Classic Western Literature

Kit Carson was legendary for his fighting skills. He could go toe to toe with any man and come out on top. But how could he beat an enemy that wasn't even human? When Kit found himself snowbound in an isolated mountain cabin with only a few friends, he knew they were in for a hard time. But then they started to see signs that they weren't alone - and whatever was out there in the snow wasn't like anything they had seen before. Kit and his friends had all heard tales of the Wendigo, but could they survive meeting one face-to-face?

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.

The year is 1807. Josh and Gabe Dent are two brothers living on the far frontier of a young America. Their lives are jolted when their parents are brutally murdered by a gang of thieves. The two frontiersmen ride to hunt down the killers. The trail of vengeance is not an easy one. In the years that follow, Josh and Gabe find themselves answering the call of the West. But as bountiful as it is, the land is fraught with danger and bloodshed.

Francis Bret Harte (1839-1902) was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short stories set against the background of the California gold rush. He himself set off at the age of 15 to become a gold miner and absorbed the rough atmosphere of the mining camps, which he used as a setting against which the interplay of human emotions stands out poignantly. 'Miggles' is an outstanding example of his humorously tender style which made his stories so popular.

Zane Grey's first western story, written in 1909, is based on a real character, Buffalo Jones. Grey's descriptive art was just beginning in this story. But he brings color and life to the area between the Grand Canyon and Utah. The story follows Grey, Jones, and a company of colorful characters on a "hunt" bent on capture rather than shooting.

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.

Poker Flat is cleaning house. John Oakhurst is allowed to leave of his own accord along with a few others who didn’t quite match society’s ideals. Maybe they got off good. Others had been hung from nearby sycamore trees. Who was good? Who was bad? Who was innocent? Questions to ponder as you listen to this classic short story narrated by Glenn Hascall.

The St. Charles Players present a unique telling of Owen Wister's classic Western, in a new multi-cast dramatization performed in exciting Radio Theatre style.

High Plains Moon has something for everyone: The old West, American Indian mythology, werewolves, vampires, land wars, and even a little romance. Funny, fast-moving, and building to a climactic finish, High Plains Moon is a worthy and satisfying second novel in the acclaimed Night Marshal series.

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.

Charlie Roy and pale, skinny Sir Arthur, an English gentleman, arrive at the Crown B ranch, north of Cheyenne, which is owned by the sir's sister, Elizabeth, who was widowed just the past winter and left with a ranch that lost nearly all its beef stock from the brutal '86-'87 winter freeze. Additionally, Elizabeth's dead husband's former partner, Justin Harper, is hell-bent on taking over her ranch. But what Harper and his boys don't figure on is interference by the likes of Charlie and the fierceness of the Sir.

The classic tale in which a drunken cowboy passes out on a barroom floor and to his horror awakes to finds he's on a train bound for hell.

From the master of the western comes a tale of love tested by the rugged life of the American Southwest. Glenn Kilbourne returned from World War I a changed man. Suffering from shell shock and disillusioned by what he witnessed, he can no longer stomach his high-flying former life in New York City. In the canyons of Arizona he finds a kind of peace with himself, and has no desire to go back to his old life. Where does this leave his glamorous fiancé Carley?

Out on the frontier, there are two kinds of men. There's the kind who's tough with a gun in his hand, who preys on anyone or anything weaker than himself. And then there's the kind like Stillwater Smith. Long and lean, Stillwater's a grizzled Civil War veteran. He doesn't take easily to killing, but he's always ready to fight for what he believes in. And you can only push him so far, as Asa Wheeler, wealthy cattle rancher, is about to find out.

Adversity is the stimulus of life. It moves one to develop or collapse. A young boy loses his entire family to a calamity and forces him to change. His mother's last wish was to find a man he has just barely heard about and doesn't know if he will be received well or not, but he must meet his grandpa in Texas.

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.

This is a collection of tales of the California Gold Rush era by the Western author, Bret Harte. It's a mix of local color, drama, and humor. Several film versions of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" have been made, and John Payne and Ronald Reagan starred in an adaptation of "Tennessee's Partner" in 1955. The spaghetti Western Four of the Apocalypse is based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".

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.

Sodbusters are about equal to farm animals on the social scale of the ranching community of Wyoming in the 1870s. Zach and Carrie Bennett, teenaged children of that wretched class, are determined to escape the scorn. They resolve to trek to Texas on foot. They are babes on the prairie, ignorant of the geography and hostility.