Classic Western Literature

The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war: under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in the mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war—of any war—told for a whole generation of victims.

This Raging Bull Publishing Box Set contains three classic Western books.

Zane Grey is considered the creator of the Western and remains the most popular author of that genre. His best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage, remains an all-time best-seller, and one of the most successful Western novels in history. This first Volume contains four of his best novels, including Riders of the Purple Sage, and its sequel The Rainbow Trail. Two more popular novels are are included in this collection.

The Shootist is John Bernard Books, the last surviving top gunfighter in a vanishing American West. He rides into El Paso in the year 1901, to be told by a doctor that he has a terminal illness. As word spreads that the famous assassin has reached the end, an assortment of vultures gather to feast upon his corpse. Most men would end their days quietly, but Books outwits them all by selecting the where, the when and the manner of his death.

When Zach Connors and his pa left their Kentucky homestead in the summer of 1824 to see the Rocky Mountains, he didn't realize he would never see his childhood home again or that he would find love, friendship, fame, and a new home in this wild and harsh wilderness. After a grizzly kills his pa, Zach struggles to survive a cold and brutal winter alone. After killing a rouge grizzly and fighting hostile Indians on his own, he becomes known as Grizzly Killer and is respected throughout the West. Along with his dog, Jimbo, whom the Indians call the Great Medicine Dog, he finds Running Wolf, an injured Ute warrior, and together they fight off a hostile war party. They rescue two Shoshone sisters from the brutality of a French trapper and take them as wives.

Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.

A brand-new Western adventure from the author of The Legend of Jake Jackson. This is a rip-roaring new adventure that puts a United States marshal directly on the trail of evil. Caleb Jacobs made a vow the day his family was unmercifully slaughtered by a cutthroat gang of outlaws. He dedicated his life to protecting those who could not protect themselves. Caleb swore that he would bring justice to the frontier by the gun or by the noose.

Fresh off a breakup, Taylor Manning accepts a yearlong teaching position in Cougar Point, Montana, and plans to focus on herself, avoid men, and return home a changed woman. That’s before she meets Russ Palmer, a local rancher who’s as stubborn as he is handsome. With his old-fashioned attitudes about women, Russ is the last man Taylor could imagine dating, and the feeling seems to be mutual. So why can’t she seem to get him off her mind?

The story you’re about to hear took place primarily in what is Southern Utah and has been called the quintessential Western, meaning simply it is a top-notch example of quality. It is composed of an extensive list of ingredients: adventure, action, violence, crisis, suspense, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex - they are all there. This classic of the Western genre was the kind of story the public clamored for, and author Zane Grey had great skill in supplying the desire.

In frontier Montana, Cassidy is a busy seamstress with a hidden history, but her desire for a family would force her to reveal the details of her life. Will she find the strength to take that risk?

This Raging Bull Publishing box set contains four classic Western books by Max Brand: Black Jack, Harrigan, Riders of the Silence, and The Untamed.

IIn the summer of 1850, a topsail schooner slipped into the cove under the rocky promontory of Trinidad Head in California and dropped anchor at the edge of the kelp (algae)-fields. Fifteen minutes later her small-boat deposited on the beach a man armed with long squirrel-rifle and an axe, and carrying food and clothing in a brown canvas pack. From the beach he saw the schooner raise anchor and stand out to sea before the northwest trade winds. When it disappeared from his view, he swung his pack to his broad back and strode resolutely into the timber at the mouth of a little river.

Abbie Mackenzie dreamed of becoming a fine lady like her aristocratic grandmother, devoting herself to music and art. But at eighteen Abbie found a different dream, turning away from the promise of a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife to marry handsome, quiet Will Deal. Together, they eagerly accepted the challenge of homesteading in Nebraska territory, where the prairies stretched as far as the eye could see, and only the strongest survived for long.

Owen Wister’s The Virginian pre-dates the classic novels of Zane Grey and Max Brand and is considered by many to be the original Western. Dedicated to Wister’s friend and fellow outdoorsman Theodore Roosevelt, this timeless tale almost single-handedly established the cowboy archetype in literature. A quiet, noble foreman of a Wyoming cattle ranch in the 1870s, the Virginian falls for pretty schoolteacher Molly Wood. But when a rival suitor challenges his honor, the Virginian struggles to make his beloved Molly understand the harsh justice of the West.

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, when beaver were plentiful and the buffalo roamed freely, the killing was good. 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 "rendezvous".

The American West by President Eisenhower's favorite writer comprises of Betty Zane (1903), The Spirit of the Border (1906), and The Last Trail (1909).

In 1828, few white men had seen the Rocky Mountains, those that had were the rugged few we call Mountain Men. Zach Connors was one of the best, known to the Indians as Grizzly Killer. He was both feared and respected throughout the Rockyies. Along with his dog, Jimbo, Running Wolf, his Ute partner, and their wives, they travel to Rendezvous, where they battle the dreaded Blackfeet and Zach fights for both justice and honor. After, they come face to face with a man eating grizzly, and confront those seeking revenge for the justice he dealt.

Hoping the vast forests and towering peaks of the Rockies will hide them, Zach Connors leads his family into the mountains. As they enter this new and beautiful land, they face both Cheyenne and Arapaho hunters who are determined to prove the medicine of Grizzly Killer is not greater than their own. Sending his family ahead to safety, Zach and his dog face a cunning and brutal enemy alone.

Smoke Jensen is the most powerful man on the Sugarloaf frontier - and he's all that stands between a greedy group of Eastern slickers and their schemes for a criminal empire in the Rockies. When Smoke heads back to Boston with his wife, it gives his enemies the opening they'd been waiting for: to kill the mountain man and take over the West. But even on the unfamiliar turf of back alleys and teeming docks, Smoke is more than most men can handle...until his wife is kidnapped.

The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life.