Tony Masero

Biography

It’s not such a big step from pictures to writing.
And that’s how it started out for me. I’ve illustrated more Western book covers than I care to mention and been doing it for a long time. No hardship, I hasten to add, I love the genre and have since a kid, although originally I made my name painting the cover art for other people, now at least, I manage to create covers for my own books.
A long-term closet writer, only comparatively recently, with a family grown and the availability of self-publishing have I managed to be able to write and get my stories out there.
As I did when illustrating, research counts a lot and has inspired many of my Westerns and Thrillers to have a basis in historical fact or at least weave their tale around the seeds of factual content.
Having such a visual background, mostly it’s a matter of describing the pictures I see in my head and translating them to the written page. I guess that’s why one of my early four-star reviewers described the book like a ‘Western movie, fast paced and full of action.’
I enjoy writing them; I hope folks enjoy reading the results.

Where to find Tony Masero online

Series

Brodie
A spin-off series based on a character from the well received set of 'Stringer and Brodie'.
Brodie 1: Home Front
Price: $1.99 USD.
Brodie 2: Man Hunter
Price: $1.99 USD.
Stringer and Brodie
Two men from different sides of the conflict. One in blue, the other gray. Both as one when they take up the badge.

Books

Brodie 2: Man Hunter
Series: Brodie. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 45,130. Language: English. Published: March 2, 2024 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
Courtesy of the Pinkerton Agency a substantial reward takes Brodie after a tough killer and thief. Trouble is the villain has five equally hard brothers. Misled by their wayward sister and accused of a liaison. Fleeing a noose he takes sanctuary with a delectable Spanish lady but the brothers and sheriff’s posse are both on his trail. Brodie must fight for his life against overwhelming odds.
Brodie 1: Home Front
Series: Brodie. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 51,920. Language: English. Published: December 29, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Western
Brodie is home to a world he left behind eighteen years ago. He is barely back before Brodie encounters a shooting that is overture to a more than deadly confrontation. The greed of an arrogant rancher and his army of gunmen brings increasing danger to his family. Brodie may have tired of such encounters but he is still inexorably drawn into the lethal conflict whether he likes it or not.
Holy Vengeance
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 50,190. Language: English. Published: October 19, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
It is 1921 and Reverend Joel Denver has seen the light. Returning to the small town he left, he finds that things have changed radically. Oil has been found and the vast fields are under the control of one wealthy despot who wants to take the family farmland. Joel resolves not to give it up without a fight but it calls for him to revive the person he once was in his wayward and violent past.
Kruger
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 44,430. Language: English. Published: September 19, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
Kruger drifted into it. Stopping off for water and supplies at a lone ranch he comes up against something a lot more deadly than supper. Despite being a confirmed loner, for the first time he finds he feels responsible for something other than himself and with a dark prospect behind him they have to head for safety.
Stringer and Brodie 4: A Sting in the Devil's Tail
Series: Stringer and Brodie, Book 4. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 48,690. Language: English. Published: September 1, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Western
Governor Coke the new Texas governor is serious about balancing the books. Cash is missing, a large amount of cash. With Stringer indisposed it is up to his partner to answer the call. A coded message sends Brodie undercover to join a gang of hooligans where an even darker force is waiting to unleash a day of reckoning.
Dust Devils
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 49,310. Language: English. Published: July 6, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
It might be that Marshal Cap Briggs wears a badge but now he is stepping outside the normal bounds of his office and turning his back on convention. Alone he discovered the prize but for the testing mission he has in mind he needs men. Men from his past with those special abilities he knows he can trust.
A Web for All God's Angels
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 61,700. Language: English. Published: June 7, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Supernatural
The confused man who walked into Father Langley’s confessional carried a case holding the most terrible of secrets. He is followed by a team of assassins charged with destroying all who discover the contents. It is up to the priest’s handyman, Mordecai, a trained and disenchanted death dealer but the kind of soldier the cleric needs right now to find a resolution.
