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Reavis Z. Wortham

Top 10 Modern Westerns for 2016 by True West Magazine

Top Books for 2015 by Strand Magazine

"Reavis Z. Wortham is the real thing: a literary voice that's gut-bucket Americana delivered with a warm and knowing Texas twang." —CJ Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author

At the tail end of 1967, the Parker family once again finds it impossible to hide from a world spinning out of control. Fourteen-year-old Top still can't fit in with their Center Springs, Texas, community or forget recent, vicious crimes. His near-twin cousin Pepper, desperate to escape her own demons, joins the Flower Children flocking to California—just as two businessmen are kidnapped and murdered in the Red River bottoms on the same night a deadly hit and run kills a farmer. Constable Ned Parker wonders if these crimes are connected, but he goes after Pepper, leaving the investigation with Sheriff Cody Parker.

Parker hires Deputy Anna Sloan, an investigator with an eye toward detail as everyone is eyeing her. Yet it is instinct that propels her after killers through a world nearly forgotten, the hunt's backdrop one of continuous rain, gloomy skies, and floods. When she's ambushed, the investigation accelerates into gunfire, chases, and hair-raising suspense.

What of Pepper? Out on Route 66, the Mother Road to California, a man named Crow isn't what he seems. Lies, deceptions, and a band of outlaw motorcyclists proves to the Parkers that no matter where you turn, no matter what you do, the world is full of such darkness that even grandmothers are capable of unspeakable deeds.

Best Small Fictions of 2015 by The Dallas Morning News

Will Rogers Medallion Award 2016 Honorable Mention, Western Fiction

Poisoned Pen Press

Texas Red River Mysteries

Dark Places

The stakes don't get much higher than murder…

It's January 1969 in the small rural community of Center Springs, Texas. Constable Ned Parker suspects a larger mystery behind the seemingly accidental death of his nephew, R .B., who was found in his overturned pickup near Sanders Creek bridge. It appears that R. B. drowned in the shallow water, but something doesn't add up for Ned, who begins turning over stones in search of what really happened the night R. B. died.

The mystery leads Ned to the Starlite Club, a dangerous honky-tonk recently constructed in a no-man's land on the Lone Star side of the Red River. His investigations there uncover suspicious characters, drugs, and gambling, but even more troubling are a series of murders that seem designed to eliminate anyone who might know what really happened to R. B. on that cold January night.

As he works his way through the cover-up, Ned lands himself in a high-stakes game of consequences with no good end in sight. Are the good citizens of Center Springs conspiring against Constable Parker in his search for the truth?

In this thrilling addition to the historical Texas Red River Mystery Series, Constable Ned Parker bets big, but only time will tell if he'll win justice or a grave of his own.

Laying Bones

Best of the West 2019 – 2nd Place in 20th- to 21st-Century Western Mystery Fiction by TrueWest Magazine

"Wortham's writing style is easygoing, relying on natural-sounding dialogue and vivid descriptions to give us the feeling that this story could well have taken place." —Booklist

As the 1960s draw to a close, the rural northeast Texas community of Center Springs is visited by two nondescript government men in dark suits and shades. They say their assignment is to test weather currents and patterns, but that's a lie. Their delivery of a mysterious microscopic payload called Gold Dust from a hired crop duster coincides with fourteen-year-old Pepper Parker's discovery of an ancient gold coin in her dad's possession. Her adolescent trick played on a greedy adult results in the only gold rush in north Texas history. Add in modern-day cattle-rustlers and murderers, and Center Springs is once again the bull's-eye in a deadly target.

The biological agent deemed benign by the CIA has unexpected repercussions, putting Pepper's near-twin cousin, Top, at death's door. The boy's crisis sends their grandfather, Constable Ned Parker, to Washington D.C. to exact personal justice, joined by a man Ned left behind in Mexico and had presumed dead. The CIA agents who operate on the dark side of the U.S. government find they're no match for men who know they're right and won't stop. Especially two old country boys raised on shotguns.

But there's more. Lots more. Top Parker thought only he had what had become known as a Poisoned Gift, but Ned suffers his own form of a family curse he must deploy. Plus, there are many trails to follow as the lawmen desperately work to put an end to murder and government experimentation that extends from their tiny Texas town to Austin and, ultimately, to Washington, D.C. Traitors, cattle-rustlers, murderers, rural crime families, grave robbers, CIA turncoats, and gold-hungry prospectors pursue agendas that all, in a sense, revolve around the center of this small vortex called Center Springs.

Gold Dust seems to be fiction, but the truth is, it has already happened.

Gold Dust

"A sleeper that deserves wider attention." —The New York Times

As 1965 draws to a close, Constable Cody Parker of Center Springs, Texas, has a frightening sense of gathering storm clouds. His dreams prove accurate when he is ambushed and nearly killed on a lonely country road during an unusually heavy snowfall. The attack leads locals to worry that a terrifying killer known as "The Skinner" has returned.

As his nephew, Cody, recovers, Constable Ned Parker struggles to connect a seemingly unrelated series of murders, and the people of northeast Texas wonder why their once peaceful community has suddenly become a dangerous place to live.

Investigating, Ned, Cody, and deputy John Washington cross paths with many colorful characters: cranky old Judge O.C. Rains; the jittery little farmer Isaac Reader; the Wilson boys, Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx; and a mysterious old man named Tom Bell. Of course, Ned's preteen grandchildren, Top and Pepper, are underfoot at every turn.

When Cody follows his main suspect across the Rio Grande into Mexico, Ned understands that to save his nephew, he will have to cross more than a river: he will have to cross over to the right side of wrong.

