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The Western

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All the pretty horses

All the pretty horses

by McCarthy, Cormac

The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

Appaloosa

Appaloosa

by Parker, Robert B.

A richly imagined novel of the Old West, as spare and vivid as a high plains sunset, from one of the world's most talented performers. It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well as I remember anything the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. Always steady, and never fast . . . When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novelDouble Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. InAppaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s. When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary-one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions. This is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain

Set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, two young men meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, whose complications, joys, and tragedies provide a testament to the power of love.

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West

by Brown, Dee

Doumented account of the decimation of Native Americans in the last half of the 19th century, told from the Indian viewpoint.

Close range : Wyoming stories

Close range : Wyoming stories

by Proulx, Annie

These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes--confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty--with the more benign values of the new west.

Django unchained

Django unchained

Django, a former slave turned hired gun, heads back to the plantation to free his wife, Broomhilda, from the tyrannical plantation owner Calvin Candie, with the help of a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Shultz.

Doc : a novel

Doc : a novel

by Russell, Mary Doria

Born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday arrives on the Texas frontier hoping that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Soon, with few job prospects, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally with his partner, Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung, classically educated Hungarian whore. In search of high-stakes poker, the couple hits the saloons of Dodge City. And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and a fearless lawman named Wyatt Earp begins-- before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology--when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.

Fistful of dollars

Fistful of dollars

A deadly gunslinger rides into a small western town torn between two warring families. He manipulates both sides to his advantage and becomes rich in the process.

Forty guns

Forty guns

Cult hero Samuel Fuller wrote and directed this visually inventive western, which didn't fare well with American audiences but earned a potent reputation with European cineastes. Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) is a despotic landowner who, with a posse of hired guns, has made herself the law of Cochise County, Arizona, with the weak-willed sheriff Ned Logan (Dean Jagger) knuckling under to her demands. One day, Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), a one-time gunfighter turned United States Marshall, arrives with his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix) to restore democratic law and order to Cochise County. Griff soon tangles with Drummond's brother Brockie (John Ericson), though Jessica is attracted to the new lawman, and Griff finds love with female gunsmith Louvenia Spangler (Eve Brent). Griff and Louvenia marry, but on their wedding day, Brockie murders Wes, and Griff, who takes pride in the fact that he has never fired his gun since becoming a marshal, must now break his vow of non-violence

Four complete novels

Four complete novels

by L'Amour, Louis

Contains four of Louis L'Amour's classic westerns, The Tall Stranger. Kilkenny. Hondo, and Showdown at Yellow Butte.

Inland : a novel

Inland : a novel

by Obreht, Téa

In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives unfold. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life--her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home.

Lonesome Dove : a novel

Lonesome Dove : a novel

by McMurtry, Larry

Chronicles a cattle drive in the nineteenth century from Texas to Montana, and follows the lives of Gus and Call, the cowboys heading the drive, Gus's woman, Lorena, and Blue Duck, a sinister Indian renegade

My Ántonia

My Ántonia

by Cather, Willa

Through Jim Burden's affectionate reminiscence of his childhood friend, the free-spirited Ántonia Shimerda, a larger, uniquely American portrait emerges, both of a community struggling with unforgiving terrain and of a woman who, amid great hardship, stands as a timeless inspiration.

News of the world : a novel

News of the world : a novel

by Jiles, Paulette

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act "civilized." Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land. Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember--strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become--in the eyes of the law--a kidnapper himself

Prairie lotus

Prairie lotus

by Park, Linda Sue

Hanna knew what Papa would say before he said it. 'I don't know, Hanna. People are already riled--I don't like the smell of it.' She paused before she spoke. 'Mr. Harris said I could attend school until he hears back from Washington on what the law is.' No answer. Yesterday afternoon had given her a tantalizing glimpse of school at its best. If she could have lessons like that for the rest of the term, she could graduate as Mama had wanted. There was another reason, though--a more important one. The world was so often unfair, and she couldn't do a single thing about most of that unfairness. But she had learned from Mama to fight it where she could, and that meant right here in LaForge.

Rango

Rango

Rango is a lizard who imagines himself an actor who literally breaks the fourth wall of his terrarium when the hatchback car in which he is riding swerves and sends him careening. Abandoned in the desert amid the shards of his former home, Rango makes his way to the nearby town of Dirt, which is experiencing a mysterious water shortage. The actor in Rango seizes the opportunity to invent a grandiloquent new image for himself, and as in many a Western, the stranger in town is suddenly promoted to the rank of sheriff. Along the way to solving the mystery of the vanishing water supply, he must survive highway crossings, giant hawks, an army of bat-riding prairie dogs, and a gun slinging rattlesnake.

