Classic Western Literature

Young Texas Ranger Russ Sittell is undercover searching for the head of a gang of rustlers - working with his ranger mentor and idol, Vaughn Steele. Staying undercover is difficult. Both rangers have difficulty staying focused while falling in love - can they uncover the criminals and keep love in its rightful place? Zane Grey tells the story in The Rustlers of Pecos County.

Willis Lander was once the T-Bar ranch's best bronc buster. Then came the day when a stallion as black as pitch and as mean as a rattler shattered his knee. Unable to perform the duties required of a cowboy, Willis took the only job he felt capable of handling - minding the line shack 40 miles from the ranch - and secluded himself from the pity of his peers in the Wyoming wilderness. Now, the T-Bar is being sold, leaving Willis to wonder whether the new owner will want to keep a broken bronc buster on the payroll.

Duster Dorword's first cattle drive is almost the death of him. Will he survive the harsh trail life, Mexican bandits, and a kidnapping? Rescue comes from the most unlikely place - but will it come in time?

The Wilcox and Son Detective Agency is working on its second case file, but Matthew and his son Chance are beginning to think they might have bit off more than they can chew. Their investigation into a series of claim-jumps near the booming mining community of Wallace, Idaho, suddenly turns deadly as one witness after another turns up dead. It turns out that the theft of land and mineral rights is only the beginning of a much deeper conspiracy. Matthew and Chance follow the leads as best they can, knowing full well that their investigation has turned into a game of cat and mouse.

In this third book in the Dead Man series, Marshal Matthew Wilcox heads out alone to find and capture one of the worst villains he will ever face. Heartsick, he traces a convoluted trail of murder, mayhem, and deceit...from the high gates of the Walla Walla State Penitentiary to Seattle and on into Billings, Montana. Although Matthew feels that he must bear the burden of a "deadman’s revenge" by himself, he will find help and succor in his travels from his friends, Sheriff Roy Smithers, Deputy Dicky McNulty, Calamity Jane, Liver Eating Johnson...and his son, Chance.

A tired old lawyer with a secret past and the young protégé that he rescued from a wagon train attack that killed his parents and left him an orphan are warriors in the tough town of Tombstone. Warriors of the code.... They are equally adept with the Commentaries of Law, a book by William Blackstone...and the revolver, a pistol by Samuel Colt.

In 1829, Jacob and Martin left Kentucky to become mountain men, trappers of the Rocky Mountains. The rugged mountains that lay beyond America’s frontier remained mostly unexplored. In those days, the killing was good. But the two young men would also find that life would be hardscrabble in the high frontier. They would face grizzly bears and hostile Indians. And they would risk horse wrecks and mountain storms to trade their furs each year at the rendezvous.

A classic work of Texas fiction from M.E.M. Davis, Under the Man-Fig was first published in1895. Part romance, part satire, and part realism, this entertaining novel takes place in the fictional town of Thornham on the Texas Gulf Coast. Under the sprawling branches of the ancient man-fig tree in the town square, all the male gossips of Thornham sit around and spin their colorful yarns - and in so doing, unwittingly weave a folk history of the Old South. This important work resounds with a reading from narrator Sally Darling.

When a man known only as The Deacon set up camp outside Rookwood, a murder of crows took to unnatural, moonlit flight. The crows came to Rookwood; trouble soon to follow. Things were already strange in that God-forsaken town, but no one could have predicted the forces and fates about to meet in a dust-bowl clearing in the desert. A Preacher. A Demon. An Angel. A Gunslinger.

Young Bradon McTavish watches the bluecoats brutally hang his father and destroy everything he's known, and he escapes their wrath into the gun smoke and blood of war. Captured and paroled, only if he'll head west of the war, he rides the river into the wilds of the new territory of Montana where savages and grizzlies await. He discovers new friends and old enemies, and a woman formerly forbidden to him.

Jack Hare is a young New Englander who has decided to travel to the West. He is rescued from sure death in the Utah desert by an old settler named August Naab, a Mormon patriarch. Jack is taken to Nabb's ranch and learns that it can be a dangerous place, since it is challenged by cattle thieves and a corrupt rancher who is after Naab's water rights. The greatest danger Hare faces, though, is over Mescal, a half-Navajo shepherdess with whom he falls in love.

A mountain man can survive anything, even a cold day in hell. Nathaniel Squire is a giant of a man, and the only one Col. Leander Melton thought could lead his pack of greenhorn would-be trappers into the mountains. And deep in Blackfoot territory, Squire must teach the youths to face the ways of survival, the rage of the Blackfeet, the cunning of a traitor - and what it means to be a mountain man.

Der junge Bloody Fox wuchs als Waisenkind am Rande des Llano Estacado auf. Seine ganze Familie fiel den Stakemen, den Räubern der texanischen Wüste, zum Opfer. Immer wieder treibt der Wunsch nach Rache ihn hinaus in den Llano, wo ein geisterhafter Reiter umgeht, der ein treffsicheres Gewehr in Händen hat. Und dann ist da auch noch die geheimnisumwitterte Oase im Kaktuswald.

Winnetou und Old Shatterhand kämpfen gemeinsam mit dem jungen Martin Baumann gegen den grausamen Häuptling Hong-Peh-Te-Keh vom Stamm der Sioux-Indianer: Gelingt es ihnen, Martins Vater, den alten Bärenjäger, vor dem sicheren Martertod zu retten? Der Sohn des Bärenjägers stammt aus dem Hörbuch Unter Geiern (Band 35 der Gesammelten Werke).

It wasn't a journey that anyone would make willingly. But Dale Maffitt had little choice. Wanted for hanging on a trumped-up charge of horse-stealing, trailed by a relentless posse, Maffitt's only hope lay in Mexico. To live, he must ride fast and hard over the scorching Texas plains and beat the posse to the border. Once across, he would be safe from arrest, and the posse would have to turn back.

This is a story of a valiant man who became a sort of American version of Robin Hood. His efforts were a courageous attempt to restore justice in early 19th-century Mexican California, where a corrupt governor was viciously exploiting the poor and downtrodden. It was a period when there were large haciendas and resident caballeros confronted by the harsh oppression. This brought forth a fictional effort featuring the persona of a masked laughing outlaw calling himself Zorro.

"The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. With a voice as gentle as ever, a voice that sounded almost like a caress, drawling a very little more than usual so that there was almost a space between each word he issued orders to the man Trampas: "When you call me that, smile!" And he looked at Trampas across the table. Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room."

In book one - No Man’s Land - Ballard helped save a widow and her daughter from a hostile land grab in West Texas. Now, needing some cash, Jack has joined a cattle drive in Bandera, Texas and will serve as security and “Nighthawker” on the Western Trail heading toward Dodge City, Kansas. The trail, however, is beset with trouble. Storms, cattle thieves, and Indian attacks follow Jack and the Triple T cattle drive, and the further north they go the worse it gets.

James Cooper and Henry Newton Brown form a close friendship when, along with Billy the Kid, they fight in the Lincoln County War. After that, James and Henry move on, and their bond of friendship growing even stronger as James becomes a crusading newspaper editor and Henry, a town marshal feared by outlaws and lauded by his peers and the towns he served. But something goes wrong, and in an emotive moment, the two best friends find themselves face-to-face in a dramatic and poignant confrontation.

When word finally reaches him that his sister and her family have died a horrid death at the hands of a cattle baron and his craven cowhands, Taggart McBain comes down off the mountain with bear traps, a double barrel coach gun, two LeMats, and a Winchester. He's on the hunt. When the task is done and blood soaks the Nemesis, NV, desert, he receives a shock - his sister is still alive.