I’ve been fascinated by the Wild West since I was a little boy, playing Cowboy vs Indian with a plastic six-shooter and bow-and-arrow set. I grew up watching movies and reading books about the Wild West, and probably that sense of adventure and necessary courage required in such settings helped build the foundation that led me to join the Marines. It took guts to move out West. (Or desperation.) But either way, the settling of the Wild West is one of our core American stories. To me, the stories of the West are even more enthralling today than they were even fifty years ago.
This book is a great read by Louis L'Amour, who’s arguably one of the greatest Western writers to ever live.
L'Amour executes the book brilliantly, placing a woman and her six-year-old son in grave danger from some angry, fired-up Apaches, who are on the warpath.
All that stands between them and their safety is one tough man and his dog.
As part of the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series, this edition contains exclusive bonus materials!
He was etched by the desert’s howling winds, a big, broad-shouldered man who knew the ways of the Apache and the ways of staying alive. She was a woman alone raising a young son on a remote Arizona ranch. And between Hondo Lane and Angie Lowe was the warrior Vittoro, whose people were preparing to rise against the white men. Now the pioneer woman, the gunman, and the Apache warrior are caught in a drama of love, war, and honor.
I was never a fan of superheroes, not even as a child. My heroes had to be credible, human, acceptably flawed yet redeemable by a personal moral code that ultimately defined their actions. The heroes in my favorite books are of this ilk, determined to pursue the right thing, regardless of how life challenges them. It speaks to how I’ve tried to live my life–and still do.
An atypical Western, I loved its unusual, yet believable plot.
A drifter, George Briggs, is hired to bring four women, maddened by the bleakness of the Nebraska plains, east to civilizational care.
Briggs fulfills his contract, guiding them through the threat of Indian attacks and other challenges to safety. A feeling pervaded the story that Briggs had been given one shot at elevating himself above an otherwise unremarkable life and he came through. This is a feature that I love in almost any story–the idea of redemption.
I love to believe that potential exists within me.
The Homesman opens in the 1850s, when early pioneers are doing anything they can to survive dreadful conditions. Women especially struggle with broken hearts and minds as they face bitter hardships: One nineteen-year-old mother loses her three children to diphtheria in three days; another woman left alone for two nights is forced to shoot wolves to protect herself. The situation calls for a "homesman"-a person charged with taking these women, driven mad by the conditions of rural life, to asylums in the East. Not exactly a job people are lining up for, it falls to Mary Bee Cuddy, an ex-teacher…
As a child, I fell in love with horses. As a teen, I fell in love with a cowboy. That’s how I became the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters and wrote for rodeo magazines. Today I write historical cowboy romances. The Western way of life is down-to-earth, honest, and God-fearing—even in our contemporary world, and I’ve written several of those stories as well. But my favorite challenge takes me back to the 1800s when life was simpler. Not easier, just simpler even though people faced the same emotional challenges we face today. I love writing about their journeys and encouraging readers that there is hope.
I was put off by the title of this book because of the name, Morrow Little. I mean, who has a name like that? Plus, I wasn’t a fan of stories set in the 1700s American frontier. But a friend insisted I read it, and yeah, my friend knew me well. I wanted to run away with this hero, but no spoilers here. Morrow Little embodies every woman looking for honest love and she has the courage to pursue it. Or follow it. You be the judge. Because of this story, I’ve read every other Laura Frantz book I could find. She has a way of capturing the setting and atmosphere and dropping you right in the middle of it.
Morrow Little is haunted by the memory of the day her family was torn apart by raiding Shawnee warriors. Now that she is nearly a grown woman and her father is ailing, she must make difficult choices about the future. Several men-ranging from the undesired to the unthinkable-vie for her attentions, but she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a forbidden love that both terrifies and intrigues her. Can she betray the memory of her lost loved ones-and garner suspicion from her friends-by pursuing a life with him? Or should she seal her own misery by marrying a man she doesn't…
I’ve loved learning about the Old West for as long as I can remember. Is this because I was born a few miles from the spot where Jesse James robbed his first train? Or is it because my family watched so many classic western movies and TV shows when I was a kid? Either way, writing books set in the Old West is a natural fit for me. I love researching the real history of that era just as much as I love making up stories set there. In fact, I write a column about the real history of the Wild West for a Colorado-based newspaper, The Prairie Times.
