Harper Wynnley

The Freight Road

• Western
• Historical Fiction
• Adventure

New Mexico Territory, 1882. The mine at Silver Basin is losing ground to water, and a replacement pump casting must reach the settlement before winter closes the mountain road. Wagon master Owen Rourke takes six freight wagons north from the railhead with thirty-six mules, mine supplies, blasting powder, and a cast-iron pump casting weighing nearly two tons. The route is long and unforgiving: flooded crossings, washed road, steep grades, failing wagon gear, and weather moving down from the high country. Every delay costs the mine time, but pushing tired animals or damaged wagons too hard can cost the entire outfit. Owen has spent years learning when to press a team and when to stop, what a road will bear, and which men can be trusted when the work turns difficult. He will need all of it to get the freight into Silver Basin—and then get his people home before winter shuts the road behind them. The Freight Road is a traditional historical Western about hard country, practical skill, and the men and women whose work kept frontier towns alive.

The Trail to Bear Springs

• Western
• Historical Fiction
• Adventure

New Mexico Territory, 1879. Fifteen-year-old Luke Redding knows horses, rifles, cattle, and hard country. None of it is enough to save his family when a small band of renegade raiders strikes their isolated ranch. Left for dead beneath the wreckage, Luke wakes to find his parents and younger brother gone and his sister Hannah missing. The riders who discover him the next morning are not rescuers. They are a Navajo pursuit party already hunting the same raiders for attacks of their own. Luke has a horse, a Winchester, and a choice. He can remain behind—or keep up. The trail eventually carries him to Fort Wingate at Bear Springs, where he finds Hannah safe and discovers that surviving is only the beginning. With winter coming and no ranch to return to yet, Luke earns his keep in the post stables and freight yard under veteran teamster Nick Turner. There he learns a different kind of frontier work: mules, harness, wagons, water, freight, and the judgment to know when action matters—and when it does not. By spring, Luke is riding the freight road as a paid hand. But old tracks have crossed that road too, and some unfinished trouble is waiting in the broken country ahead. The Trail to Bear Springs is a traditional historical Western of survival, hard-earned judgment, and a boy learning to carry responsibilities larger than himself.

Hidden in the Jungle

A desperate explorer discovers that some treasures are better left buried in the dark

• Fantasy
• Adventure

Gold is the ultimate bait, and the Amazon is the ultimate trap. Soren Lundgaard is a man with nothing left to lose. Ruined by gambling debts and desperate to reclaim his family name, the Danish cartographer leads a ragtag expedition into the deepest, most treacherous corners of the South American jungle. His goal: The Temple of the Screaming Sun, a place whispered about in legends and feared by every local tribe. Guided by a tribal scout who warns of ancient curses and pursued by a fanatical exile intent on blood sacrifice, Soren’s journey is a descent into madness. The jungle is no mere backdrop; it is a living, breathing predator that hungers for the souls of the greedy. As his crew falls to supernatural horrors and internal treachery, Soren must face a terrifying reality: the temple isn't a treasury—it’s a prison. In this heart-pounding tale of survival and obsession, Edmund Thorne explores the thin line between ambition and insanity. When the gold finally glitters in the darkness, Soren will have to decide if his life is worth more than the fortune he’s died a thousand deaths to find.

Shadows in the Mist

One boy, a forgotten island, and the brutal cost of survival on the high seas

• Adventure
• Thriller
• Historical Fiction

Fourteen-year-old Tommy Penhaligon was a mere cabin boy when the HMS Sovereign set sail to spy on the Spanish Crown. He expected the harsh discipline of the British Navy, but he never anticipated the total destruction of his world. When a catastrophic hurricane tears his ship asunder, Tommy is cast away on a desolate Caribbean island. He is the sole survivor, left with nothing but a rusted blade and the instincts he sharpened under a stern captain. But the island is far from empty. Between the arrival of ruthless pirates, predatory slavers, and even darker threats, Tommy must learn that survival requires a different kind of steel. For two long years, the boy he once was dies, and a hardened warrior is forged in the shadows of the reef. Alongside an unlikely ally, Tommy wages a silent, desperate war against those who would hunt him. As the line between civilization and savagery blurs, he faces a final choice: stay a victim of the tide or become the master of the mist. Edmund Thorne delivers a visceral historical epic about the loss of innocence and the enduring power of the human spirit.