Free introduction
The Weight of the Record
A short, free entry into the work’s recurring concern: what a town remembers, what it records, and what falls outside the account.
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Books by Hank Redding
Literary Western fiction about memory, judgment, endurance, and the systems people inherit. Choose by setting, by mood, or by the question you want to follow.
A reader’s catalog
A catalog for different kinds of readers.
This guide is for choosing. Each book title opens Hank’s official page for the current description, reading sample, formats, and purchase choices.
Western novella · accusation and judgment
The Last Good Rope
A woman is accused in Virginia City. A lawyer, a sheriff, and the people around them must decide whether the town’s first story deserves to stand.
Book details and reading optionsNovella · a life reconsidered
Hairtrigger
On the night before his execution, Amos Deakins listens to the gallows being built and measures the distance between an order he followed and a choice he made.
Book details and reading optionsWestern novella · strange country
Dust Will Tell
A stranger enters a town where the sun does not move and the date does not change. The place seems to know him before he can understand it.
Book details and reading optionsRead before its sequel, The Settled Dust.
Weird Western novella · sequel
The Settled Dust
Surveyor Velo Bullhead arrives to measure a basin that official maps call empty. The land, its people, and a journal insist on a different account.
Book details and reading optionsThe second Velo Bullhead story; begin with Dust Will Tell.
Novella · railroad winter
Car No. 47
An immigrant railcar is cut loose during a winter storm. The people inside face the weather while the railroad’s paperwork keeps moving.
Book details and reading optionsNovella · a wrecked gold wagon
What Was Carried West
After a storm breaks over a freight wagon, four men walk away from the wreck. One carries a coin the others have not accounted for.
Book details and reading optionsHistorical Western mystery · Nevada, 1881
The Mercy Contract
Three strangers arrive with pieces of one photograph. Each carries the same word, and the town has only a little time left to keep its old promise buried.
Book details and reading optionsReading order: Most titles stand on their own. For Velo Bullhead’s story, read Dust Will Tell before The Settled Dust. Availability and formats can change; the linked official pages are the current source.
Forthcoming work
More country ahead.
These novels are listed as forthcoming on Hank’s official site. The author pages carry the latest status and any available opening pages.
01
The Low Place
Arizona Territory, 1908. Nathan Cooper returns to help sell his late father’s place and finds an old Colt—and a story about Picacho Pass that his father never told him.
Coming to Kindle · Book details ↗02
Certainty
A late-nineteenth-century town trades fear for procedure. What begins as precaution becomes policy, with a human cost the town absorbs without comment.
Forthcoming · Read the opening ↗03
The Fence and the Fire
In Obregon, the man who helped build a successful town begins to find that success has made him unnecessary.
Forthcoming · Read the opening ↗This is a reader’s guide, not a retailer. Current publication status, book descriptions, and purchase links are maintained on Hank Redding’s official author website.