Welcome to the Essential Western Novels book series, where you will find a selection of endless tales about deadly shootouts, gunslingers seeking revenge, love stories with beautiful women, in peril, and of course, cowboys and their trusty steeds. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the 5 novels by authors who created memorable stories that shaped the foundations of Western fiction. This book contains the following novels: - Chip, of the Flying U by B. M. Bower. - The Bandit of Hell's Bend by Edgar Rice Burroughs. - Chaffee of Roaring Horse by Ernest Haycox. - The Yukon Trail by William MacLeod Raine. - Heart of the Sunset by Rex Beach. If you appreciate good books, be sure to check out the other Tacet Books titles!
From the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning "absolute master of 'Western' prose," comes McMurtry's electrifying take on the classic tale of Billy the Kid, the teenage outlaw of the American Old West. The first time I saw Billy, he came walking out of a cloud... Welcome to the wild, hot-blooded adventures of Billy the Kid, the American West's most legendary outlaw. Larry McMurtry takes us on a hell-for-leather journey with Billy and his friends as they ride, drink, love, fight, shoot, and escape their way into the shining memories of Western myth. Surrounded by a splendid cast of characters that only Larry McMurtry could create, Billy charges headlong toward his fate, to become in death the unforgettable desperado he aspires to be in life. Not since Lonesome Dove has there been such a rich, exciting novel about the cowboys, Indians, and gunmen who live at the blazing heart of the American dream.
Zane Grey is, without doubt, the absolute master of the Western novel. Although he was 31 years old before his first book was published in 1903, his writing style and his depiction of the old 'wild' west led to him becoming one of the highest-earning authors of 'popular' literature of his time. This classic collection of three of the best Zane Grey Western adventures includes: Riders of the Purple Sage, a thrilling saga set in the Utah/Arizona border country which features a despicable villain and a straight-shootin' hero in a tale of passion, rivalry and revenge; in The Trail Driver, the heroine is disguised as a boy while a cast of hard-bitten, weather-beaten characters drive four thousand cattle north out of Texas, braving the weather, marauding outlaws and hostile Indians along the way; Rangers of the Lone Star, features Texas Ranger Russ Sittell working undercover on a ranch to break a rustling ring, a dangerous assignment made all the more hazardous by the fact that the ranch owner is the local Mayor.
Introducing Wyoming’s Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Hell Is Empty and As the Crow Flies, the first in the Longmire Mystery Series, the basis for LONGMIRE, the hit Netflix original drama series. Fans of Ace Atkins, Nevada Barr and Robert B. Parker will love this outstanding first novel, in which New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson introduces Sheriff Walt Longmire of Wyoming’s Absaroka County. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, and full of memorable characters. After twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire’s hopes of finishing out his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody has been one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle. With lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, and a cast of characters both tragic and humorous enough to fill in the vast emptiness of the high plains, Walt Longmire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all.
In 1888 Oswell Danford is living a hard but satisfying life as a rancher in Virginia when he receives an unexpected telegram. A wedding invitation should be cause to celebrate but not when it means he'll have to face past deeds that he's deeply ashamed of. Now he and his brother, along with their ex-compatriot, an inveterate gambler from New York, will have to travel to Montana Territory to settle an old score they'd nearly forgotten. They will join the expectant congregation at the church for the marriage of their former brother-in-arms. But while everyone else will be wishing a blissful future for the happy couple they will be praying the darkness from their past doesn't devour the entire town. A Congregation of Jackals is an unrelenting tale of betrayal and revenge told with a precision and brutality that will leave you breathless and haunted. Fans of Zahler's breakout hits Bone Tomahawk and Wraiths of the Broken Land will be floored by this, originally the first installment of his western horror trilogy.
Winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Prix des libraires du Quebec and the Stephen Leacock Medal. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Walter Scott Prize. Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die: Eli and Charlie Sisters can be counted on for that. Though Eli has never shared his brother’s penchant for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. On the road to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside San Francisco — and from the back of his long-suffering one-eyed horse — Eli struggles to make sense of his life without abandoning the job he's sworn to do. Patrick deWitt, acclaimed author of Ablutions, doffs his hat to the classic Western, and then transforms it into a comic tour-de-force with an unforgettable narrative voice that captures all the absurdity, melancholy, and grit of the West — and of these two brothers, bound to each other by blood and scars and love.
A brutal and unflinching tale that takes many of its cues from both cinema and pulp horror, Wraiths of the Broken Land is like no Western you’ve ever seen or read. Desperate to reclaim two kidnapped sisters who were forced into prostitution, the Plugfords storm across the badlands and blast their way through Hell. This gritty, character-driven piece will have you by the throat from the very first page and drag you across sharp rocks for its unrelenting duration. Prepare yourself for a savage Western experience that combines elements of Horror, Noir and Asian ultra-violence. You’ve been warned. Praise from Kurt Russell, Joe R. Lansdale, Booklist, Jack Ketchum, and Ed Lee: "Zahler's a fabulous story teller whose style catapults his reader into the turn of the century West with a ferocious sense of authenticity." -Kurt Russell, star of Tombstone, Escape from New York, Dark Blue, and Death Proof "If you're looking for something similar to what you've read before, this ain't it. If you want something comforting and predictable, this damn sure ain't it. But if you want something with storytelling guts and a weird point of view, an unforgettable voice, then you want what I want, and that is this." -Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Bottoms, Mucho Mojo, and Savage Season" "[C]ompulsively readable.... Fans of Zahler's A Congregation of Jackals (2010) will be satisfied; think Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. [C]lever mayhem ... leads to a riveting climax." -Booklist "[A] classic Western that's been twisted into the shape of a snarling monster...." -Gabino Iglesias, Out Of The Gutter Online "It would be utterly insufficient to say that WRAITHS is the most diversified and expertly written western I've ever read."-Edward Lee, author of The Bighead and Gast. "WRAITHS always rings true, whether it's visiting the depths of despair, the fury of violence, or the fragile ties that bind us together for good or ill. It's a Western with heart and intelligence, always vivid, with characters you will detest or care about or both, powerfully written." -Jack Ketchum, author of Off Season and The Girl Next Door
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Ghost Soldiers comes an eye-opening history of the American conquest of the West—"a story full of authority and color, truth and prophecy" (The New York Times Book Review). In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian 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. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
In the continuing redefinition of the American West, few recent writers have left a mark as indelible as Cormac McCarthy. A favorite subject of critics and fans alike despite--or perhaps because of--his avoidance of public appearances, the man is known solely through his writing. Thanks to his early work, he is most often associated with a bleak vision of humanity grounded in a belief in man's primordial aggressiveness. McCarthy scholar Barcley Owens has written the first book to concentrate exclusively on McCarthy's acclaimed western novels: Blood Meridian, National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. In a thought-provoking analysis, he explores the differences between Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy novels and shows how those differences reflect changing conditions in contemporary American culture. Owens captures both Blood Meridian's wanton violence and the Border Trilogy's fond remembrance of the Old West. He shows how this dramatic shift from atavistic brutality to nostalgic Americana suggests that McCarthy has finally given his readers what they most want--the stuff of their mythic dreams. Owens's study is both an incisive look at one of our most important and demanding authors and a penetrating analysis of violence and myth in American culture. Fans of McCarthy's work will find much to consider for ongoing discussions of this influential body of work.
