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Growing up in Alberta, Canada, I spent many summer days at the Calgary Stampede, where I became familiar with the idea of the Wild West. We would don our cowboy hats and trek to the fairgrounds to watch bucking horses and chuckwagon races. Thus began my obsession with popular westerns. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject, and I still teach courses and write books about various aspects of the popular West. As a bit of an outsider myself, I especially love Westerns by folks on the margins, without a lot of power. Their takes on the West are always quirky and surprising. I hope you agree!
This is a Rubik’s cube of a Western. It feels so familiar in terms of its Western iconography and stock characters and motifs, but McCarthy twists the familiar tropes of the popular Western into bizarre and inscrutable patterns.
It’s a book I want to figure out but can’t quite, and that’s why I have re-read it several times. With each read, I’m confronted with a new puzzle just when I thought I had cracked its code.
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes that Moss and his young wife are in desperate need of protection. One party in the failed transaction hires an ex-Special Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular…
My family moved frequently and, as a result, I was raised in a number of different small towns in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and Massachusetts. I now live in a large city but the experience has never left me. There was always a certain amount of crime and corruption in the towns I grew up in, but I only had a child’s eye view of it. However, a child’s eye view is usually the most vivid. This experience and the books that I have listed above all had a direct influence on Blue Hotel.
Road to
Perdition takes place during the Great Depression. Like my book,
it concerns a man who betrays his Chicago Irish-American mob boss and is forced
to flee for his life (accompanied by his young son in this case), pursued by a
relentless killer sent by his former boss. Superficially, what appealed to me
was the Depression-era atmosphere that the author of Road to Perdition created.
On a deeper level, it appealed to me as a story of a man in a battle for the
soul of his son. The man, an enforcer for his gangland boss, considers his own
soul to be irredeemably lost because of the crimes he has committed, not only
survive but to thrive.
First there was Max Allan Collins' legendary graphic novel...then came the Academy Award winning movie and his bestselling screenplay novelization. Now Collins presents an epic new novel, combining and expanding upon all that came before, to create the ultimate version of his unforgettable story.;
Depression-era Chicago is awash in liquor and blood, ruled by guns, graft, and gangsters like John Looney. His most feared enforcer is Michael O'Sullivan, known as the "Angel of Death." But when O'Sullivan's twelve-year-old son witnesses a gangland murder committed by Looney's brutal son, O'Sullivan's entire family is marked for execution to cover up the crime.…
My family moved frequently and, as a result, I was raised in a number of different small towns in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and Massachusetts. I now live in a large city but the experience has never left me. There was always a certain amount of crime and corruption in the towns I grew up in, but I only had a child’s eye view of it. However, a child’s eye view is usually the most vivid. This experience and the books that I have listed above all had a direct influence on Blue Hotel.
This
is the story that inspired my novel. It takes place in a small Nebraska
railroad town in the bitterly cold winter of 1898. My novel takes place in the bitterly
cold winter of 1947, shortly after WW2, mostly in the same blue hotel in the
same snowbound town as in Crane’s story.
Crane’s
story “is one of the most well-known of the short stories in the collection The
Monsters and Other Stories. Although it appears to be a reasonably simple
tale about a man who encounters trouble following a stay at the Palace Hotel,
several complex themes underpin the story and define many of the overarching
themes in novels like Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and more generally,
Crane’s corpus. Stylistically, the story breaks free from the norms of the
period, often entering the realms of Expressionism, an unusual style to
encounter in American literature.”
This carefully crafted ebook: “The Blue Hotel” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
"The Blue Hotel" is a short story by American author Stephen Crane. The story first appeared in the 1899 collection entitled The Monster and Other Stories. It is a story about a man who gets in trouble after a stay at the Palace Hotel.
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet who is often called the first modern American writer. The Blue Hotel (1899) is considered one of Crane ́s finest short stories.
My family moved frequently and, as a result, I was raised in a number of different small towns in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and Massachusetts. I now live in a large city but the experience has never left me. There was always a certain amount of crime and corruption in the towns I grew up in, but I only had a child’s eye view of it. However, a child’s eye view is usually the most vivid. This experience and the books that I have listed above all had a direct influence on Blue Hotel.
