Showing results by author "Reavis Z. Wortham" in All Categories

In 1964, when Ned Parker, farmer and part-time constable, is summoned to a cornfield one hot morning to examine the remains of a tortured bird dog, he discovers that there is a dark presence in their quiet community of Center Springs, Texas. Ned is usually confident handling moonshiners, drunks, and instances of domestic dispute. But when it comes to animal atrocities—which then turn to murder—the investigation spins beyond his abilities.

Border patrol agents are being ambushed along the Big Bend region of West Texas, a notorious drug corridor running east and west across the Lone Star State. They’re not the only targets. A film production depicting human trafficking in the area has been attacked by a brutal drug cartel. Into this lawless frontier steps Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke, ready and willing to dispense his own brand of justice. It’s an all-out war with the thinnest line separating the good from the bad. Sonny knows the only way out is to aim straight and stand your ground....

Fourteen-year-old Top Parker, who lives with his grandparents, Constable Ned Parker and Miss Becky, in a little farmhouse near the Red River, is caught up in another adult situation sparked by a mysterious fatal car accident involving the white mayor of Chisum and his black female assistant. Questions and accusations arise about their relationship as the families wreak vengeance on each other. But what is the significance of a man calling himself the Wraith, who moves through the region at will, invading homes and watching the Parkers?

At the tail end of 1967, the Parker family once again finds it impossible to hide from a world spinning out of control. Fourteen-year-old Top still can't fit in with their Center Springs, Texas, community, and his near-twin cousin, Pepper, does the only thing she can conceive to escape her own demons: she joins the Flower Children flocking to California - just as three businessmen are murdered in the Red River bottoms on the same night as a deadly hit and run.

In October of 1967, the Summer of Love is history, rock and roll is dark and revolutionary, and people in the small east Texas community of Center Springs simply want to live their lives as quietly as possible. But a handsome darkness in the form of Las Vegas gangster Anthony Agrioli has left the business to hide out in their tiny backwater settlement with his blond bombshell girlfriend.

In 1965 Constable Cody Parker’s frightening dreams of gathering storm clouds for the tight-knit Parker family from Center Springs, Texas, proved accurate. Cody is ambushed and nearly killed on a lonely country road during an unusually heavy snowfall. With that attack, the locals fear that a disturbed murderer "the Skinner" has returned to their community. While his nephew recovers, Constable Ned Parker struggles to connect a seemingly unrelated series of murders.

Lyndon B. Johnson is president, Beatlemania is in overdrive, and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multistate killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

The serene beauty of West Texas's Big Bend National Park is shattered when four hikers are brutally ambushed by a sniper. Only one survives to report the murders. When investigators come up with nothing, they're left wondering if this is a single incident - or the beginning of a rampage. One week later, Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke drives his 3500 Dodge Dually into the park, determined to unearth the truth. Before he knows it, he's in the same sniper's crosshairs. A drug and human smuggling cartel has lured him to remote backcountry, looking for payback for an old grudge.

Judge. Jury. Executioner. One man is taking the law into his own hands. His targets are the criminals who slipped through the justice system. Dangerous men. Violent men. Depraved, cold-blooded killers. From California to Texas, this relentless avenger hunts down the unpunished and sentences them to death. But now he's on Sonny Hawke's turf. A Texas Ranger committed to his job, Hawke will not abide vigilante justice - even if the targets deserve to die. With each murderous act of vengeance, the hunter becomes more like the vermin he's exterminating.

Special Agent Tucker Snow knows there's big money roaming the fields under the wide Texas sky—and the cattle rustlers committing large-scale thefts on remote ranches know it, too. But when a prominent local rancher dies unexpectedly and his property is quietly sold to an unknown buyer, Tucker suspects there's something more sinister going on in his jurisdiction than the usual steal-and-resell racket. Still raw after the tragic death of his wife and young daughter, the lawman can't bear the thought of more innocent lives destroyed by people whose greed poisons everything around them.

Tucker Snow is as tough as they come, hardened by decades working as an undercover narcotics agent for the Texas Department of Public Safety. Through special dispensation from the governor, he and his brother Harley cut a wide swath through the criminal element of Northeast Texas. But tragedy comes calling after taking a dream job as a special ranger with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, when Tucker's wife and toddler are killed in a horrific traffic accident caused by a drug-addled felon.