Riders of the purple sage

Riders of the purple sage

by Grey, Zane

This splendid, powerful, classic novel was written in 1911, but for over ninety years it has existed only in a profoundly censored version, one that undermined the truth of the characters and the integrity of Zane Grey's masterpiece. In this restored edition, with text based on Grey's original handwritten manuscript, the real "Riders of the Purple Sage" can finally be read as the author wrote it.

The Sisters brothers

The Sisters brothers

by deWitt, Patrick

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.

The Virginian : a horseman of the plains

The Virginian : a horseman of the plains

by Wister, Owen

He is the Virginian-the first fully realized cowboy hero in American literature, a near-mythic figure whose idealized image has profoundly influenced our national consciousness. This enduring work of fiction marks the birth of a legend that lives with us still.

The buckskin line

The buckskin line

by Kelton, Elmer

On the Texas frontier in the 1840s, a red-haired child whose family has been massacred is captured by a Comanche war party. The boy is rescued and adopted by Mike Shannon. In 1861 his adoptive father is bushwhacked and murdered and the boy, now known as Rusty Shannon, follows in his father's footsteps and joins the Texas Rangers. Rusty's life has had its share of burdens - not the least of which is that his duties as a Ranger sometimes conflict with his sense of justice. But his problems are about to multiply when he meets Buffalo Caller - the Comanche warrior whose band killed his family and took him captive…

The complete Western stories of Elmore Leonard.

The complete Western stories of Elmore Leonard.

by Leonard, Elmore

Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier--with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. In these classic tales that span more than five decades--including the first story he ever published, "The Trail of the Apache"--Elmore Leonard once again demonstrates the superb talent for language and gripping narrative that have made him one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of our time.

The family Jensen

The family Jensen

by Johnstone, William W.

Trapped in a remote cabin, surrounded by ruthless gunmen, Matt Jensen and his adoptive father Smoke Jensen join forces with their old friend, Preacher, in the greatest fight of their lives.

The game of silence

The game of silence

by Erdrich, Louise

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. One day in 1850, Omakayas's island is visited by a group of mysterious people. From them, she learns that the chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island and move farther west.

That day, Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, could be in danger: Her way of life. Her home.

The Birchbark House Series is the story of one Ojibwe family's journey through one hundred years in America. The New York Times Book Review raved about The Game of Silence: "Erdrich has created a world, fictional but real: absorbing, funny, serious and convincingly human.

The loner

The loner

by Johnstone, J. A.

The Loner may appear to be a dashing young gunfighter, but few know the tragedy and heartbreak that shaped him. Most people have no idea that successful young businessman Conrad Browning is the son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan. And that's one secret he plans to keep - until his beautiful wife Rebel is kidnapped by a group of deadly bandits. When Conrad Browning's wife disappears in the untamed frontier, Conrad finds himself assuming the identity of his famous gunslinging father to find her. But his hopes of rescuing Rebel are swiftly shattered - and now he's burning for vengeance the old-fashioned way. Conrad fakes his own death and starts calling himself The Loner, becoming the deadliest gunfighter this side of his own father - ready to settle the score in blood and bullets

The son

The son

by Meyer, Philipp

Philipp Meyer, the acclaimed author of American Rust, returns with The Son: an epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th century.

The treasure of the Sierra Madre

The treasure of the Sierra Madre

by Traven, B.

The Treasure of Sierra Madreis the literary masterpiece for America's pop mythology of the Wild West. A savagely ironic novel, it follows the rugged adventure of three Americans hunting for gold in the mountains of Mexico who find themselves caught in a morality tale of greed and betrayal. Originally published in 1935, the book has captivated millions of readers, including the director John Huston, who immortalized it in his 1948 film starring Humphrey Bogart. This is a timeless story that has much to teach us, for, as we all know, finding the treasure is always secondary to the hunt. B. Traven, whose national origins are still in dispute, maintained that "my life belongs to me—only my books belong to the public." He died in Mexico in 1969.

True grit

True grit

by Portis, Charles

Pursuing a murderer who has escaped into Indian Territory, U.S. Marshal Rooster J. Cogburn teams up with a bounty-hunting Texas Ranger and Mattie Ross, a cantankerous young lady who is bent on revenge.

Valdez is coming

Valdez is coming

by Leonard, Elmore

They laughed at Roberto Valdez and then ignored him. But when a dark-skinned man was holed up in a shack with a gun, they sent the part-time town constable to deal with the problem -- and made sure he had no choice but to gun the fugitive down. Trouble was, Valdez killed an innocent man. And when he asked for justice -- and some money for the dead man's woman -- they beat Valdez and tied him to a cross. They were still laughing when Valdez came back. And then they began to die.

Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp

The biography of the legendary Wyatt Earp, including the infamous shootout at the O.K. Corral.

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