Caldone
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 51,940. Language: English. Published: December 27, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Western
John Caldone served as a fierce Indian fighter with the famed Buffalo Soldiers. With a major cattle drive in the offing he receives news that disaster has struck. Caldone discovers that the cattle barons have recruited violent gangs to chase down the marauders. When the parties meet it will be a bloody clash that echoes all of Caldone’s earlier battles - the ones he had hoped to forget.
Stringer and Brodie: Riding Perdition's Rim
Series: Stringer and Brodie, Book 3. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 50,440. Language: English. Published: November 9, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
Marshal’s Stringer and Brodie have had a serious falling out but despite their differences the Governor orders them to face down two warring parties in a local feud. There is a taint of corruption hovering in the air and the only resolution for the two lawmen seems to be the simple expediency of a six-shot Colt revolver.
Between
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 48,990. Language: English. Published: September 4, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
He came out of the desert alone and understanding no one, when they found him he was wild and untamed and as he grew age did not mellow him. They called him Joe Between for convenience sake and with a lawman’s star on his vest he had to choose between the white man’s way or to fight in the way of the warrior.
Hold a Candle to the Sun
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 50,960. Language: English. Published: July 16, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Utopias & dystopias
It is the near future and Armageddon has happened. Sergeant Vincent Evimann, a decorated ex-serviceman with the elite First Infil Battalion, returns home to Port Coliseum to find it no better than the rest of the world. There is nothing here remaining for him except news of a family he had thought lost and Evimann sets off on a quest across the ruined country to discover the truth.
The Path Less Taken: A Western Short Story
Price: Free! Words: 10,220. Language: English. Published: July 10, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
THE PATH LESS TAKEN traces the journey of James ‘Buddy’ Boyd and his devotion to his upright elder brother whose moral attitudes that are a leading light in young Buddy’s development.
Stringer and Brodie: Hell to Pay
Series: Stringer and Brodie, Book 2. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 45,660. Language: English. Published: December 13, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Romance » Western, Fiction » Historical » General
When confirmed Unionist, General Charles Griffin takes over Reconstruction in post-war Texas he is all set to dissolve the arrangement with free-ranging lawmen Stringer and Brodie. But then a series of murders close to his wife’s heart brings the two back into prominence.
Stringer and Brodie: Dancing with the Devil
Series: Stringer and Brodie, Book 1. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 51,450. Language: English. Published: September 24, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Two men from different sides of the conflict. One in blue, the other gray. But the long Civil War is over and both are sick of the violence and death they encountered. Can they escape it though? Despite their early allegiances on the battlefield they find they are not so different and as for the violence and death, well, that just follows close behind them when the devil calls the tune.
Hard Bitten
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 78,330. Language: English. Published: July 22, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Six stories and novellas of the Old West told with the rough humor and brutality of hard-bitten men.
Warriors
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 48,540. Language: English. Published: May 11, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Ex-cavalry captain Holt Sangey has retired from the Indian Wars and gone back east with his loving wife and family. Holt finds he despairs of holding down a tedious job in the claustrophobic life of the city and determines to make one last trip to Arizona but all that awaits him there is danger and death.
Devil Gunman: A Horror Western
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 50,300. Language: English. Published: October 27, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Horror » General
When gunman Leo Kasselford arrives in town he comes with a lot more than a loaded revolver in his holster. He carries something a whole lot darker that haunts him and must be satiated.
Black Eye
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 46,780. Language: English. Published: January 31, 2020 by Bold Venture Press. Categories: Fiction » Adventure » Action, Fiction » Mystery & detective » Hard-Boiled
A beautiful woman hires a private detective, Phil Black, to locate her missing husband. Things get a lot more complicated after that. With an old Marine buddy following closely, Black follows a violent path from San Francisco’s foggy streets to the steaming jungles of Peron’s Argentina, in a noir thriller involving Manchu treasure and a Nazi mass murderer who will not accept defeat.
Return to Salado
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 49,020. Language: English. Published: December 5, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Everett Chad spent a long time on the run. Now he's back to make peace with his family and see the girl he left behind. But changes have come to town and it is not going to be an easy homecoming. There will be more blood spilt and battles to overcome if he is to survive on the streets of Salado. But there is one thing none of them know - Everett comes riding under false colors!
