A rancher must contend with a snake in the grass in this pulse-pounding Ralph Compton western. Dane Kramer looks forward to the day when his Oklahoma cattle ranch will truly be his—no strings attached. With only one more payment to make and a buyer in Omaha ready to pay top dollar for a herd of Herefords, he should finally have the banker Earl Throckmorton off his back. But Earl has a plan to keep the sprawling ranch for himself. If he has his way, Dane’s herd will never make it across the Omaha Trail—and Dane won’t make it home alive. Up against Earl’s hired gang of outlaws, Dane must do whatever it takes to bring in the herd—but Earl has more than one trick up his sleeve. Planting one of his own men in Dane’s newly hired team of cowhands could be just the insurance Earl needs.... More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books In Print!

Dane Kramer saddles up to take a herd across the Omaha Trail, and make the final payment on his Oklahoma ranch. But along the way he'll face outlaws hired by a banker who would kill for the chance to foreclose on Dane's property.

A catnip garden yields a bumper crop of murder for actress-turned-sleuth Alice Nestleton... Alice Nestleton, beautiful off-off Broadway actress-turned-amateur-detective, has been forced into a life of crime—sleuthing that is—with some cat-sitting on the side. But this hot summer in New York she has taken a hiatus from stage and scene-of-the-crime to join a coterie of cat-lovers in cultivating a Manhattan herb garden. Unfortunately, a party to celebrate their first crop of peppermint tea ends with one of their group going right off the edge—of a 25th-floor terrace. Alice is stunned and grief stricken at the apparent suicide. But aided and abetted by her two cats, she soon smells a rat. And the help of her own feline-like instincts, the gorgeous gumshoe discovers that the victim’s dearest friends may well have been her most murderous enemies… Be sure to look for A Cat Tells Two Tales, available October 2012 in trade paperback from Obsidian.

"A bravura performance: a witty, moving, sexy book that bursts with as much color and excitement as the city of Constantinople itself." -Financial Times Roman historian Procopius publicly praised Theodora of Constantinople for her piety-while secretly detailing her salacious stage act and maligning her as ruthless and power hungry. So who was this woman who rose from humble beginnings as a dancer to become the empress of Rome and a saint in the Orthodox Church? Award-winning novelist Stella Duffy vividly recreates the life and times of a woman who left her mark on one of the ancient world's most powerful empires. Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore is a sexy, captivating novel that resurrects an extraordinary, little-known figure from the dusty pages of history.

An exploration of the fast food industry in the United States, from its roots to its long-term consequences.

CORDUROY MANSIONS - Book 2 In the Corduroy Mansions series of novels, set in London’s hip Pimlico neighborhood, we meet a cast of charming eccentrics, including perhaps the world’s most clever terrier, who make their home in a handsome, though slightly dilapidated, apartment block. The heartwarming and hilarious new installment in the Corduroy Mansions series presents the further adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s newest beloved character: the Pimlico terrier Freddie de la Hay. In the elegantly crumbling mansion block in Pimlico called Corduroy Mansions, the comings and goings of the wonderfully motley crew of residents continue apace. A pair of New Age operators has determined that Terence Moongrove’s estate is the cosmologically correct place for their center for cosmological studies. Literary agent Barbara Ragg has decided to represent Autobiography of a Yeti, purportedly dictated to the author by the Abominable Snowman himself. And our small, furry, endlessly surprising canine hero Freddie de la Hay—belonging to failed oenophile William French—has been recruited by MI6 to infiltrate a Russian spy ring. Needless to say, the other denizens of Corduroy Mansions have issues of their own. But all of them will be addressed with the wit and insight into the foibles of the human condition that have become the hallmark of this peerless storyteller.