Books with author Thomas Roberts

THE BURNING is the fourth in the western series, A Jess Williams Novel. In book three, Jess rescues a nice family of four and escorts them to where they plan on building a new homestead on land they own. In book four, Jess returns to help the family finish building their home and when he gets there, he finds out that all four of them have been murdered and their home burned down to the ground by the three Bolin brothers, Lance, Felix and Burt. Before killing the two children, Jessica and Harold, Burt Bolin does some unthinkable things to them. Jess sets off on their trail, hell-bent to make them pay for what they did.Along the way, Jess runs into United States Marshal Frank Reedy who asks Jess to detour from hunting the Bolin brothers and help the Marshal deal with a rich rancher, Evan Dwight, who is running out the other small ranchers in the area; and if they don't sell cheap, they end up dead.Jess again finds himself in a war with dozens of hired guns, but in the end, Jess and Marshal Reedy are still standing, and Evan Dwight ends up in the ground. When that is over, Jess continues on his hunt for the Bolins, and he never stops until he kills every last one of them. To make his job even more difficult, it seems a rich banker from New York City has placed a ten thousand blood bounty on his head because Jess killed his brother, and every hired gun in the west is looking to collect the blood bounty. An exciting, action-packed novel you won't be able to put down.

Jess was on the hunt for Chance Beauregard when he runs into a trapper, Chad Buntner, who is down on his luck. He agrees to let him ride with him just long enough to catch Beauregard, but Buntner turns out to be cursed with bad luck. Things keep happening to Buntner, and when Jess tries to leave him behind, Buntner takes a bullet meant for Jess. He feels guilty about Buntner taking the bullet, so he reluctantly agrees to let him accompany him.Along the way, they run into a cattle rancher, George Wesley, who is in a feud with an unscrupulous sheep rancher by the name of Barney Fiddler. Wesley has a couple of his men transport two hundred thousand dollars to his bank in San Antonio. When they end up dead and the money is missing, Wesley runs into Jess and convinces him to find the men responsible for the killings and get his money back.Jess takes the job, but he’s not sure he’ll survive this one with Buntner having one problem after another. He begins to wonder if he’ll ever finish the job or end up with a dirt blanket because of Buntner and his seemingly cursed luck that hangs over them like a dark cloud.

Jess is doing what he does best. Hunting down the worst of men for the bounty on their heads and stopping them from committing any more heinous crimes against the innocent. He rides into the town of Grayson, Texas, with a dead body in tow.There, he finds a beautiful young woman by the name of Julie Handy, who has two sons. He immediately becomes attracted to her and his mind begins a tug of war within itself. One part of him wants to stop hunting men, stay with Julie and try a new way of life. The other tells him he’s not finished with ridding the west of the worst of men. He was finding himself at a crossroads with his life. The struggle continues in his head, but then things turn deadly. Three murders and a bank robbery in Grayson, along with a dire threat to Julie’s safety, force him back into the business. One of the three men who robbed the bank, sends his two partners back to Grayson to kidnap Julie.He hits the trail hard with anger and vengeance coursing through his veins. Along the way, the struggle within him continues. Can he choose another way of life or does he have to continue on the one that was chosen for him. That was a decision he would have to make once he found Julie, praying she would still be alive when he did.

In book three, Sins of the Father, Jess hunts down his father, Eddie Sloan. After two years he finally has him in his sights when a desperate call for help comes from Marshall Frank Reedy. Jess answers the call for help and he heads for Timber Texas and straight into a bloody range war between two cattle barons.Rance Madden and his hired guns have no idea of the trouble heading their way. Jess arrives and Madden's men start dying one by one and he begins to feel the grip of death at his throat--and Jess is slowly tightening the noose.

In Death Dance, Jess is on the hunt for two men who killed an innocent woman and her son. His hunt takes him to Wichita where he finds United States Marshal Frank Reedy healing from the wounds he received in an ambush that left his deputy, Chance Hannon, dead.Jess sets out to hunt the men responsible for the ambush on Frank Reedy, but things get even more complicated when a group of pistol competitors from the state of New York come west to get revenge against Jess for the killing of their friend and pistol champion, Wesley Hommes, who Jess killed in a gunfight.If that wasn't bad enough, Thomas Stidham offers up ten thousand dollars to start a pot of prize money for the man who can kill Jess in a fair gunfight. Jess ends up in Abilene, Kansas, where hundreds of easterners come to watch what becomes the "Death Dance with Jess Williams," where Jess has to accept challenge after challenge from the group of pistol competitors from New York who want to be the one who beats him on the draw and receive over forty thousand dollars in prize money.

