Author Information
Gary McCarthy's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    57 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    July 1979
  • Latest Book:
    February 2021
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Full Series List in Order

Gunsmoke

1 - Gunsmoke (Dec-1998)
2 - Dead Man's Witness (Mar-1999)
3 - Marshal Festus (Jul-1999)

The Horsemen

1 - The Horsemen (Jun-1992)
2 - Cherokee Lighthorse (Oct-1992)
3 - Texas Mustangers (Feb-1993)
3 - The Mustangers (May-1999)
4 - Blue Bullet ()
5 - Stallion Valley (Aug-1994)

The Rail Warriors

6 - Derby Man ()

Multi-Author Series List

Rivers West

3 - The Colorado (Dec-1989)
5 - The Russian River (Jan-1991)
7 - The American River (Feb-1992)
10 - The Gila River (Oct-1993)
18 - The Cimarron River (Dec-1998)

Book List in Order: 57 titles









  • Thomas Atherton accepts the challenge to hunt the nearly extinct buffalo for a five-thousand-dollar prize, but savage Indians, miserable weather, elusive herds, sinister outlaws, and corrupt Indian agents turn a difficult job into an impossible task...





  • Determined not to suffer the same fate as their father--a lowly sodbuster who was destroyed by the grueling work and became a cold and bitter man--Zach and Carrie Bennett escape and set out on the trail to Texas, where they must fight for survival. R...



  • A FATAL FRIENDSHIP Ben Pope and Rick Kilbane are as different as night and day. A miner's son, Ben is an awkward, earnest kid with no money and lots of hard luck. Rick is the wild, troublemaking son of Ulysses Kilbane, a professional gambler and t...








  • Seeking his fortune in the California Gold Rush, Michael W. Callahan, soon nicknamed the "Gringo Amigo," finds a friend in a young Mexican man, Joaquin Murieta, and when an unspeakable act drives Murieta on a mission of revenge, only the Gringo Amigo...



  • RIVERS WEST Native Americans, hunters and trappers, pioneer families--all who braved the emerging American frontier drew their very lives and fortunes from the great rivers. From the earliest days of the settlement movement to the dawn of the twenti...



  • After the Civil War devastates their home, the Ballous, a Tennessee horsebreeding family, relocate and start anew in the West where their new neighbors could become lasting friends or tomahawk-toting enemies. Original....





  • Accompanied by his brother, sister, and the last four mares of the Ballou Farm, Houston Ballou leaves his beloved Tennessee and the destruction of the Civil War and sets out for a new, and dangerous, life. Original....



  • A TEXAS-BOUND FAMILY STRUGGLING TO RECAPTURE THEIR DREAM... In the wake of tragedy, the surviving members of the Ballou family sought a new beginning on the Texas frontier. There, the Comanches shared their love and respect for horses -- taming the ...




  • Miguel Santana, a young Spaniard abandoned by his gold-hungry comrades, and his Pima son, Vitorio, find their lives entwined with those of beautiful Jacova and the mysterious "man of three bloods" on the banks of the Gila River. Original....



  • To preserve their father's dream and save his precious thoroughbred horses, Ruff Ballou and his sister, Dixie, leave the post-Civil War South to seek a new life in Denver, only to become caught up in a search for murderous outlaws. Original....






  • Filled with the men and women who made history, the epic story of a timeless place of vast, unspoiled beauty reveals Yosemite's rich resources and visionaries like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt who preserved it for generations of Americans. Origin...



  • Seeking his fortune on John Wesley Powell's epic expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, William Dunn finds short-lived happiness with a beautiful half-Havasupai woman and a perilous career as a rancher and champion of Native Ame...



  • Libby Pike reaches California, the land of her dreams, with her family, only to see her husband killed and her eldest child abducted by Indians, leaving her to save the remainder of her family from perishing in the wilderness. Original....



  • In the harsh, wilderness landscape of desert Colorado, the ancient Anasazi had built a great sanctuary into the walls of cliffs, a civilization that becomes lost for more than a thousand years, until two snow-blind cowboys accidentally stumble upon t...





  • Fleeing the brutal polygamist she had been forced to marry, Rebecca and her sister, Katie, who dreams of establishing a sprawling ranch of her own, fight for freedom and survival in Utah's mountain wilderness. Original....



  • A young man and his lover, pursued by her vengeful husband, risk life and limb to reach Yellowstone, where the promise of gold has flooded the land with frontiersmen and desecrated the once-sacred ground of Native American tribes. Original....



  • On the Utah frontier in the 1880s, Katie is determined to raise her young child and run her ranch with out any assistance from a man, while her sister Rebecca dreams of becoming a doctor, in an epic saga detailing the bravery and independence of two ...



  • Andy Parmentier is sixteen the winter his father joins the Union army, working his mother's farm and dreaming of heading west for gold. When his father's death and the murder of his mother's new husband forces Andy to flee their Virginia farm, he tea...



  • Sherriff Matt Dillon wonders whether Dodge City's popular new doctor may be in cahoots with a gang of bank robbers, in the first installment in a western series based on the long-running, venerable TV series. Original....






  • When dying rancher Adam Dawson cuts his ruthless outlaw son Nick out of his will, Matt Dillon must race against time to stop Nick, who will do anything to seize his inheritance, including turning Dodge City into a ghost town. Original....



