June Pick/ HOLMES ON THE RANGE

By Steve Hockensmith

The Wild West meets Sherlock Holmes in Steve Hockensmith's mystery, "Holmes On The Range." Now Mr. Holmes does not show up in person in 1893 Montana, but in the stories read by Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer around the campfire. But when the Amlingmeyer brothers sign on to work as ranch hands for the mysterious Bar-VR ranch Old Red feels that something is "afoot." Especially when the general manager of the ranch, an Englishman turns up dead, the apparent victim of a cattle stampede.

Old Red finally gets his chance to put the deductive reasoning to work that he has so admired in Sherlock Holmes and his brother Big Red becomes his somewhat unwilling Doctor Watson. Along with the brothers as ranch hands are a colorful assortment of characters with nicknames straight out of the Old West.

"Holmes On The Range" is a new twist on the classic western tale.

June Pick/ BONE MUSIC

By Lee Moler

Enemies from the Vietnam War. A mutated rabies virus. Chinese Triad gangs. What do all these things have in common? They are all part of the New West in Lee Moler's novel, "Bone Music." The traditional Old West components are here also, ruthless ranch owners, cowboys and cattle, Indians and vision quests, even a beautiful barmaid.

When rancher Judd Jefferson finds 150 of his prize cattle dead from a mysterious poison, he suspects that the new microchip plant borders his land has had something to do with it. He confronts the company manger and is presented with an EPA clean bill of health for the company and assurances that they have done nothing to harm his land or his cattle, but Judd still has his suspicions. Suspicions that are compounded by the fact that Judd is currently dealing with his own personal demons. His wife has left him and something is eating him up inside, some piece of his past that just won't die. As he investigates the factory, Judd's past does come back, C.K. Lone, a Triad crime lord who knows Judd from Vietnam, and whose thirst for revenge has also been eating him up inside for the last twenty-five years.

Set in Montana, "Big Sky Country," and home to Glacier National Park, "Bone Music"
takes the reader on a journey that looks at the evil men do in the name of revenge and love. It also looks at what can happen when your try to manipulate Mother Nature, and how modern day thinking can go hand in hand with the ancient ways. It take you to a place where the ancient spirit of the land can still be felt and can capture you and hold you in all its fierceness and beauty.