I find this book fascinating because, along with telling one individual's story, it discusses the experiences of thousands of Chinese women who were trafficked to America during the 1800s. This is not a subject many books discuss. Note: because of the subject matter, this book is not suitable for all ages.
Polly Bemis’s destitute peasant family in China sold her into slavery when she was a young teen. She was taken to America and sold as a concubine to a wealthy store owner. A few years later, her owner lost Polly in a poker game to a gambler named Charlie Bemis, who married her. Polly Bemis spent the rest of her life a free woman, working hard in the home she and her husband built in the wilderness.
This true story of a concubine and the Gold Rush years “delves deep into the soul of the real old west” (Erik Larson).
“Once the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill launched our ‘national madness,’ the population of California exploded. Tens of thousands of Chinese, lured by tales of a ‘golden mountain,’ took passage across the Pacific. Among this massive influx were many young concubines who were expected to serve in the brothels sprouting up near the goldfields. One of them adopted the name of Polly Bemis, after an Idaho saloonkeeper, Charlie Bemis, won her in a poker game and…
I’m fascinated by singular women who have found ways to express themselves and to flourish in the face of doubt. My experience of moving country as a child, family breakdown, losing a parent as a teenager, and dropping out has left me intrigued by other women with the drive to survive on their own terms. Of course, the social constraints a woman must overcome will vary according to when she lived, but common characteristics will be bravery and obstinacy. I’ve now written three novels about women who have succeeded against the odds. I hope the books I’ve recommended captivate you as much as they do me.
American settler Cy Bellman leaves his daughter Bess to search for giant monsters in a Kentucky swamp.
It’s a brilliant story of a man’s obsession. But it’s Bess who fascinates. While others doubt Bellman’s sanity, Bess believes in him. Young and vulnerable, when danger strikes, she’s as fierce as the wilderness her father faces.
She’s left to grow up in the care of an indifferent aunt. When Bess is touched inappropriately by the librarian, the girl takes evasive action. When the yard hand almost rapes her, she fights back, then with a snap, regains her composure to deal with a shocking death.
Davies uses words economically and poetically: they leave me breathless. Though short, the book’s an epic.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Sunday Times (UK) * The Guardian (UK) * The Washington Independent Review of Books * Sydney Morning Herald * The Los Angeles Public Library * The Irish Independent * Real Simple *
Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize
“Carys Davies is a deft, audacious visionary.” —Téa Obreht
When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are…
Since I began reading, two things have fascinated me the most, that is, history and mystery. My voracious appetite for mystery began with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. History has always been my best subject in school. To me, history isn’t about people, achievements, and dates. It’s about lives lived through the tragedies and triumphs that we all face and can relate to. It is the origin of stories. History doesn’t have to be boring. It can be the greatest and most intriguing story that you have ever read. Mystery is history’s great friend—to convert a huge range of readers into history lovers.
The small town of Asheville’s history is upheld by rituals, myths, and strange stone ruins. It beckons you to stay and be unsettled as you read of the gravedigger Abel Cunningham’s tragic story and how breaking one small rule sets off a series of unexplainable happenings that will keep you from sleep. Your heart will break, yet be comforted by Jones’s incredible prose and emotional depth.
Ashville is a town with a secret history. Ancient structures lie hidden in the woods, and strange rituals are performed to keep the dead where they belong. For gravedigger Abel Cunningham, it is also a town filled with regrets. And when Abel is tasked with an unusual burial, he discovers there are more than just corpses in the cemetery.
Set in an unsettling vision of the Old West, Almost Ruth is the new nightmare from the author of Criterium and The Dark Side of the Room.
“Tyler Jones writes with the lyrical complexity and haunting tenderness of masters like Matheson…
I am a teacher of primitive survival skills. As a young boy, I was fascinated with the concept of courage. At seven, I read the pseudo-biography of Wyatt Earp, a wonderfully written account of a courageous man. This book began my lifelong interest in Mr. Earp. Eventually, I met many of the giants in Western history research and accompanied them into the field. After 65 years of collecting the facts, I wanted to use my novelistic skills to portray the life and times of Wyatt Earp as best as the record shows.