Eye on the Rail
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 56,630. Language: English. Published: September 6, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
The lawman Drew Sodenmire is in exile. Drew has fought his way through enough tight spots with the toughest of opponents even when he isn’t sober. But now he has lost his position after a fatal drunken shooting. He is to lie low and behave himself the Governor insists, and that’s how he ends up in one small isolated community. Then ghastly items start turning up....
Manhunters
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 62,620. Language: English. Published: August 24, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Two books from Western author Tony Masero bound together in one volume. HARD EDGED and BIG WIN – Tough and uncompromising Western novels laced with excitement, action and adventure.
Jake Rains
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 48,790. Language: English. Published: August 17, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
1898 CUBA - As his best friend and fellow Rough Rider lies fatally wounded during the battle for Kettle Hill, Jake Rains takes a solemn oath to care for his widow. But the trouble is Kitty Cartright already has a protector. When Jake arrives in Oakum, it is not an auspicious start.
Wire Rope Express
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 31,180. Language: English. Published: August 17, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Utah 1861 Up in the high reaches of the Humboldt Mountains a woman has come begging for rescue. Her shepherd husband and two sons are lost to her. But winter is coming and the risks are great, the party must evade a band of Indian renegades and get down from the mountains before the snow sets in and they are cut off.
The Mansion on Pike Lane
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 28,760. Language: English. Published: July 14, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Horror » General, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
A gripping Horror/Thriller from the new master of macabre. Three outlaw bikers and their girl find the old deserted Mansion on Pike Lane offers a safe haven to hang out and enjoy some questionable products and party time. Their activities though, are arousing other inhabitants, darker creatures that had first call on the place.
Manae the Rower: Origins
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 52,090. Language: English. Published: July 12, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Classical Greece & Rome, Fiction » Adventure » Action
(5.00 from 1 review)
With the fall of Carthage, Manae takes up Rome’s offer to serve as a rower on the quinquereme ‘Avis’. After ten years at the oars he is free to quit the ship and sets out to find the only surviving member of the family lost to him during the savage slaughter of the city. But Hispania is facing a bloody uprising and the rebellious Celtic tribes are rampaging through the countryside.
Ahead of the Promise
Price: Free! Words: 130. Language: English. Published: July 11, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Graphic novels & comics » Comics
Gyre Ludd stands accused of heresy under the Christian law of England’s new Norman overlords. His sentence is severe but can he outwit his accusers by following the old ways.
Wildfire
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 46,700. Language: English. Published: December 13, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Western, Fiction » Adventure » Action
Denver Wildfire is a hard man whose looks may not amount to much but he’s smart, literate and ex-military.... and he has a plan. He rides with the Mexican, a good man with a long match and short fuse, and the kid, a wild card who can drive a six-team like the devil himself. All three are intent on stepping into a lucrative honeypot. The prize is a fortune; the price is in bullets and blood.
Blood Legacy
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 50,000. Language: English. Published: July 5, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Boston attorney Zack Endeavor seems set for life. He has a beautiful heiress as his fiancé and a blossoming new law practice in the growing prosperity of the city. Everything holds promise. It all changes when a mysterious armed visitor comes calling with reminders of his time in the hellhole of Libby Prison.
Final Debt
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 48,540. Language: English. Published: October 18, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Western
Simeon Norstrad is not a man to fool with, he is the disturbed leader of a tough work gang and he runs his backwoods lumberjack camp like a cruel dictator. The two Lapain brothers, just downriver at the sawmill, are drawn into Norstrad’s insane world when Joe Lapain discovers that his reckless younger brother is working as a debt collector for the town’s devious casino owner.
The Law According to Court
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 45,630. Language: English. Published: September 5, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Western
A killer is loose in the West and nobody is more directly affected than Reuben Court, the one-time roustabout and gunman. Reuben has seen his fair share of trouble but this one hits home and hurts bad. His heartbreak is superseded by the determination to seek justice and he sets out determined to find those responsible. Why and by whom?
