, Blade is all action, action, action, culminating in a big shoot-out in a cave where Blade and an eclectic group have holed up.

This was a fast-paced read I enjoyed from Piccadilly Publishing, who is bringing a lot of Matt Chisholm back to the digital realm.  A good read for western fans.

#8: The Blind Trail by Reese Sullivan

A stalwart deputy learns the town sheriff is crooked, and suddenly is accused of murder and on the run in Reese Sullivan's The Blind Trail.

Sullivan was actually western wordslinger Giles Lutz, who kept the paperback market busy with a number of pseudonyms.

This one pretty much lays all its cards on the table early, but hits all the right beats, including an irascible old coot and a late-arriving frontier romance.

 This is half of an Ace Double with Tim Kelly's Ride of Fury on the flip side.  I got this in a bunch of old westerns from eBay and read it quickly.