Westerns
I have a wide definition of a “western” as a work of fiction. James Fenimore Cooper’s last Leatherstocking novel, The Prairie (1827), is a Western in even a modern sense of the category. The Dime Western of the post-Civil War period, and the sensational “yellow” Westerns that overlapped the end of the wars with the American Indians of the West created and strengthened the stereotypes and conventions that later generations of writers had to deal with.
What is important and interesting, however, is that those later generations of writers are good, sometimes great. From Zane Grey (Ohio-born) to Louis L’Amour, A.B. Guthrie to Larry McMurtry, Dorothy Johnson to Paulette Giles, Elmer Kelton to Elmore Leonard, Thomas McGuane to Edward Abbey to N. Scott Momaday - so many writers have faced and continue to face the West and its history and its landscape.
I have a Westerns section in the store in the far frontier of the North Room, but I have other Westerns scattered in different areas, outposts in other literatures. I will work to gather them on this page, an ongoing building of community. Audiobooks of Western writers, including Zane Grey and A.B. Guthrie, Jr., are listed on my Audiobooks - Fiction, Poetry, Drama page.
A note on Louis L’Amour’s books: they are listed in alphabetical order by title with the exception of the 17-volume Sacketts titles, which are clustered at the end and numbered according the rough chronology L’Amour intended (it was flexible by his intention and unfinished at his death).
Listed here alphabetically by author.
The Lone Star Ranger and The Mysterious RIder
The Lone Star Ranger and The Mysterious RIder
Two classic novels of the frontier, by Zane Grey, one of America's most celebrated Western storytellers
The Lone Star Ranger
Buck Duane, gunfighter, was offered a pardon by Captain Mac Kelly of the Texas Rangers, on one condition: Take down the local Chelsedine gang. Many had died trying, but it was Duane's only shot at freedom. When Duane teamed up with the Rangers for a final showdown against the ruthless rustlers, he discovered a secret that could destroy them all.
The Mysterious Rider
His name is Hell Bent Wade, a wandering gunfighter and a good man, though one with a violent temper. But it isn't until he arrives at the Bellhounds Ranch, where Bill Bellhounds is about to marry off his foster daughter Columbine to Jack, a cowardly drunkard, gambler, and thief, that Wade reveals the full range of his righteous fury.
This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback.