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 Mark of Zorro
The Mark of Zorro
Timid Don Diego Vega grows faint at even the mention of bloodshed and would rather read poetry than defend his own honor. No one suspects that the effete aristocrat is living a double life as Zorro the fox, bold fighter of injustice, whose sword is ever ready to defend the poor and oppressed against a corrupt governor and his merciless army. Zorro's charade fools even the spirited Lolita Pulido, whose father forces her to endure the listless wooing of Don Diego while her heart belongs to the masked hero who laughs in the face of danger.
This lighthearted tale of the Robin Hood of Old California unfolds as a suspenseful romp across Los Angeles of the 1820s. Loaded with colorful characters and historic atmosphere, recounted in direct and unpretentious prose, the pulp adventure offers a winning balance of action, comedy, and romance. This edition reprints the original 1919 story, published serially as "The Curse of Capistrano," which launched the Zorro legend. Scores of sequels followed, along with movie and television versions, all inspired by this swashbuckling classic.
Reprint of the Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1924 edition.