R. J. Marek

A series

Pioneer Mountain

A mountain town, a hard winter, and the arithmetic of what neighbours owe each other when nobody is coming.

Cover of Last Chair by R. J. Marek: a broken ski lift chair hanging above a snowbound mountain.
Book One

Last Chair

Available now

No bomb. No plague. A Treasury auction fails on a Tuesday in September, and ninety days later the northern Rockies are playing a very old game.

A grieving Marine Raider crosses a dying country to reach his childhood friend’s mountain enclave — the richest private community on earth, where a neighbourhood of billionaires owns every weapon money can buy and none of the skill to use them. Their wealth does not vanish. It simply stops working, which is worse.

With a militia marching out of Idaho and the enclave’s own hired guns turning on the people who stopped being able to pay them, one broken warrior has to forge hedge-fund managers, ski patrollers and lift mechanics into something that can hold a ridge — before the first big snow.

The whole book is a countdown to snow. Snow seals the passes, kills the unprepared, and becomes a weapon.
Book one of a planned trilogy.

The rest of the series

  1. Boundary Line — in progress
  2. Winter Count