Horseman, Pass By

Horseman, Pass By

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove comes the novel that became the basis for the film Hud, starring Paul Newman. In classic Western style Larry McMurtry illustrates the timeless conflict between the modernity and the Old West through the eyes of Texas cattlemen. Horseman, Pass By tells the story of Homer Bannon, an old-time cattleman who epitomizes the frontier values of honesty and decency, and Hud, his unscrupulous stepson. Caught in the middle is the narrator, Homer's young grandson Lonnie, who is as much drawn to his grandfather’s strength of character as he is to Hud's hedonism and materialism. When first published in 1961, Horseman, Pass By caused a sensation in Texas literary circles for its stark, realistic portrayal of the struggles of a changing West in the years following World War II. Never before had a writer managed to encapsulate its environment with such unsentimental realism. Today, memorable characters, powerful themes, and illuminating detail make Horseman, Pass By vintage McMurtry.
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The Evening Star

The Evening Star

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Larry McMurtry’s Terms of Endearment touched readers in a way no other story has in recent years. The earthy humor and the powerful emotional impact that set this novel apart rise to brilliant new heights with The Evening Star. McMurtry takes us deep into the heart of Texas, and deep into the heart of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Aurora Greenway—along with her family, friends, and lovers—in a tale of affectionate wit, bittersweet tenderness, and the unexpected turns that life can take. This is Larry McMurtry at his very best: warm, compassionate, full of comic invention, an author so attuned to the feelings, needs, and desires of his characters that they possess a reality unique in American fiction.
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Buffalo Girls

Buffalo Girls

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance: "Martha Jane -- better known as Calamity -- is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity's Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley's shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of the tour, McMurtry turns the story of a band of hardy, irrepressible survivors into an unforgettable portrait of love, fellowship, dreams, and heartbreak.
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Boone's Lick

Boone's Lick

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else. Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels. At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster. Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers). The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail. Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.
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Leaving Cheyenne

Leaving Cheyenne

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry comes the second novel about love and loss on the great plains of Texas. From 1920’s ranching to range cowboys and WWII grief, McMurtry is the undisputed father of the Western literary epic. Leaving Cheyenne traces the loves of three West Texas characters as they follow that sundown trail: Gideon Fry, the serious rancher; Johnny McCloud, the free-spirited cowhand; and Molly Taylor, the sensitive woman they both love and who bears them each a son. Told in alternating perspectives over sixty years, Leaving Cheyenne follows their dreams, secrets, and grief against a changing American landscape. Tragic circumstances mark the trail, but fans of McMurtry’s distinctive style will cherish his unforgettable characters and pathos of the American West.
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Moving On

Moving On

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

With a riotously colorful cast of highbrows, cowpokes, and rodeo queens, in its wry humor, tenderness, and epic panorama, Moving On is a celebration of our land by Larry McMurtry, one of America’s best-loved authors. Moving On is a big, powerful novel about men and women in the American West. Set in the 1960s against the backdrop of the honky-tonk glamour of the rodeo and the desperation of suburban Houston, it is the story of the restless and lovable Patsy Carpenter, one of Larry McMurtry’s most unforgettable characters. Patsy—young, beautiful, with a sharp tongue and an irresistible charm—and her shiftless husband, Jim, are adrift in the West. Patsy moves through affairs of the heart like small towns—there’s Pete, the rodeo clown, and Hank, the graduate student, and others—always in search of the life that seems ever receding around the next bend. Moving On is vintage McMurtry.
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Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, Brokeback Mountain is her masterpiece. Brokeback Mountain was originally published in The New Yorker. It won the National Magazine Award. It also won an O. Henry Prize. Included in this volume is Annie Proulx's haunting story about the difficult, dangerous love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. Also included is the celebrated screenplay for the major motion picture "Brokeback Mountain," written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. All three writers have contributed essays on the process of adapting this critically acclaimed story for film.
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Zeke and Ned

Zeke and Ned

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Zeke and Ned is the story of Ezekiel Proctor and Ned Christie, the last Cherokee warriors -- two proud, passionate men whose remarkable quest to carve a future out of Indian Territory east of the Arkansas River after the Civil War is not only history but legend. Played out against an American West governed by a brutal brand of frontier justice, this intensely moving saga brims with a rich cast of indomitable and utterly unforgettable characters such as Becca, Zeke's gallant Cherokee wife, and Jewel Sixkiller Proctor, whose love for Ned makes her a tragic heroine. At once exuberant and poignant, bittersweet and brilliant, Zeke and Ned takes us deep into the hearts of two extraordinary men who were willing to go the distance for the bold vision they shared -- and for the women they loved.
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Sin Killer

