Books

When an armored car hijacking leaves two men dead, Arizona Sheriff Jim Weber takes the crime personally, because one of the dead men is his brother-in-law. His hunt for the killers leads him into a world of sordid sex, deceit, and violence, with a suspect list that includes jilted women, a family of anti-government survivalists, and the...

When a young Apache man is found hanging from a tree on Cat Mountain, Sheriff Jim Weber and FBI agent Larry Parks go on the hunt for the killers and by the time their investigation is over, the idealistic cover is ripped from the little mountain town of Big Lake, revealing old prejudices, resentments, and hatred.

In their search for justice,...

Everybody seems to have gone crazy in the little mountain community of Big Lake, Arizona. Neighbors are threatening violence, eco-protestors are on the march, flower children are camping in the nearby forest, two of Sheriff Jim Weber’s deputies have gotten into a fistfight in the ButterCup Café, the grocery store manager has locked himself in...

It’s deer season and the mountains around Big Lake are filled with trophy hunters. But deer aren’t the only things being stalked. When Emma Moyer, Big Lake’s resident environmental activist, disrupts a guided hunt, it leads to a deadly confrontation. Now Sheriff Jim Weber has to find a killer from a list of suspects that include angry hunters,...

When the richest man in Big Lake is murdered on the night he announced his bid for State Senator the list of suspects stretches all the way from the small mountain town to the Governor’s office.

Sheriff Jim Weber’s investigation reveals a web of secrets, illicit sex, and shattered lives that teaches him that nothing is what it appears to be and...

When mysterious fires begin plaguing the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, it doesn’t take Sheriff Jim Weber long to realize that a serial arsonist is on the loose and has to be stopped before somebody dies or the entire forest goes up in flames. With the help of C.C. Callahan, a beautiful Deputy Fire Marshal, the sheriff begins the...

The busy summer season is drawing to a close in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona and the locals are looking forward to a relaxing interlude before the first snowfall brings carloads of skiers to the high country. That all changes when a terrified nearly nude woman rushes into a convenience store in the middle of the night begging...

When a young woman is brutally assaulted at the Cat Mountain Ski Resort, two of the three suspects Sheriff Jim Weber arrests come from wealthy families whose roots go deep into Arizona’s history, and the third has a past shrouded in mystery. The sheriff soon finds himself involved in a sordid case that stretches from the White Mountains all the...

Tongues are wagging all over town about Big Lake’s newest business, the Black Stocking Brewpub, where the scantily clad waitresses are drawing crowds of men and the ire of local churchgoers. And that’s before the arrogant womanizer who owns the brewpub is found murdered!

Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies have plenty of suspects to choose from as...

Life may seem idyllic in the small mountain town of Big Lake, but there are dark secrets here. When a small child goes missing from his dysfunctional home the clues are few, and the ones Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies do have are confusing. The boy’s playmates describe a giant with an orange head and someone else claims to have seen a...

Sheriff Jim Weber always said it was just a matter of time before somebody shot Bureau of Indian Affairs Agent Gordon Hahn. The man was a loud, crude, misogynist drunk who treated women with disrespect, and was a racist who rode roughshod over the people of the White Mountain Apache Reservation. So Weber wasn’t surprised when somebody finally...

When summoned to George Duncan’s farm in response to a tragic accident, Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies had no idea just how bad it was going to be. Everybody in Big Lake knew and respected Duncan. The easy-going hog farmer was a successful businessman who had made a fortune supplying restaurants from Show Low to Springerville, and all the...

Big Lake’s first annual Snowdaze celebration to kick off the winter season was off to a good start. Mother Nature cooperated with the event planners with a cold front that brought a heavy snowfall to the White Mountains of Arizona, dumping over a foot of the white stuff at the higher elevations just two days before Snowdaze weekend began in...

The phone call to the Big Lake Sheriff’s office was no more than a curiosity to begin with. A couple calling to check on the welfare of a bruised and battered young man they had found stranded along the highway. A young man who claimed to be Sheriff Weber’s son. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town soon afterward and is evasive about...

With only two weeks to go before their wedding, Big Lake Sheriff Jim Weber and his fiancée, Deputy Robyn Fuchette are busy managing all of the last-minute details before the big day while dealing with Robyn’s often-difficult mother, whose demands have already lost them the florist and the limousine. But when compromising photographs of the bride...