Jess makes good on his promise to Juan Hernandez to bring in the evil murderous Mexican outlaw called Machete and hand his head over to the Mexican government. His job is tough enough, tracking him through New Mexico Territory, but once he sees the carnage Machete leaves behind, he wants to catch Machete and bring him to justice in the worst way.His job is hard enough, but he soon learns that Machete has a faithful flock of followers who believe his every word and would take a bullet for him to keep him safe. His job becomes even more complicated when he finds out that Machete's flock of followers are made up primarily of young men and even a few young women.Jess has to find a way to finally get to Machete without killing the young men and women in his flock, but they keep getting in his way, forcing him to consider doing some things that almost makes him quit the job of hunting Machete.The thought, however, of leaving Machete to roam the New Mexico Territory, murdering and butchering innocent women, forces him to continue his hunt for Machete knowing full well that he might have to kill some of his flock, who seem to be brainwashed and have no apprehension about giving their young lives for Machete.

Cripple Creek had a gold rush two years ago and the town was flush with people and money. Now, the town has become dilapidated and only a handful of miners pan for gold in the creek that is drying up from a long drought.Jess arrives in Cripple Creek, where he meets a woman by the name of Lucille Deveroux. He stays in town and while there, the miners begin finding gold again as the creek rises to previous levels caused by two separate and strange events.The gold rush is on again and it brings new miners and new wealth to Cripple Creek, but it also brings drifters, outlaws and thieves. The town has no law and Jess seems to be putting out fires left and right. Miners are being robbed, killed and some even suspiciously vanish.Jess tries to enforce some order in the town, even though he refuses to take the town marshal’s job when offered to him. Tempers flare and the problems grow. Jess wonders if he alone can bring order back to the town.

From the creator of Veronica Mars comes a timely novel that looks at a high school fundraising tradition of auctioning off students as “slaves.”At Robert E. Lee High School, the traditional fundraising event is Slave Day, in which the student leaders and faculty are auctioned off as slaves for the winning bidders. Keene Davenport is outraged and plans to stay home to protest this racist practice. But his mom won’t let him skip school, and he finds that none of his classmates took his protest seriously. So instead he decides on an alternative path of civil disobedience—he will “buy” Shawn Greeley, the school’s first black student body president. Told in eight alternating perspectives, Slave Day is a powerful novel featuring beauty queens, geeks, class clowns, and football players—and none of them will come out of it the same.

Steve details his descent from bright star to burnout in this newly repackaged edition of the definitive, highly acclaimed novel from the creator of Veronica Mars and Party Down.Houston, sophomore year: Steve is on top of the world. He and his friends are the talk of the school. He’s in love with a terrific girl. He can even deal with “the astronaut”—a world-famous hero who happens to be his father. San Diego, senior year: Steve is bummed out, drugged out, flunking out. A no-nonsense counselor says he can graduate if he writes a 100-page paper. So Steve starts writing, and as the paper becomes more and more personal, he reveals how a National Merit Scholar has become an under-achieving stoner. And in telling how he got to where he is, Steve discovers how to get to where he wants to be.

Keene Davenport has called for a student walkout to protest his school’s annual “Slave Day” fundraiser, but it’s not exactly working. Shawn Greeley, the first African American student council president of Robert E. Lee High, continues to preside over the auctioning of student reps to serve as book-toters, chauffeurs, and lunch-fetchers for the day. So Keene chooses an alternative path of civil disobedience: Assuming that a day of degradation ought to open Shawn’s eyes, Keene decides to “buy” Shawn to be his slave, no matter what the cost—and launches a series of life-changing events in the process.

Steve details his descent from bright star to burnout in this newly repackaged edition of the definitive, highly acclaimed novel from the creator of Veronica Mars and Party Down.Houston, sophomore year: Steve is on top of the world. He and his friends are the talk of the school. He’s in love with a terrific girl. He can even deal with “the astronaut”—a world-famous hero who happens to be his father. San Diego, senior year: Steve is bummed out, drugged out, flunking out. A no-nonsense counselor says he can graduate if he writes a 100-page paper. So Steve starts writing, and as the paper becomes more and more personal, he reveals how a National Merit Scholar has become an under-achieving stoner. And in telling how he got to where he is, Steve discovers how to get to where he wants to be.