Treble Heart Books
Electronic  Books
Reviews
© Copyright 2001 - 2008 Treble Heart Books.  All rights reserved.
This web site is owned and maintained by Treble Heart Books.
designed with Homestead
New Trilogy, Book 2 of Doc Holliday's story
The days that try men’s souls...
John Henry “Doc” Holliday and Wyatt Earp embark on what will be the most tumultuous years of their lives, lives spent in and around “The Town Too Tough to Die,” Tombstone, Arizona Territory.      Together they face life and death situations, meet new demands and make life altering decisions.

     Doc Holliday, dentist, gambler and lawman will face these challenges with typical Holliday aplomb. It will be the obstacles he faces in his personal life
that will try his very soul.

    The gunfight near the O.K. Corral with the resulting deaths of three men, weigh heavily on a man already burdened with guilt and remorse. The
subsequent murder of Morgan Earp is the last straw.  Something has to give and it does. Doc Holliday is swept away into the darkest recesses of a man’s soul. Even if he survives the ordeal, will life be worth the living?
ISBN: 978-1-932695-69-4
PG 13
$11.95 Tradesize Paperback
Holliday in Tombstone
by
S.M. Ballard
See Pages [ 1 ]  [ 2 ]   [ 3 ]
Pg 2
From Amazon.com
By  Jennifer S. Reynolds (Vermont)

   
Wow!!! Great read!!!, March 23, 2008
This is the second book in the S.M. Ballard series, I didn't think the first book could be topped but I was wrong. The second book, "Holliday in Tombstone" was absolutely terrific! Such a riviting story full of action, adventure, friendship, hardship, love, and the terrible inner turmoil that made up much of Doc Holliday's life. The rich detail of the inter-twining lives of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp and their friendship is engrossing. I greatly enjoyed reading this book, I couldn't put it down! I highly recommend it to everyone who wants a fantastic read! I can't wait for the next one in the series!
By  Jared Place - Amazon.com
   
"Holliday in Tombstone' is less a sequel and more of a "second chapter" in the story which began with Ballard's "Borrowed Time". The two books blend seemlessly from one to the other.

Just as with "Borrowed Time" Ballard successfully re-creates the Old West atmosphere with living, breathing realism. The blending of fact and fiction are again expertly knitted together into a compelling and moving tale of friendship, love, addiction, murder, and revenge.

This book gets to the very core of Doc Holliday, a man who sees the specter of death coming but is unable to do anything about it. A young man who once had a promising life ahead of him now faced with the ugly truth that he is in fact living on borrowed time.

The turmoil, agony and heartache that Holliday goes through is a side seldom seen. Ballard does an excellent job conveying real emotions, pulling the reader in and not letting go.

This is not just another shoot 'em up story full of bland disposable characters.

It's a portrait of the man, not the legend. I'm sure Doc would approve.

Once again Ms. Ballard has come up with a winning combination. Holliday in Tombstone is a romantic novel, part fiction, and part the author's descriptive cadence of the wild, wild west. It is well written by Ms. Ballard and easy reading. The characters are crisp and clean, and believe it or not you can follow the storyline without having to refer back several pages or chapters to find out what you missed. This is something I really like because when I get the time, which isn't often, I like to just read. If you like westerns, this book is good reading. It would make an excellent movie recalling the clean love stories of our history. Thank you again, Ms. Ballard, for a good read.

Ellen Clugston, Senior Editor, The Voice in the Desert.

This much anticipated second book in Ballard's "Doc" Holliday trilogy does not disappoint. This story picks up where BORROWED TIME left off, as Doc, dentist turned gambler and gunman, follows his friend Wyatt Earp to the boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona Territory.
From the moment Holliday sets foot on the dusty Tombstone streets, he risks life and safety for his friends. Although Doc backs Earp against the likes of Curly Bill Brocious, Johnny Ringo, and their gang of ruffians, the Georgia gentleman emerges in his own right, rather than the often portrayed shadowy appendage attached to Wyatt Earp's coat-tails.

Ballard has thoroughly researched her subject (she has written numerous non-fiction articles about Holliday for The Tombstone Times) and it shows. Seamlessly blending fact and fiction, Ballard delves into Doc's interpersonal relationships: Clementine, the love of his life; his love-hate relationship with Kate (Fisher) Elder; his abiding friendship with Wyatt Earp; and his antagonistic interactions with both Bat Masterson and Earp's brother Virgil.
In this traditional Western, the action storyline is paralleled by Holliday's struggle to live as normal a life as possible while dealing with an illness that, in that time period, proved fatal more often than not. In one particularly poignant scene, Doc shows his humanness as he commiserates with Earp over his friend's loss of an unborn child through miscarriage before disclosing his own loss of a child through abortion.

Holliday in Tombstone brings John Henry "Doc" Holliday nearly full circle as he battles his personal demons while struggling to stay true to a friendship he values above all others. This is a good, fast read that will appeal to men and women alike.

---Reviewed by J. D. Harkleroad
Writersarereaders.com

“It is true. It seems to be true. It should be true. It must be true. And yes…you cannot tell where the truth leaves off and the author’s skill comes in, as it is blended so perfectly one could truly read this book as an actual chronicle of events before and after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
    “You will get into John Holliday’s very soul. You will feel his deep pain and anguish, and you will feel his love, and his enormous devotion to Wyatt Earp above all else.
    “While you are reading it, your mind is telling you…you know this is not a true story, but in your heart you cannot help feeling it rings true, almost like a slice of a double biography.” The characters are not only real, but you will recognize events from your reading of histories, or watching of movies, and you will be pulled into the lives of these incredibly complex, incredibly brave, incredibly stoic men as a moth is drawn to a flame. You will not be able to put it down.  What an amazing job!”

---Book Review, Cowboy Chronicle, July 2008 issue
Reviewed by Nubbins Colt, SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) life member