The Pagan Mask
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 60,480. Language: English. Published: January 16, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Crime thriller
Jason White is leading a solitary life as an art restorer and small time forger when an old friend from London’s East End asks him to attend a strange ritual undertaken by his boss, head of a Japanese crime syndicate. Jason is commissioned to take on an unusual task of archaeological detection and track down a missing mask, an item deemed to have powerful mystical significance.
Bad Men Go To Hell
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 57,380. Language: English. Published: November 12, 2016 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Courage or cowardice can happen in the briefest moment of time. In the split second that Tag Donovan takes to face down the killer Scart Benjamin, events are set in motion that are bound to change the rest of his young life. It all begins with a bank raid that goes horrendously wrong and leaves a town destroyed and a heap of bodies lying in the street.
Stoneheart
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 53,370. Language: English. Published: September 29, 2016 . Categories: Fiction » Western
‘Stoneheart’, that’s what the Cheyenne called him back in the old days. Caleb Barnes always went in hard that way, in fact the same way he had lived his whole life, on a knife-edge with the cold feel of a Colt .45 pistol and the blade of a Bowie knife not far from his reach.
Centroblis
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 62,540. Language: English. Published: February 1, 2016 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
Hidden fast for centuries and created by a genius, the discovery holds the secret to a vast potential unknown since the world was first created. The past always plays a part, overshadowing all and drawing together warring factions to gain a treasure born in alien skies with the deadly capacity to reshape the world.
Babychain Blues
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 51,200. Language: English. Published: November 15, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Crime thriller
It was twenty-five years later and yet things were eerily turning in a full circle for Cole Junger. On the surface he was an ordinary guy, a simple man living a simple life in Rivers Bend but it had not always been that way for Cole. The random chance that brought him to young Caitlin May’s door was proving to be the lynch pin for a catastrophe.
The Bitter Stones of Intention
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 47,470. Language: English. Published: November 14, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » General
Falsely blamed for an accident in England, the engineer James September is exiled to an isolated mine in the Portuguese mountains. It is 1882 and he finds that life in the primitive mining village is a place where repressed lust and superstition are rife. Before long the mountains are set alight as Spanish brigands invade and James must flee.
The Thirty Six Hundreds
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 51,170. Language: English. Published: September 24, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Sometimes events compel a man to do something he would much rather not. Needs must when the devil drives…. and the devil just arrived in The Thirty Six Hundreds.
I Went Down to the Valley
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 47,170. Language: English. Published: April 26, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Crime thriller
It looked simple on the face of it – TV actor commits suicide, what more is there to say? You hear it every day. That’s when they call in troubleshooting PI Jack Stern to put a gloss on things but what Jack uncovers leads him down a complex avenue of sex and intrigue. It seems there will be a long trail of death and deceit before Jack can leave this particular valley of shadows.
Gilded Rage
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 48,160. Language: English. Published: January 28, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
To all appearances when the stranger breezes into Tombstone he is a peaceable kind of guy not looking for any trouble and yet this is a tough silver town on the edge of a war. The friction between the Earp’s and the Clanton and McLaury gang is heating up. But the enigmatic stranger is on another kind of mission. One that takes him into the underworld environment of a very different culture.
The Gardener: A Thriller
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 43,690. Language: English. Published: October 28, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
John Chayne is a hard man. Trained by the best in the military, he has lost the woman he loves and is due for some solitude in his life. The ad offers just such employment. It reads, gardener-stroke-gamekeeper on a lonely estate in the wild Scottish Highlands. What could be more tranquil? But his boss is an arms dealer with a beautiful wife and marital problems.
Dead Fall Back: A Thriller
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 55,350. Language: English. Published: October 24, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Crime thriller
(5.00 from 1 review)
He thought it was going to be an easy life. When ex-DC cop Paul Stoeffel first took over as police chief in the quiet West Virginian resort town, he believed he was in for a gentle ride into retirement. Things change radically when they find a child cruelly murdered in the gloomy woods alongside Dead Fall Back, a place already tainted with a sad history.
Blood Ridden
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 44,940. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
A hard-bitten Western tale of harsh revenge. Marshal Arnwood Deal is a lawman man equipped with both decency and honor but when he receives word that his much loved and respected family have been cruelly murdered, he lays aside his star and follows a trail of reprisal that takes him beyond the borderlines of any code.