  • In 1860s Nevada, Pete Sills, an apprentice mustanger, joins the Cross T Ranch and is determined to capture Sun Dancer, a beautiful palomino, to impress Candy, the ranch owner's daughter, but instead he learns a valuable lesson in pride and bravery. O...



  • With Marshal Matt Dillon laid up with a broken leg, Deputy Festus is in charge of the town, and now Festus has to face his first challenges--a gang of cowboys out to stir up trouble, and the townspeople of Dodge City who do not think that he is up to...



  • Glen Collins confronts some dangerous opposition in his campaign to be elected the first sheriff of San Diego in the person of a gunfighter supported by a powerful, ruthless rancher, as well as some stiff competition in he courtship of the beautiful ...



  • Thomas Atherton agrees to hunt the nearly extinct buffalo for a five thousand-dollar prize, but Indians, miserable weather, elusive herds, sinister outlaws, and corrupt Indian agents turn the job into an impossible task....



  • When his estranged daughter, who is dying, asks him to take his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, who despises him, to meet the father she has never known, reformed outlaw Bruin Henry sets out on a perilous journey of redemption. Original....




  • On the vast and indescribably beautiful South Rim of the Grand Canyon a young Hualapai boy faces a bleak future in 1902. River Thunder's mother has just passed into the Spirit World and his father has nothing left to give the boy except his hand carv...



  • THE MIGHTY COLORADO RIVER...as wild and unpredictable as its thundering rapids...as relentless as its first daring explorers. THE 1869 POWELL EXPEDITION...deep in a chasm of roaring water and soaring stone and at a deadly stretch of river now named S...



  • YELLOWSTONE THUNDER is a grand historical novel about a young California woman and her Chumash Indian friend who flee for their lives having no idea that their fates will carry them all the way to what is today our magnificent Yellowstone National Pa...






  • "Joaquín Murieta Was My Friend" is the story of an unlikely friendship forged in the days of the historic 1849 gold rush when California’s population exploded with dreamers and rogues. Among the former is Michael Callahan who has survived a perilo...



  • Growing up on a small ranch without a mother hasn't been all that easy for only-child Maddie O'Brien. Her father, scarred by war emotionally and physically is kind, but very withdrawn. Her grandfather, Otis, is funny and wise but a confirmed bachelor...



  • THE RAVEN CLAN…450 A.D. Animus Valley, Northwestern New Mexico…in a time of starvation The People set out upon a perilous journey to find a mystical mesa where hope can be reborn but also where death and deep snows lay silent in waiting. ECHATAâ€...



  • Before man, there was a place of breathtaking beauty... a land forever wild, forever free. The Indians called it Ahwahnee. We know it as YOSEMITE. . .a timeless land of vast, unspoiled riches. . .where ancient tribes walked the sacred ground in peace...



  • Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you are sure to find entertaining. "The Roadrunner - Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked "Calamity Jane" ...



  • Two strong-willed sisters…barely holding on to their dreams despite suffering unimaginable hardships and the loss of their mother in the California Gold Fields and now pulling their sick father in a Mormon handcart ever higher into Utah’s the ...



  • Rebecca. . .willing to fight charges of bigamy in a Salt Lake City courtroom and face the polygamist who forcibly took her as his wife. All she ever wanted was to be valued for her independence and to become a real doctor. But to achieve that drea...



  • After days of rain and storms, Maddie O’Brien is restless to venture out into the forest. Little could she know that while walking with her beloved grandfather, they will come upon a nest of eleven turkey eggs protected by their dying mother. Maddi...



  • Isaac Beard … a giant who works hard and honestly for every small blessing, including his frail but loving wife. Now comes another spring in the bustling riverfront town of St. Louis where Isaac stands behind a merchant’s counter wearing an ap...



  • The fabulous Forty-Niner Gold Rush brought gold-fevered men from all over the world to San Francisco and then on to the raging Sierra Nevada rivers. They rode fast horses, drove wagons and even walked across the Great Plains, but many died or were sc...






  • What if. . .Elvis had met someone like Cowboy Charlie, his beautiful sister, Stella and wise Hopi grandmother, Lucy Yoyetewa in the last years of his fabulous career? In the summer of 1972, Cowboy Charlie is trying to live up to his father’s reputa...





  • National award winning western and historical novelist Gary McCarthy brings together the cast from two of his most popular and long running series - The Horsemen and The Derby Man.Several years have passed since Ruff, Dixie and Houston Ballou fled Ci...




    • / Historical
    • Buy Buy

    Darby Buckingham was an unlikely candidate for western frontier life. From his round-toed shoes to his derby hat, he was a man of culture, a creature of comfort, who liked his gourmet restaurants and expensive cigars. The short, stocky New Yorker mad...




    • / Historical
    • Buy Buy



    • / Historical
    • Buy Buy

    Look sharp, hit hard - that's the Derby Man's style. He's a fast-moving mountain of muscle who throws himself into the thick of the West's greatest adventures - like the Pony Express, a grueling 2,000 mile race through hell. The pace and terrain are ...


Award-Winning Books by Gary McCarthy

The Gila River
1993 SPUR Award -- Paperback Original


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Gary McCarthy has published 57 books.

Gary McCarthy does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Horsemen and The Derby Man, was published in February 2021.

The first book by Gary McCarthy, Showdown at Snakegrass Junction, was published in July 1979.

Yes. Gary McCarthy has 3 series.