Hell's Half Acre

"Stay the Hell out of Fort Worth." Those were the last words uttered by a dying man who was the boomtown's most recent sheriff. Rail-thin and half starved, desperate cowpuncher Jess Casey ignores the travel advice. Instead, Jess not only enters Fort Worth, he becomes the new sheriff, inheriting the body-riddled little slice of heaven called Hell's Half Acre, the wide-open, deadliest piece of real estate on the American frontier. Hell's Half Acre is home to Kurt Koenig and his gang-run empire of booze, prostitution, and wholesale slaughter. For Koenig, the only good lawman is a dead one, and he puts a pretty price on Jess Casey's head. For Jess Casey, that means war. Against him are the frontier's fastest draw and a host of murderous triggers. On his side are decades of rock-hard Texas living, a couple of ne'er-do-well deputies, and the good sense to do all his talking behind the barrel of a fast-blazing gun ...

Bestselling Western writers William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone introduce lawman Jess Casey, a rode-hard, stubborn, Texas cowboy with a knack for laying down the law with a very fast gun ONE DAY TO LIVE. SEVEN DAYS TO DIE. Sheriff Jess Carey and his oddball band of sidekicks have pulled off the impossible, taming Hell's Half Acre, the most lawless town in Texas, infamous for murder, mayhem, prostitution, and every random act of bloodshed imaginable. Now the no-good politicians in Austin have decided it's cheaper to dump hordes of criminals on Jess Carey's town than hanging em. In one dreadful week it seems as if the gates of Hell have burst open. Freed outlaws, gunslingers, bandits, rapists, desperados, drifters and miscreants are roaming Hell's Half Acreand Jess and his deputies are running out of bullets fast. As the fighting rages, some ruthless, powerful men see their chance to kill Sheriff Jess Carey and take the town for their own.

They call him "The Butcher of Baxter Pass," the notorious former Union General who massacred 200 Confederate prisoners just because he could! Now it's Sheriff Jess Casey's unenviable job to protect the bloodthirsty murderer from those who want him dead... pretty much everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line! When the Butcher arrives in Fort Worth followed by the vengeance-hungry McNamara clan, Casey has to swallow his disgust and uphold the law... even if it means saving a mass murderer's hide! But it won't be easy. He's outgunned by a dozen ex-Rebel avengers who lost three of their kin to the Butcher and will shoot anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately for them, Sheriff Casey is the one man who's brave enough -- and crazy enough to try and stop them...