The Heart of Dark Passage
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 50,360. Language: English. Published: December 8, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Drifting cowhand Wick Hailey asks directions from rancher Callie Barnes and his visit stirs something in the young widow as she points the way to her neighbors spread. At the sprawling JM Ranch, Wick finds himself in the middle of a tense marital dilemma and forced into a dark and dangerous journey which only a six gun can resolve.
Mister D'Eath and the Judge
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 44,460. Language: English. Published: November 6, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
1870 Nebraska. Sam D’Eath and Judge Aldermire make an unlikely team. Their task is to dispense tough frontier justice and the Judge likes to keep things simple in his circuit court, which means that most cases end in a terminal way. But bad news travels fast and when it reaches Sam he has to leave off stretching necks to take time out for some personal justice.
The Raid
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 42,920. Language: English. Published: November 5, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
1864 – Virginia. Amidst the hell of The Wilderness battleground, Jesse Bob Blue performs a deed of memorable courage. In reward he is granted home leave. Jesse Bob gets back to find a danger awaiting him and his loved ones far greater than those he found on the hard fought and bloody battlegrounds of the war. Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne Dog Soldiers have joined forces and are about to raid.
The Killing Desert
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 38,610. Language: English. Published: November 4, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
1888 - Mojave Desert. A simmering hundred and forty degrees in a dry waterless wasteland. So unbelievably hot you could fry eggs on a flat rock. The man who stumbles out of the desert and into ex-Cavalry scout Cody Hartford’s campsite, drinks his canteen dry and then leaves behind a lot more than either of them bargain for.
Slashed Star
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 46,910. Language: English. Published: October 5, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Arizona 1880. It should have been a happy start, a ferocious range war finally settled by a marriage contract. There was certainly some love in the offing but it was only of a forbidden kind. A callous murder and a madman with a machete sets off a chain of bloody death that Pedro Delrey must follow to its deadly end.
Go Lightly Rider
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 39,230. Language: American English. Published: October 3, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Texas 1870 Eight years hard time leaves the world a whole new place when Cairns gets out. And it’s not just the world that’s changed; there are parts of Cairns that are missing as well. What happened to his estranged wife, Adele, for instance? It means a ride back into a life he would rather forget, one that resurrects all the bloody aspects of Cairns’ old past.
Hard Rain Must Fall
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 35,860. Language: English. Published: July 26, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » Western & American frontier
Rain. It never stops. It just keeps coming, until it seems the whole of Yoma County will flood. One man rides out of that downpour. A man carrying a Colt on his hip and a mission in his heart. He is to find no warm welcome awaiting him at his destination.
Feed the Crow
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 85,700. Language: English. Published: September 23, 2012 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » General
Captain John Page and his Portuguese translator Adelino, are on a vital mission of political importance. The Peninsular War of 1812 rages around them and their way is fraught with danger; it is a mysterious path that leads them down into the depraved sexual underworld of Lisbon high society, where they discover a devious predator is on the loose.
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Tony Masero's tag cloud

1812 war    action    action adventure    action and adventure    adventure    american civil war    american west    angels demons    apache    apache indians    bikers    buenos aires    carthage    civil war    civil war veterans    cowboy    cowboys    crime    crime action adventure    dystopian    europe    femme fatale    frontier    future    gunfight    gunman    hangman    hardboiled    historical    historical 19th century    historical fiction    historical novels    historical thriller    horror    indians of north america    international crime    los angeles    lumberjacks    marshal    mens adventure    military    moonshine    mountain men    mountains    murder    nazi war criminal    norman england    old west    peninsular war    penitentiary    police    portugal    portugal and england    primitive species    private detective    private eye    raiding party    reconstruction    revenge    robbery    roman era    romance    romance 1800s    romance historical    san francisco    science fiction    short story    sniper    texas    texas rangers    thriller    tombstone    utah    war    war between states    wells fargo    west virginia    western    western 1860s    western 1870s    western 1890s    western action    western adventure    western american history    western and frontier fiction    western book    western books    western fiction    western frontier    western lawman    western novel    western romance    western series    westerns    wild west    wisconsin