Ghost Towns West

The story of the American mining frontier can be traced in the ghost towns - from the camps of California's forty-niners to the 20th-century ruins in the Nevada desert. They mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gun-slinging and hell-raising. We who have seen too many Western movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by scriptwriters - but the ghost towns remain.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A long-abandoned silver mine for sale sounded like an adventure too great to pass up, but it turned into much more—a calling, a community of millions, and hard-earned lessons about chasing impractical dreams. “Inspiring and meditative—the story of man vs...

EDITORIAL REVIEW: Ghosts of Boot Hill transforms the haunted Old West into a deeply unsettling exploration of justice, guilt, memory, and the price of forgetting. Blending documented vigilante history, authentic frontier atmosphere, eyewitness-style testimony, and emotionally powerful storytelling, Ted Lazaris delivers one of the strongest entries in the Documented Terror series—a haunting journey that asks whether some places remember the truth long after humanity chooses to forget it. Equal parts historical mystery, supernatural thriller, and psychological horror, Ghosts of Boot Hill ...

He wanted peace. She wanted to be remembered. Neither expected to find love between the living and the lost. When blacksmith, Earl Bateman, receives a letter addressed to another man—and a shipment of trunks belonging to a woman named Betsy Sweet—he thinks it’s a mistake. Until the nights turn strange. Until the air in his empty house starts to breathe. Betsy died on her way west to marry a man who never met her. Now her spirit lingers, tethered to the forge that bears his name. She doesn’t know why she’s here or what she’s meant to finish, only that the quiet man by the fire ...

Ghosts of Silver Maple Island A Jamie Blackwood Mystery When a promising archaeology student is found murdered at a remote river island in West Virginia, Professor Jamie Blackwood is pulled into the darkest case of his career—one that threatens not only a sacred past, but the fragile peace he’s fought to build. Silver Maple Island is more than an archaeological site. Once home to a major Shawnee settlement and the birthplace of the Seven Nations Consortium, it holds artifacts powerful enough to rewrite history—and valuable enough to kill for. As evidence of professional looting ...

Throughout Teller County, history lovers can find abandoned towns and forgotten main streets that once bustled with life and commerce. Even before Teller was carved from surrounding counties, the scenic mountains and lucrative mines of the gold rush era brought thousands of settlers and attracted resort owners and tycoons eager to exploit the rich setting. Seemingly overnight, towns in the Cripple Creek District and other places popped up, flush with gold and people looking for opportunity. As the ore disappeared, the miners moved on in search of the next big lode.

A historical fiction book set in the Kansas prairie during the late 19th century. Step into a world where dreams are built on barren soil and the ghosts of the past linger in the windswept landscape. In "The Ghost Town," follow Calvin Morgan, a tenacious man determined to carve out a life as a farmer in the unforgiving Kansas prairie. As he battles the harsh realities of lawlessness and despair, his journey reveals the thin line between hope and destruction in the small, chaotic town of Levi. As Calvin arrives in Levi, he quickly discovers a community haunted by tragedy and moral decay. The...

Three Strangers, 3 days, Trapped in a Ghost Town 100 Years in the Past. Winner, American Fiction Awards Finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Awards Brilliant but burned-out CIA operative Richard Hart has a midlife crisis. He wants out of the intelligence game for good... A CIA operative. A black-site time experiment. A ghost town that shouldn't exist. Three strangers. Three days. Trapped 100 years in the past — and hunted by the dead. 🏆 Winner, American Fiction Awards Finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Awards Burned-out CIA operative Richard Hart wants out of the intelligence game for good. But a career...

The pandemic didn’t end humanity. It awakened its children. Kali has spent her life learning how to survive. Rescued from an abusive home and raised by the family who chose her, she grows into a skilled K-9 search-and-rescue specialist at Ghost Town, a secluded Wyoming community built by veterans, handlers, and families determined to protect their own. Then a mysterious virus sweeps across the world. Everyone twenty and younger falls into a four-day coma. Most awaken changed. Some can communicate with animals, sense danger, move objects, control the elements, or heal injuries. Kali can ...

Grab your pan. Pack your patience. And for heaven’s sake, do not trust every shiny rocks. Gold panning is one of the few hobbies where a grown adult can stand knee-deep in a freezing river, swirl mud in a plastic dish, stare at a speck the size of a flea’s kneecap, and whisper, “This could be it.” Welcome to the ultimate, dirt-under-your-fingernails road trip across America's historic gold country. This isn't your standard, dry history textbook written by someone in sensible shoes. Weird Gold Panning Road Trips is a witty, delightfully unhinged travel guide that takes you past the ...