This is a portrait of Nebraska (and
Nebraskans) where most of my own book takes place. It’s also the state
where I went to high school. I like Hansen’s spare and precise writing style
because it perfectly fits the time and place, as well as the characters
themselves who are presented stripped of the conceits and pretensions. For me,
it’s a style, though different from McCarthy’s, that creates the illusion of
actual direct experience as opposed to something I happen to be reading about. His
story “Wickedness” creates a powerful image of winter on the Great Plains and
its effect on people.
Stories of the heartland by the National Book Award finalist and author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
“Nebraska captures a rowdy, changing America. Written with wit and brawny lyricism, in voices ranging from hip to tender, the stories gathered here are as diverse and expansive as the country they celebrate…References to America’s heartland abound throughout the book and serve as a central metaphor for what’s close to American hearts, what connects us: dreams, myths and possibilities as vast as the Great Plains. Wise and smart-alecky, creaking with legend and crackling with modernisms, these tales…
During a lonely stretch of primary school, I recall discussing my predicament with my mother. “You only need one friend,” she said by way of encouragement. Some part of me agreed. I’ve been fortunate to have had (and to have) several friends in my life, never more than a few at a time, more men than women, and each has prompted me to be and become more vital and spacious than I was prior to knowing them. The books I’m recommending—and the one I wrote—feature these types of catalyzing, life-changing relationships. Each involves some kind of adventure. Each evokes male friendship that is gravitational, not merely influential, but life-defining.
“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us,” Maclean writes, and here brotherhood, religion, and fly-fishing bleed into one another to comprise the river flowing through this stunning novella.
Wild Paul and his measured older brother Norman seem more friends than family, mostly because they choose one another. Meditative asides abound and delight, but the tender stuff concerns memory and acceptance and forgiveness, affirming Emily Dickinson’s adage: “The soul selects her own society.”
When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. One editor, so the story goes, replied, "It has trees in it." Forty years later, the title novella is recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. The finely distilled product of a long life of often surprising rapture for fly fishing, for the woods and their people, and for the interlocked beauty of life and art A River Runs through It…
I’ve been fascinated with true crime since a serial killer operated in my hometown when I was a kid. I’m now an expert on criminal psychology, which I teach at DeSales University. I’ve appeared in more than 200 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on Murder House Flip (my idea) and A&E’s Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK. I’ve published more than 72 books, and over the past 12 years, I’ve penned a blog on the dark side of the human psyche for Psychology Today. Currently, I’m writing a fiction series based on a female forensic psychologist who runs a PI agency and consults on unique death investigations.
Most people don’t know the surprising story of the first FBI profile, but I think it’s one of the best examples of how the method works.
I love that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit’s founders, Howard Teten and Patrick Mullaney, get their due since they’ve been eclipsed by other profilers’ books.
For the first time, we get the full story of a deadly kidnapping in Montana, told by someone who grew up in the area. I find Ron Franscell’s true crime books to have literary qualities that others lack while also delivering a solid story. In addition, the kidnapper turned out to be a truly shocking individual.
"Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare." (Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling)
The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer.
On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished…
I am a world traveler, who has been blessed to live in many different countries, studying human interactions and culture. People matter. I’m fascinated to see how people react and relate to each other. As a proficient people watcher, it makes sense that when I read or write a book, characters are most important to me. They make or break the story with their quirks and hurts and hang-ups. It always gives me great pleasure to see my own characters grow as the story develops. I enjoy putting them into situations that may not be comfortable for them and then seeing what God does to bring them through.
Look at him… who doesn’t love a cowboy with a hat? Knox draws you into the beginning of a conspiracy that spans several different series. What I love about this author is that she creates a community of characters who could be your next door neighbor. Hello. Why not? This is a people watcher’s dream come true.
*Susie writes a delightful story! - NYT bestselling author Dee Henderson.*
Susan May Warren is the USA Today best-selling, Christy and RITA award-winning novelist of 80 novels, including the best-selling Montana Rescue and Montana Fire series.