Boessenecker has achieved a fine reputation for honesty and thoroughness in his research, plus he has learned how to structure his books to carry a reader forward as a novel does. His book puts into scope how major an event it was for Wyatt Earp to go up against the organized crime gang (known as the “cow-boys”) that had corrupted Southern Arizona. Many of these outlaws had drifted west from New Mexico after taking part in the bloodbath called the Lincoln County War. Ride the Devil’s Herd is more than a history book. It’s a great ride in itself.
Winner of the Best Book Award by the Wild West History Association
A ripsnortin' ramble across the bloodstained Arizona desert with Wyatt Earp and company… A pleasure for thoughtful fans of Old West history, revisionist without being iconoclastic. —Kirkus Reviews
Wyatt Earp is regarded as the most famous lawman of the Old West, best known for his role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. But the story of his two-year war with a band of outlaws known as the Cowboys has never been told in full.
Drawing on groundbreaking research into territorial and federal government records,…
I love history and I love to laugh. That’s why I brand myself as a writer of Victorian Whodunits with a touch of humor. I’ve spent decades learning about 1800s America. I began sharing that knowledge by performing in costume as real women of history. But I couldn’t be on stage all the time so I began writing the books I want to read, books that entertain while sticking to the basic facts of history and giving the flavor of an earlier time. I seek that great marriage of words that brings readers to a new understanding. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite
intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole
book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond
society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a
book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.
It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise them behind covers of more domestically-appropriate reading. She could match wits with Sherlock Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals.
Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles, Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department. There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate. Seizing her…
Born in Texas, raised in Colorado, I’ve always had one foot in the working cowboy world and the other in the Rocky Mountains. I’m a member of the Western Writers of America, and I’ve summited all 54 fourteen-thousand foot peaks in Colorado. For a number of years, I worked with horses at a therapeutic riding center, as a barn manager. After that, I worked as an equine veterinary assistant, driving around with the vet in a pickup truck to doctor horses. Following that, I pursued the arts. Over the years, I’ve recorded and performed western/folk music (find me on Bandcamp), acted in western films (check my YouTube channel), and written western novels (Sunbury Press/Milford House).
A Hopi Indian named Don Talayesva was born in 1890 in the northeastern desert of Arizona. This is his personal life journey on the Sun Trail. I’ve never read anything quite like this. Every sentence immerses you into his mind’s eye, and you’ll see life through the lens of the Hopi worldview. Legends and myths run through every experience–yet everything feels real. The Spider Woman, Guardian Spirit, Katcina dancers, Six-Point-Cloud-People, Masau’u the bloody-headed Fire Spirit who wanders the mesa at night, and the secret society of Two-Hearts, who cast spells to take lives, to prolong their own. Don’s personal joys, opinions, and flaws are all part of the mix. In my own novel, I created a Hopi character with a vivid inner dialogue, thanks to Sun Chief.
First published in 1942, Sun Chief is the autobiography of Hopi Chief Don C. Talayesva and offers a unique insider view on Hopi society. In a new Foreword, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert situates the book within contemporary Hopi studies, exploring how scholars have used the book since its publication more than seventy years ago.
My imagination opened a portal into the past. And then I found myself spending years researching, reading, and traveling to historical sites across the western United States. Upon visiting historical places, I sometimes become overwhelmed by a visceral sense that is difficult to describe but has compelled me to write about people and places whose stories and spirits are lost and forgotten. An anecdote about a madam in a local museum stirred around in my consciousness for many years before I started writing Ophelia’s War as my MFA thesis.
Vivid details and excellent writing bring the Western frontier to life in this unique novel that avoids cliché.
A greed-driven frenzy for buffalo hide based on market speculation decimated the species in the late 1800s.
The tragedy of the buffalo is paralleled by the plight of William Andrews who, inspired by transcendental philosophy, sets out to find his true self on the Western Frontier, yet ends up losing more than his innocence as he follows the buffalo into the abyss.
The tragedy of the buffalo is conveyed through story and is in no way pedantic or political. This novel taught me a lot about the economic forces of Western expansion in narrative form.
In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.
It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them,…