When someone dressed in a ninja costume was first seen lurking around homes in Big Lake, everyone assumed it was some kind of teenage mischief. Things escalated when the ninja was spotted peeking in people’s windows. Sheriff Weber and his deputies are on the lookout for the mysterious prankster, and more sightings seem to come in every day....

Big Lake High School’s star quarterback seems to have it all. Handsome, popular with the girls, adored by the fans, and with a talent that his coach is convinced will take him to the big time in professional football. So when Gary Gunkel goes missing a week before the homecoming game, some people in town believe he’s just a typical young man...

The opening of Big Lake’s new medical marijuana dispensary caused quite a stir in the little mountain town, drawing debates before the Town Council and protesters to the site even as the building was being remodeled. With the doors now open and business flourishing, a crew of diehard protesters led by a big man who is used to getting his way...

At first it seemed like a routine death in a run of the mill house on a residential street that could be anywhere in small town America. An elderly woman who sat down in her recliner to take a nap and never woke up. But Sheriff Weber would soon learn there was nothing routine about this case at all.

When an autopsy revealed that she had been...

It’s a hot, dry summer in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, and the heat and the drought have old-timers fearing a wildfire could break out at any time, as they had in other parts of the state. But the shops and restaurants are filled with seasonal residents and tourists who are in town to escape even worse temperatures in the...

It’s Fall, the special time of year the locals in the little Arizona mountain town of Big Lake call the sweet season between when the summer visitors have gone back to their homes in the crowded desert cities and when the snow has accumulated enough to draw the ski crowd. Things are moving at a slower pace for now as people draw a deep breath...

Everyone in Big Lake was surprised when hard-drinking good old boy Levi Bischoff left town and went to a rehab clinic to dry out. No one thought it would be long before he fell back into his old ways, but Levi proved them wrong, moving to the college town of Flagstaff, meeting a nice girl, enrolling in classes at Northern Arizona University, and...

When Chet Wingate is brutally assaulted on a Sunday morning on the small mountain town’s Main Street in front of a dozen witnesses, including Big Lake Sheriff Jim Weber and his wife, Deputy Robyn Fuchette, it seems like a simple case of road rage. But was it? With the victim clinging to life, the investigation into the attack opens a can of...

Willie Chandler didn’t even want to go fishing that dreary, rainy spring morning, and he darned sure didn’t want to spend any time with his rude, crude mooch of a brother-in-law, Larry Munson. But yet he found himself standing on the edge of the lake in the early morning drizzle, listening to Larry brag about how many women he had bedded and how...

When a construction crew unearths a skeleton in an unmarked grave, there is speculation that it might be the remains of a long-forgotten settler, or even a Native American. Whoever it was, the discovery of a bullet hole in the back of the skull reveals that death was not by natural causes. And why was a silver cross found in the grave?

Even...

Winter is a special time in the charming little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona. Fireplace smoke rises from chimneys as kids build snowmen or skate on the frozen surface of Miller’s Pond, neighbors help neighbors shovel sidewalks and driveways, and there’s nothing like enjoying a hot toddy or a mug of cocoa to warm up after a busy day.
But...

Life is good in Elmhurst, Ohio. The war is over, the economy is booming, and the future looks bright. But just across the deep ravine known as Dog’s Run is a different life, one where times are always hard and dreams seldom come true. When Wanda Jean Reider, a beautiful young woman from the wrong side of town, is found dead in Dog’s Run secrets...

In the summer of 1951, Elmhurst, Ohio was shocked when the small town's war hero police chief, Lester Smeal, was killed putting an end to the bloody rampage of a rogue cop. It was the last violent act in a chain of events that began with the discovery of the body of Wanda Jean Reider, a beautiful young woman from the wrong side of the tracks....

Life is already complicated enough for John Lee Quarrels, what with his estranged wife dropping in for unannounced sleepovers, her oversexed sister tempting him, his pot smoking ponytailed grandfather growing his own stash, his Elvis obsessed grandmother, and being caught smack dab in the middle of a power struggle between the Sheriff and Chief...

When the father he never knew shows up at his house in the middle of the night, beaten and his body mutilated, with only a vague explanation of what happened to him, Somerton County Deputy John Lee Quarrels suspects there’s more to the story than he is being told. And when his father just as mysteriously disappears two days later, John Lee knows...

When Somerton County “bad girl” Leona Darling goes missing, Deputy John Lee Quarrels is ordered to find her. How hard could it be? Just look in the nearest gin mill, right? But Leona was nowhere to be found. As he begins asking questions, John Lee discovers that Leona was a badge bunny, a cop groupie who was well known on a less than...

Life has been difficult lately for Somerton County Deputy Sheriff John Lee Quarrels. He’s on the trail of a sexual predator, his love life is in turmoil, his soon-to-be ex-wife just served him with divorce papers, someone has stolen his police car and is using its radio to broadcast offensive jokes, a 350 pound redneck named Baby Bubba just...

Looking back on all of it later, Somerton County Deputy John Lee Quarrels couldn’t help but wonder what quirk of fate, stretching back more than 80 years, would connect three Depression-era outlaws with another man born long after their crime spree was over with. A man who would be on the run from the police for more than 50 years himself. And...

When a hidden gunman ambushes D.W. Swindle in the driveway of his own home, leaving the Somerton County Sheriff barely clinging to life, every one of his deputies and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are on the hunt for the attacker. The list of suspects include a father who blames law enforcement for the death of both his daughters, an...

Somebody is killing old men in Somerton County. Stalking and killing them in the most horrific way. The first to fall was Wilbur Forbes, murdered in his own garage in the middle of the afternoon. As Deputy John Lee Quarrels and the rest of the Somerton County Sheriff’s Department investigate the gruesome crime, the people around town are talking...

Some people seem to be born lucky and have it all. Audrey Rittenhouse and Lonnie McBride were just such a couple. Superstars in the real estate business in Somerton County, she was stunningly beautiful and he was movie-star handsome. Their futures looked bright, and their passion burned at a fever pitch.

Yes, Audrey and Lonnie had everything....

When a small town cop working the late night shift finds a battered woman dying of an overdose, Deputy John Lee Quarrels and the men and women of the Somerton County Sheriff’s Department know that even their rural Florida community is not immune to the scourge of hard drugs. As more addicts turn up dead a massive effort is launched to find...

When game warden Raymond McConnell is found murdered with his own knife in the cab of his state-issued pickup truck at a popular fishing lake, it’s hard to know where to begin an investigation because it’s doubtful that anyone in Somerton County had more enemies than McConnell. Even deputies John Lee Quarrels and Maddy Westfall are considered...

When a pair of would-be assassins ambush Somerton County Deputy John Lee Quarrels on a dark, lonely road late at night, it is only their ineptness and his quick thinking that saves his life. Wounded and disoriented, John Lee must make it through the forest on foot to find help, never knowing if his attackers are coming back to finish the job.

...

Curtis Darling was without a doubt one of the most annoying men who ever lived in Somerton County, Florida. And given the number of rednecks, racists, wife beaters, petty thieves, drunks, methheads, and other assorted losers who called that part of rural north Florida home, that was saying a lot. Even so, the county was shocked when Curtis and...

Florida deputy John Lee Quarrels is not happy when his estranged mother comes to town accompanied by her flashy Nashville music producer boyfriend, Dakota Phillips. When she unveils her latest scheme, a country music song that makes his life sound like every day is a shootout at the OK Corral, it pushes John Lee over the edge. He demands that...

We all know a person like Raymond Winters. He is Everyman. You see him daily on your commute to work. He sits in the cubicle next to yours. He’s the guy plodding through life, just going through the motions. He’s not happy. His work is not fulfilling. But he never expected anything more. At 41, he’s stuck in a rut, without the energy to climb...

If someone ever tells you that small towns are boring and that nothing ever happens in them, just shake your head and walk away because they have no idea what they are talking about! New York Times bestselling author Nick Russell spent much of his working life publishing small town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona and has...

A simple trip to town, a chance meeting with a pretty young woman, and a few words was all it took for Lucas Wirtz to flee his family farm and the abusive father who dominated it. Following Rachel McNally to the big city, he had no idea how much his life and the world around him would change.

Chronicling the days leading up to World War I and the...

The Roaring Twenties. A prosperous era of flappers, bootleggers, speakeasies, bathtub gin, and women pushing the conventions of society. Those are the things the newspapers are talking about. But that is only a small part of what is happening. Not everyone is celebrating the good times. For most people, life goes on as it always has, though...

The Roaring 20s are in full swing and people are living the good life, making money, and having fun. Henry Ford just introduced the forty-hour work week and there is plenty to celebrate. Nobody seems to have a care in the world, except for Elizabeth McNally, who can’t shake the feeling that there are things to fear just over the horizon, even...

The 1930s are the darkest days of the Great Depression. Factories are closing their doors, millions of people are out of work, men are riding the rails searching for elusive jobs that seldom exist, and a thriving way of life that has been cherished is disappearing. Desperate people are doing desperate things just to survive, while labor strikes...

Just as people all over America in the second-half of the 1930s, the people of Tinder Street are struggling to survive. They have their triumphs and their challenges, their joys and their heartbreaks, but the McNallys and their extended family never give up and continue to help their neighbors and even strangers in need.

Hardworking family men...

As America pulls itself out of the Great Depression, war clouds are hanging low over Europe, and
Adolph Hitler’s Nazis seem unstoppable in their brutal march across the continent. Meanwhile, the growing threat from Japan is ignored by many in Washington. That all changes with the deadly attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly the country is thrust into...

The long, terrible war years are over and the Nazis have been defeated. America’s victorious soldiers are finally home, but the country they returned to was not the one they left. As they tried to pick up the pieces of their lives, to some it seemed like everything had changed. Women who had gone into the factories to produce the bombs,...

There Is Adventure Waiting Just Off The Highway!
Speeding down an Interstate highway is no way to see America.

For a real taste of our history, our culture, and adventure, you have to travel the back roads, far away from toll booths and rest area service plazas. That is where you will discover the interesting locations and fascinating stories no...

Even More Mysteries And Little Known History From America’s Back Roads!

Speeding down an Interstate highway is no way to see America. For a real taste of our history, our culture, and adventure, you have to travel the back roads, far away from tollbooths and rest area service plazas. That is where you will discover the interesting locations and...

From the Panhandle to the Key West, Florida is filled with wonderful attractions that most visitors never get to see. Frontier forts, wildlife refuges, historical museums, Cracker homesteads, and fishing towns are all waiting for you away from the glitter and glitz of Orlando and Disney World. Come explore with this handy guidebook!

From the towering saguaro cacti of her deserts to the pine covered mountains of the Mogollon Rim, Arizona is filled with wonderful attractions that most visitors never get to see. Frontier forts, ghost towns, Spanish missions, historical museums, canyons, and winding mountain roads are all waiting for you, with adventure along every mile of the...

Run Away To A New Lifestyle!
Overworked and underappreciated? Is your nose sore from keeping it to the grindstone day in and day out? Have you ever been tempted to climb out of your rut and escape the rat race? Nick and Terry Russell did it, and you can too!

Come along for the ride as a pair of overworked baby boomers decide that life is too short...

Yes, you can enjoy the RV lifestyle on a budget! Nick Russell tells you how!

Fulltime RV author and publisher Nick Russell has presented his Frugal RVer seminars at RV shows and events across the country, teaching RVers how to enjoy traveling without spending a lot of money. Now you can learn these same money saving techniques to cut your travel...

If you have ever wanted to travel fulltime in an RV, but did not believe there was a way to earn enough money to support yourself and your family as you travel, this book is for you. Written by a working fulltime RVer, Work Your Way Across The USA gives you dozens of ideas for generating a full or part time income as you travel.

Nick Russell has...

For years Bad Nick has been delighting, infuriating, and entertaining readers with his popular blog. Now he has compiled over four years of his best posts into one book for readers who want more.

So who is Bad Nick and what’s he all about?

Bad Nick refuses to wear a label, because he prefers to think for himself, instead of letting someone else do...

If you have ever dreamed of owning your own gun shop, this book will show you how to make that dream come true!

Author Nick Russell owned a successful gun shop for years, and knows every aspect of the business inside and out. He shares tips on deciding if a gun shop is the right business for you, preparing yourself for the business, licenses and...

“A fine book for self-publishers set to take advantage of today’s best entry to self- publishing.” Aaron Shepard, author of Aiming at Amazon.

This book cuts through all the hype that surrounds the publishing industry. Learn how to register your own publishing imprint and reap the benefits of passive income that successful writing provides. This...