Literary Fiction Western

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.

In the waning days of the Wild West, Texas rancher Charles Abner Sunday wants to leave a legacy of the Old West to his grandson Henry-Ellis. Sunday buys 300 head of Texas longhorn cattle and leads his grandson - along with a ragtag crew of cronies and misfits - on an old-fashioned cross-country cattle drive. As the drovers struggle to push their 300 charges across a swiftly changing American frontier, they butt heads with a Colorado meatpacker hell-bent on living in the wild, wild past.

Racism can linger in the strangest of places. Sometimes, even within yourself. For Clara Lacroix, the past was the place she chose to dwell. That's where her memories of Boone, and the life they shared, resided. But for Joe Black Hawk, the past was a painful mix of a fading heritage he didn't want to lose, and a string of mistakes he'd just as soon forget.

There's no taming Billy Blanchard. He's cut from the same rough cloth as his father, Jacob, the man who built the town of Black Horse Creek from nothing. Jacob takes pride in Billy's lawless, wild ways. But when the boy returns home with a stolen horse, having just killed a US Marshal, Jacob knows trouble will be coming. Called in on special assignment, enigmatic former deputy marshal Grayson is asked to find Billy. The marshals would prefer to have him brought in alive. But Grayson knows Billy.

Sheepman Abel McKenzie and cattleman Zack Rainford were once the best of friends, but are now, in 1887 Montana Territory, mortal enemies. Their escalating feud threatens to throw the people of Meriwether County into a bloody range war. Three ranchers have already been killed, and the investigation into the homicides received only cursory review. One of those three men was McKenzie's employee. Deputy United States Marshal Merlin Fanshaw is sent to investigate and enforce the law.

Bass Reeves was a man of color and a deputy United States marshal. For thirteen years he was aided by Dave Adams, also a deputy marshal, and a white man. Bennie Reeves was Bass Reeves' son and a barber, a good one, before he shot down his unarmed wife who had been cheating on him and then disappeared. U.S. Marshal Leo E. Bennett, known as Doc, had reservations about handing the warrant to Bass Reeves to be served against Bennie. But for Bass there was no reservation...

Calvin Sidey - steely, hardened, with his own personal code - is one of the last cowboys. It's the 1960s, and he's living off the grid in a trailer on the prairie when his adult son, Bill, seeks his help. A mostly absentee father and grandfather, Calvin nevertheless agrees to stay with his grandchildren for a week. He decamps for his son's house in the small town where he once was a mythic figure, and soon enough problems arise: A boy's attentions to 17-year-old Ann are increasingly aggressive, and a group of reckless kids portend danger for 11-year-old Will.

Raw frontier action is epitomized in Lee Porfilo. With a penchant for settling his problems with his fists, Porfilo is always in trouble. And trouble comes to stay when he beats a rich man's son. Now he has an enemy for life. Framed for murder and sentenced to the penitentiary, he is saved by Tex Cummins' small steel saw and heads for the mountains.

Harry Camden came out of the wilderness unwillingly. It was a girl who attracted him. But Sparrow Roberts, a fight manager, used this romantic lure only to attract Harry into his own sphere, because he knew that Camden had a truly devastating punch.

When Corporal Elijah Russell's superb horsemanship is revealed during a firefight in northern Iraq, the young Army Ranger is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. Elijah's task is to train the Green Berets - fiercely loyal to their enigmatic commander, Captain Wynne - to ride the horses they will use to execute this mission through treacherous mountain terrain. But as the team presses farther into enemy territory, the nature of their operation only becomes more mysterious, and Wynne's charismatic power takes on a darker cast.

Eight-year-old Benjamin Franklin “B .F.” Windes decides to abandon home and trail his father’s path. Thus begins a trip of constant struggle with disease, severe weather, hardship, Indian attack, and death on his lone journey across much of what is now the United States. B. F. spends the next 11 years in gold rush towns in California - first as a barber, then as a physician’s assistant - before departing for the Caribbean at age 19, where he becomes a blockade runner during the American Civil War.

If a man beats you, you never let your anger show, never at the time. You wait until he least expects it, until nobody remembers that you were angry at all.... In 1860s Southern California, life on the Burn ranch has been peaceful for 15-year-old John Evert since the death of his father. But recently there have been violent raids on nearby properties, where it's not just cattle and horses that are taken but women, too. And when the white-painted men arrive at the Burn ranch on horses in the dead of night, John Evert is near-fatally injured, his beloved mother spirited away, and their house torched to the ground.

After 12 years, the headstrong Annabel McKeige is back in the frontier town of Parable, Nevada. Back to face the husband she left behind...the son she never saw grow to manhood...and the home where her heart broke when she lost a beloved daughter. But her intentions regarding their marriage are soon clear - even if her motives are not. Gabe McKeige loved Annabel too fiercely to let a chance like this slip away. So, Gabe sets out to woo Annabel the only way he knows.... Annabel is finding the man she once left is unbearably hard to resist....

When Slade Donovan, strong willed and eager for vengeance, shows up on her front porch, Mariah is not ready to hear his truths: Her father's farm, the only home she's ever known, was bought with stolen gold. With Slade ready to collect his father's rightful claim and force Mariah and her family out on the streets, Mariah must turn to God for guidance. Though Mr. Frederick Cooper, a local landowner, promises to answer her financial woes if she agrees to be his bride, Mariah finds herself drawn instead to the angry young man demanding her home.

At the heart of this exciting debut novel, set in Arizona and Idaho in the mid-1970s, is 15-year-old Loretta, who slips out of her bedroom every evening to meet her so-called gentile boyfriend. Her strict Mormon parents catch her returning one night, and promptly marry her off to Dean Harder, a devout yet materialistic fundamentalist who already has a wife and a brood of kids. The Harders relocate to his native Idaho, where Dean's teenage nephew Jason falls hard for Loretta.

Eli Singer, a rancher and poet in remote Eastern Montana, sees his life upended when a long-buried corpse - which turns out to be a murder victim from Eli's childhood - erodes out of a hillside on his property. This discovery forces Eli to turn inward to revisit the tragic events in his past that led to a life-changing moment of violence, while at the same time he must reach outside himself toward Chloe, a literary agent from New York whom he is falling in love with.

Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his 10th birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Indians, settlers, and blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals.

When the McCandles' Gang decides to shoot up Coalville, Idaho, it seems like a pretty easy hit. But among the survivors is a young man named Joseph Roper. Joey worked with Sheriff Hackett, and he was not about to let Ian McCandles get away with what he has done. This is the story of Joey's search for justice, and the paths that his search took him on!

Cripple Creek, Colorado, is the most infamous sinkhole of vice and violence in the Rockies. The town's steamy bordello row and gambling halls beckon to Brad Medford, who is set on tasting all the pleasures a young man can find. He sets out across the long miles to reach Cripple Creek and prove himself a man, but misfortune takes a hand when Brad's path crosses that of a renowned gunfighter. It turns out Brad's first meal in Cripple Creek may be his last.

In this panoramic tale of manifest destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer.