"It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper--and cousin by marriage--of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also skeptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully...

"No sooner has Montana become a state than Zimmerman launches a diabolical campaign to turn a remote swath of land into an outlaw kingdom. Some of the richest mines in the West are in Zimmerman's sights, and he's rallied allies on both sides of the law to stake his claim. The corpses are piled high in Deputy U.S. Marshal Jeremiah Halstead's war with the vicious outlaw, but now Zimmerman proves himself as cunning with a pen as he is deadly with a six-gun....