Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Author Barry R. Willis has published "The Legacy of the Pony Express: True Tales from the Old West," a history of the short-lived mail relay service that has become one of the enduring symbols of the American frontier. The book is published through Covenant Books.

The Pony Express ran for about eighteen months beginning in 1860, carrying mail across roughly 1,900 miles between Missouri and California before the transcontinental telegraph made it obsolete. Willis’s account draws on primary sources, period writings and firsthand testimonies to reconstruct the riders’ journeys across mountains and plains, according to the announcement.

The book doesn’t stop at the riders themselves. According to the publisher, Willis places their exploits inside the larger story of westward expansion, including its toll on Native American communities, and examines how economic pressure, political ambition and individual risk-taking intersected during the period. The narrative also touches on wagon trains and the gold rushes that drew settlers west alongside the mail route.

"The stories of these riders and the era they inhabited deserve to be told with honesty and depth," Willis said in the announcement. "By presenting multiple perspectives — including the often-silenced voices of Native Americans — we can better understand both the achievements and moral complexities of our frontier heritage."

Willis has previously written on American musical heritage, a background the publisher says informs his approach to historical narrative here. "The Legacy of the Pony Express" is available in hardcover and as an e-book through major retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and Google Play.

Studio CarryOnHarry is always glad to see frontier history get the fuller, more complicated treatment — the Pony Express makes for a good story, but the context around it is where the real history lives.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

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Rick Larnerd has published a new novel, "The Mystery of Gasparilla Bay," a crime story set on Florida’s Gulf Coast that pairs a present-day poaching case with the region’s pirate lore, according to the publisher’s announcement. The book is out now through Covenant Books, available in bookstores and through major online retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

At the story’s center is Andy Warden, an experienced Florida conservation officer who pursues Bart Thibodeaux, an alligator poacher, through Florida’s swamps and Gulf Coast backwaters. According to the publisher’s description, Thibodeaux’s crimes take a darker turn when he takes a vacationing mother and her two children hostage during a treasure hunt of their own — one tied to the buried fortune of nineteenth-century pirate Jose Gaspar, whose legend has long drawn treasure hunters to the area. The description frames the story as one built on the question of whether the woman he’s underestimated will turn the tables on him, and whether Warden can close the case before it’s too late.

Larnerd’s own background runs close to his protagonist’s. He spent thirty-one years in law enforcement, including service as a wildlife officer in both Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and eight years as police chief in his Tennessee hometown, according to the announcement. He also served as an active-duty infantryman in the military. The publisher’s materials describe that record as the basis for the procedural detail in the novel, particularly the conservation officer’s perspective on poaching and the backcountry terrain where it plays out.

"I wanted to blend the romance of pirate legend with the reality of modern-day conservation challenges," Larnerd said in the announcement, adding that the aim was a story that "keeps readers on the edge of their seats while honoring both history and the natural world."

"The Mystery of Gasparilla Bay" is published through Covenant Books. Larnerd has said on social media that the book has already drawn its first reader review, which he described as encouraging.

Studio CarryOnHarry is always interested in writers who put a working career on the page rather than research alone — a three-decade law enforcement record is the kind of detail that tends to show up in a book’s texture, not just its marketing copy.

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