Macon Fallon had never needed more than a deck of cards, a fast horse, and a ready gun; he was counting on those things now as he led an unsuspecting group of settlers to an abandoned mining town. But while Fallon prepared to pass the ghost town off as a gold mine in the making, a funny thing...

A dime novel for a new age! Tales of the frontier in the terrifying territory of New Golgotha. In the haunted frontier of Lone Creek, resurrected-outlaw-turned-monster-hunter Billy Choate is ensnared by dark forces and a sinister figure known only as the Man in the Crimson Hat. Teamed up with another hunter, Delilah Kane and her spectral coyote, Ash, Billy battles deadly shadows and confronts a past that refuses to die. Every step draws him closer to a fate written in blood—will he break the curse or be forever lost to the darkness? "Shadows of Lone Creek" is a gripping supernatural ...

Are you ready to visit the strangest state in America? Arizona isn't just a state. It's a fever dream baked into red rock and desert sand — where gold mines swallow treasure hunters whole, where ghost towns outnumber living ones, and where thousands of people once watched a massive silent spacecraft glide over Phoenix while the government shrugged and said "probably flares." Weird Arizona Stories takes you on a wild ride through the Grand Canyon State's most jaw-dropping legends, baffling crimes, haunted hotels, desert monsters, and moments of pure human madness that no screenwriter could...

Local matchmaker and PI Demeter West gets called in to investigate some interdimensional turbulence in the basement of the local library. Over the course of the investigation, Demeter learns some new approaches to tarot work, some local history, some new information about Casper's situation within the multiverse, and some things she didn't know about her husband and daughter.

There’s a new bad boy in town… And not just any bad boy—Peter Burton, the one outlaw that’s been on my mind for weeks. This werewolf shifter is a suspected murderer, and I’m going to find him, even if it means upturning this small town. I’ve never really cared for werewolves. I became a bounty hunter to get revenge for my father and stop men like Burton… But when your target’s a sexy cowboy with rock-hard muscles and a sizzling smile, things tend to get…interesting. Too bad he’s not staying long. He’s got one mission in Laudville. Someone else is going to die. Unless I...

In the small mining town of Wildcat Ridge, the only thing more plentiful than widows is whiskey. But for Thalia Plunkett, rather than the threat of starvation or losing her home it's s man's descent into alcoholism that shatters her heart. Dinky Moon, the town's handsome and charming bachelor, once the pride of Wildcat Ridge, is now the town drunk. Being one of the only men to survive a devastating mine disaster and losing his wife to another man, caused Dinky to turn to the bottle. Now, his addiction has taken over his life and threatens to consume him completely. Unable to stand by and ...

Cat and the members of her writers' retreat have just arrived in Outlaw, Colorado, an "Old West" tourist town complete with inhabitants dressed up as famous figures from history. But this authentic slice of Americana takes a murderous turn when a college student masquerading as a 19th-century saloon girl becomes history herself. Was she the intended target? Or did she take a hit meant for someone else? With a cast of suspects to choose from, Cat must unhorse the real culprit before a real-life ghost story is given a killer twist

They built cities in the desert. They died for gold. They left behind monuments to ambition and ruin. In 1892, a prospector rode into Southern Cross with saddlebags full of gold. Within three years, 15,000 people lived in a town that hadn't existed before. Within twenty, it was dying. This is the pattern that shaped Western Australia: boom, prosperity, collapse, silence. From Coolgardie to Wittenoom: Stories of Australia's Lost Mining Towns Mining Boom & Bust in Western Australia reconstructs the lives behind the ruins—the miners who chased fortune through waterless country, the women who...

Three lives, one hundred years, one ghost town: an explosive novel about a mysterious place called Sunrise, where the secrets of the past refuse to stay buried, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife “I’ve loved every book Téa Obreht has written but I might love...

From the pages of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine: When the stagecoach lady gambler, Miss Pandora Parson, and bareknuckle boxer, Corey Callaghan, are riding in breaks down in the middle of nowhere, they think that all they have to worry about is food, water, and finding a way to civilization. They have no idea that something more sinister awaits them and their fellow passengers in the old mining ghost town they take shelter in and no way to know that not all of them will be walking out again.