He's not looking for trouble...
Montana rancher Knox Marshall's danger years are behind him. A former bull-rider, he now runs the Marshall family ranch, raising champion bucking bulls for the National Professional Bullrider's Expo (NBR-X). Wealth and success are his, but life is stable, expected, and...ordinary. But he wants more from life...
I am a history-phobe turned history fanatic thanks to a snippet of a family story about my great-grandmother. Casual interest morphed into a focused passion when I learned that she truly had homesteaded-- all by herself and in her late teens-- in eastern Montana in 1917. Her accomplishment inspired four years of research and writing, resulting in my first historical novel, Hattie Big Sky, which earned a Newbery Honor award and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. More importantly, that bit of family lore revealed my purpose as a writer and I have since devoted my career to bringing the past alive for today’s young readers.
The author, a history professor and Tennessee State Historian, provides an in-depth look into Montana history, region by region. The academic tone is nicely balanced by the people and events presented on the pages – plain folk to preachers and everything in between. A great companion to Jonathan Raban’s Badland.
Montana writer and historian Joseph Kinsey Howard described Montana as "high, wide, and handsome." It is difficult to find better words for Montana's geography. Between these covers, Carroll Van West discusses Montana's physical and historical landscapes, the settings for important events involving exploration, the military, Native Americans, miners, cowboys, homesteaders, and railroad builders as well as the physical remnants of Montana's prehistoric past. With this guide in hand, readers can discover a Montana past unavailable in more standard histories.
I am a history-phobe turned history fanatic thanks to a snippet of a family story about my great-grandmother. Casual interest morphed into a focused passion when I learned that she truly had homesteaded-- all by herself and in her late teens-- in eastern Montana in 1917. Her accomplishment inspired four years of research and writing, resulting in my first historical novel, Hattie Big Sky, which earned a Newbery Honor award and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. More importantly, that bit of family lore revealed my purpose as a writer and I have since devoted my career to bringing the past alive for today’s young readers.
Dorothy M. Johnson wrote three short stories that were made into Western movies: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; The Hanging Tree; and A Man Called Horse. But this collection is a light-hearted visit to her childhood, growing up near Glacier National Park. A quick but delightful read to balance out some of the chewier reading I’ve suggested.
"[When You and I Were Young, Whitefish is] a lighthearted look into the life of a growing Western town in the early twentieth century. These fresh, jaunty tales of youth radiate good humor." -American West
I am a history-phobe turned history fanatic thanks to a snippet of a family story about my great-grandmother. Casual interest morphed into a focused passion when I learned that she truly had homesteaded-- all by herself and in her late teens-- in eastern Montana in 1917. Her accomplishment inspired four years of research and writing, resulting in my first historical novel, Hattie Big Sky, which earned a Newbery Honor award and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. More importantly, that bit of family lore revealed my purpose as a writer and I have since devoted my career to bringing the past alive for today’s young readers.
The story behind this book is nearly as fascinating as the book itself. Evelyn Cameron—Lady Cameron!—accompanied her ne’er do well husband to Montana with a scheme to raise thoroughbreds. When that failed, her husband fell into despair and it was up to Evelyn to put food on the table. She did that by photographing what she saw around her: everything from staged and romanticized “Western photos” that she sold to magazines back East, to interiors of dreary homestead claim shacks. Her glass plate negatives were converted to greenhouses after her passing but were thankfully discovered and restored, resulting in this incredible book of photographs.
Leaving behind her childhood world of the English gentry, Evelyn Cameron began ranching on the harsh and beautiful plains of eastern Montana in 1889 with her husband, Ewen. When their initial venture--raising polo ponies--failed, Evelyn turned to glass-plate photography to help support her family. Nearly 2,000 negatives remained in a friend's basement for 50 years after Evelyn's death until author Donna M. Lucey tracked down the exra-ordinary collection. Photographing Montana showcases more than 150 photographs of life in Montana from the 1890s through the 1920s. Evelyn Cameron's work portrays vast landscapes, range horses, cattle roundups, wheat harvests, community celebrations, and…