The Right Side of Wrong

Top 5 Modern Westerns by True West Magazine

"Loaded with healthy doses of humor, adventure, and intrigue, populated by a remarkable cast of characters both good and bad and featuring one heck of an electrifying climax is a throwback to the pulp era in the best possible sense." —Owen Laukkanen, bestselling author

By October 1967… the Summer of Love is history, rock and roll is dark and revolutionary, and people in the small East Texas community of Center Springs want only a quiet life. Unluckily, two years earlier, Anthony Agrioli met newlyweds Cody and Norma Faye Parker in a Vegas casino and heard their enthusiastic descriptions of Center Springs as the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. Now handsome hit man Agrioli and a blonde bombshell full of surprises need a place to hide out and, if possible, duck retribution from his Las Vegas crime boss.

Thirteen-year-old Top Parker has what his grandmother, Miss Becky, calls a Poisoned Gift. His dreams, though random and disconnected, always seem to come true. This time Top dreams he's a wagon wheel with spokes converging from all directions. To him, the spokes symbolize that something is coming. And it is—Center Springs will soon become a combat zone when a squad of gangsters arrives. Oddly, they're after something else. Not Agrioli—yet. Add a sheriff crooked as a dog's hind leg, an unsolved murder in the river bottoms, counterfeit money, and a bank robbery to this country-noir Shakespearian comedy, cast it with Wortham's real and sometimes wacky characters including a constable and a judge, and the outcomes become unpredictable.

Vengeance is Mine

"The cinematic characters have substance and style. They walk off the page and talk Texas." —The Dallas Morning News

Constable Ned Parker's retirement is cut short when Center Springs, Texas, becomes the latest stop for a murderer who has already hit Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma on his deadly spree. A dead man hooked to fishing lines in the river draws Ned into the investigation to back up his nephew Cody, the new Constable and Vietnam vet. Cody and Deputy John Washington, the law south of the tracks, follow a lead from their small community to the long abandoned Cotton Exchange warehouse in Chisum. The building is a hoarder's paradise: each floor is stuffed to the ceiling with garbage, furniture, books, tools, tires, rats, and filth. But this maze of junk is also host to booby-traps, shafts, and bales. Was this lair built out of desperation or designed to torture and kill anyone trying to capture the elusive killer? Despite Ned's warnings, Cody dives into the building where he confronts both his own demons and a killer intent on destruction....

Traber Burns

Blackstone Publishing

Burrows

"An unpretentious gem written to the hilt and harrowing in its unpredictability."—Kirkus Reviews STARRED review

The first book in the Texas Red River Mystery series, The Rock Hole is the gripping story of a rural community shaken to its core by a killer, and the man who will stop at nothing to protect his own…

When your family's safety is threatened, what wouldn't you do to defend them?

Lamar County, Texas: Summer, 1964. Life is idyllic for ten-year-old Top Parker, who has come to live with his grandparents in the small, rural town of Center Springs. Yet while Top runs the woods and countryside with his near twin cousin, Pepper, his Grandpa Ned—a small town constable—witnesses the spreading menace of a deranged killer. Out of his element, Ned reaches out to neighboring law enforcement and then the FBI.

Local news sources tag the budding serial killer "The Skinner," and the label is chillingly accurate. Beginning with the torture and killing of small animals, the monster quickly moves to humans, displaying their mutilated corpses as gruesome trophies, with no apparent pattern to grab hold of. Lamar County cowers. Meanwhile, Constable Ned is convinced that a vendetta is involved, and though the why of it is murky, he can no longer deny that something horrific and dangerous is heading for the Parkers. Now the law can't help him, and he must use whatever means necessary to protect himself and his family.

Is Ned up to the fight of his life?

Set in the Texas panhandle and perfect for fans of C.J. Box and Craig Johnson, The Rock Hole is a riveting mystery that explores the worst—and best—parts of humanity.

Top 12 Mysteries of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews

Finalist in the Benjamin Franklin Awards, Mystery

The Rock Hole

"Not only does Wortham write exceptionally well, but he somehow manages to infuse Unraveled with a Southern gothic feel that would make even William Faulkner proud… A hidden gem of a book that reads like Craig Johnson's Longmire mysteries on steroids." —The Providence Journal

Blending the racial topicality of the Sixties crime classic In the Heat of the Night with the coming-of-age poignancy of To Kill a Mockingbird, Unraveled presents a gripping investigation into the extremes of human nature—both at its most repulsive and at its redemptive best.

It's 1968; a time of race riots across America, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, and polarizing demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In the rural Northeast Texas community of Center Springs, a car lunges through the guard rails on Highway 271's tightest curve and flings its two occupants down the new Lake Lamar Dam. What stuns the town's residents isn't the tragic accident but the identities of the two victims: Mayor Frank Clay, a white man, and Maggie Mayfield, a black woman who worked in his office. Each of them married to other people. What were they doing in Frank's car together?

Living with his grandparents, Ned and Miss Becky, in a little farmhouse near the Red River, fourteen-year-old Top Parker finds himself caught up in another adult situation. The war escalating between the Clays and the Mayfields is frightening in its intensity. More horrifying is a man calling himself the Wraith, who moves through the region at will, invading homes and watching the Parkers. The Wraith has his own deadly agenda. And it soon becomes clear to Top that, for some reason, he is part of it.

Texas Red River Mysteries - La serie de libros

Texas Red River Mysteries - La serie de libros

Texas Red River Mysteries libros en orden

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