One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
by Jim Fergus
from St. Martin's Griffin
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
from Vintage
"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridianbrilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west."Â Â Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Resolution
by Robert B. Parker
from Putnam Adult
The New York Times–bestselling author’s richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction.
I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook . . . .”
After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It’s the kind of town that doesn’t have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as lookout at Amos Wolfson’s Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the backrooms—as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O’Malley copper mine.
Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon OÂ’Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up ResolutionÂ’s few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between OÂ’MalleyÂ’s men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order donÂ’t exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.
Heart of Texas, Vol. 1: Lonesome Cowboy / Texas Two-Step
by Debbie Macomber
from Mira
Lonesome Cowboy
Savannah Weston lives quietly on the family ranch with her brother, Grady. Until a stranger named Laredo Smith comes along—a disenchanted cowboy who just might change Savannah's life!
Texas Two-Step
After her father's death, Ellie Frasier takes over the feed store in Promise. Still in mourning, she turns to her friends for comfort. But now her long-standing relationship with one of those friends—rancher Glen Patterson—seems to be turning into something else.…
These is my Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 (P.S.)
by Nancy Turner
from Harper Perennial
A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author's own family memoirs, these words belong to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier. Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon—from child to determined young adult to loving mother—she shares the turbulent events, both joyous and tragic, that molded her, and recalls the enduring love with cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot that gave her strength and purpose.
Rich in authentic everyday details and alive with truly unforgettable characters, These Is My Words brilliantly brings a vanished world to breathtaking life again.
Long Hard Ride (Rough Riders)
by Lorelei James
from Samhain Publishing
Channing Kinkaid itches for a wild western adventure with an untamed man. Enter Colby McKaybull rider, saddle bronc buster and calf roper. He knows hes found a woman whos up to the challenge of cutting loose. Intrigued by Channings bold proposition to "horse around" on the road, Colby proposes sexual escapades not only in his bed, but in those of his two rodeo traveling partners. Can Channing give up total control? Especially when not all is as it seems with the sexy trio?
Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
from Pocket
Larry McMurtry, in books like The Last Picture Show, has depicted the modern degeneration of the myth of the American West. The subject of Lonesome Dove, cowboys herding cattle on a great trail-drive, seems like the very stuff of that cliched myth, but McMurtry bravely tackles the task of creating meaningful literature out of it. At first the novel seems the kind of anti-mythic, anti-heroic story one might expect: the main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of former Texas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the trail begins, the story picks up an energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men. Their mission may be historically insignificant, or pointless--McMurtry is smart enough to address both possibilities--but there is an undoubted valor in their lives. The result is a historically aware, intelligent, romantic novel of the mythic west that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Bestselling winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, Lonesome Dove is an American classic. First published in 1985, Larry McMurtry's epic novel combined flawless writing with a storyline and setting that gripped the popular imagination, and ultimately resulted in a series of four novels and an Emmy-winning television miniseries. Now, with an introduction by the author, Lonesome Dove is reprinted in an S&S Classic Edition.
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, the author of Terms of Endearment, is his long-awaited masterpiece, the major novel at last of the American West as it really was.
A love story, an adventure, an American epic, Lonesome Dove embraces all the West -- legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settiers -- in a novel that recreates the central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths.
Set in the late nineteenth century, Lonesome Dove is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana -- and much more. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a daring, even a foolhardy, adventure, but a part of the American Dream -- the attempt to carve out of the last remaining wilderness a new life.
Augustus McCrae and W. F. Call are former Texas Rangers, partners and friends who have shared hardship and danger together without ever quite understanding (or wanting to understand) each other's deepest emotions. Gus is the romantic, a reluctant rancher who has a way with women and the sense to leave well enough alone. Call is a driven, demanding man, a natural authority figure with no patience for weaknesses, and not many of his own. He is obsessed with the dream of creating his own empire, and with the need to conceal a secret sorrow of his own. The two men could hardly be more different, but both are tough, redoubtable fighters who have learned to count on each other, if nothing else.
Call's dream not only drags Gus along in its wake, but draws in a vast cast of characters:
-- Lorena, the whore with the proverbial heart of gold, whom Gus (and almost everyone else) loves, and who survives one of the most terrifying experiences any woman could have...
-- Elmira, the restless, reluctant wife of a small-time Arkansas sheriff, who runs away from the security of marriage to become part of the great Western adventure...
-- Blue Duck, the sinister Indian renegade, one of the most frightening villains in American fiction, whose steely capacity for cruelty affects the lives of everyone in the book...
-- Newt, the young cowboy for whom the long and dangerous journey from Texas to Montana is in fact a search for his own identity...
-- Jake, the dashing, womanizing exRanger, a comrade-in-arms of Gus and Call, whose weakness leads him to an unexpected fate...
-- July Johnson, husband of Elmira, whose love for her draws him out of his secure life into the wilderness, and turns him into a kind of hero...
Lonesome Dove sweeps from the Rio Grande (where Gus and Call acquire the cattle for their long drive by raiding the Mexicans) to the Montana highlands (where they find themselves besieged by the last, defiant remnants of an older West).
It is an epic of love, heroism, loyalty, honor, and betrayal -- faultlessly written, unfailingly dramatic. Lonesome Dove is the novel about the West that American literature -- and the American reader -- has long been waiting for.
The Star Garden: A Novel of Sarah Agnes Prine
by Nancy E. Turner
from Thomas Dunne Books
It is winter 1906, and nearing bankruptcy after surviving drought, storms, and the rustling of her cattle, Sarah remains a stalwart pillar to her extended family. Then a stagecoach accident puts in her path three strangers who will change her life.
In sickness and in health, neighbor Udell Hanna remains a trusted friend, pressing for Sarah to marry. When he reveals a plan to grant Sarah her dearest wish, she is overwhelmed with passion and excitement. She soon discovers, however, that there is more to a formal education than she bargained for.
Behind the scenes, Sarah’s old friend Maldonado has struck a deal with the very men who will become linchpins of the Mexican Revolution. Maldonado plots to coerce Sarah into partnership, but when she refuses, he devises a murderous plan to gain her land for building a railroad straight to Mexico. When Sarah’s son Charlie unexpectedly returns from town with a new bride, the plot turns into an all-out range war between the two families.
Finally putting an end to Udell’s constant kindnesses, Sarah describes herself as “an iron-boned woman.” She wants more than to be merely a comfortable fill-in for his dead wife. It is only through a chance encounter that she discovers his true feelings, and only then can she believe that a selfless love has at last reached out to her. . . .
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers
by Ralph Moody
from Bison Books
Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man #3 (Mountain Man)
by William W. Johnstone
from Pinnacle
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