Sin Killer

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry comes the first in a four-volume epic journey through the early American frontier, featuring the Berrybender family, English nobility adrift in the American West in the 1830s. It is 1830, and the Berrybender family—rich, aristocratic, English, and hopelessly out of place—is on its way up the Missouri River to see the untamed West as it begins to open up. With irascible determination—and a great deal of outright chaos—the party experiences both the awesome majesty and brutal savagery of the unexplored land, from buffalo stampedes and natural disasters to Indian raids and encounters with frontiersmen and trappers, explorers, pioneers, and one part-time preacher known as "the Sin Killer." Packed with breathtaking adventure, charming romance, and a sense of humor stretching clear over the horizon, Sin Killer is a truly unique view of the West that could only come from the boundless skill and imagination of Larry McMurtry.
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The Desert Rose

The Desert Rose

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry writes novels set in the American heartland, but his real territory is the heart itself. His gift for writing about women -- their love for reckless, hopeless men; their ability to see the good in losers; and their peculiar combination of emotional strength and sudden weakness -- makes The Desert Rose the bittersweet, funny, and touching book that it is. Harmony is a Las Vegas showgirl. At night she's a lead dancer in a gambling casino; during the day she raises peacocks. She's one of a dying breed of dancers, faced with fewer and fewer jobs and an even bleaker future. Yet she maintains a calm cheerfulness in that arid neon landscape of supermarkets, drive-in wedding chapels, and all-night casinos. While Harmony's star is fading, her beautiful, cynical daughter Pepper's is on the rise. But Harmony remains wistful and optimistic through it all. She is the unexpected blossom in the wasteland, the tough and tender desert rose. Hers is a loving portrait that only Larry McMurtry could render.
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The Lonesome Dove Chronicles

The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

The timeless, bestselling four-part epic that began with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove takes readers into the lives of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two tough-as-nails Texas Rangers in the heyday of the Old West.Dead Man’s WalkAs young Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call--"Gus" and "Call" for short--have much to learn about survival in a land fraught with perils: not only the blazing heat and raging tornadoes, roiling rivers and merciless Indians, but also the deadly whims of soldiers. On their first expeditions--led by incompetent officers and accompanied by the robust, dauntless whore known as the Great Western--they will face death at the hands of the cunning Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump and the silent Apache Gomez. They will be astonished by the Mexican army. And Gus will meet the love of his life. Comanche MoonTexas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow Call, now in their middle years, are still figuring out how to deal with the ever-increasing tensions of adult life--Gus with his great love, Clara Forsythe, and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him--when they sign up to pursue the Comanche horse thief Kicking Wolf into Mexico. On this mission their captain, Inish Scull, is captured by the brutally cruel Mexican bandit Ahumado, and Gus and Call must come to the rescue, with the aid of new friends including Joshua Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker, as well as the renowned Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes. Lonesome DoveGus and Call, now retired from the Texas Rangers and settled in the border town of Lonesome Dove running the Hat Creek Cattle Company, are visited by their old friend Jake Spoon, who convinces Gus and Call to gather a herd of cattle and drive them north to Montana in order to start a cattle ranch in untouched territory. Gus is further motivated by a desire to see the love of his life, Clara Allen (nee Forsythe), who now lives with her children and comatose horse-trader husband in Ogallala, Nebraska. On the way to Montana they travel through wild country full of thieves, murderers, and a lifetime's worth of unforgettable adventure. Streets of LaredoWoodrow Call is back in Texas, a Ranger once again and a general gun-for-hire, but increasingly a relic as the westward sprawl of the railroads rapidly settles the once lawless frontier. Hired by a railroad tycoon to hunt down a dangerous bandit named Joey Garza, Call sets out once again with a hapless Yankee named Ned Brookshire who works for the railroad company that hired Call. Call's old friend Pea Eye Parker--who initially refused to join the expedition because of his family--sets off with the Kickapoo tracker Famous Shoes to try to catch up with Call, until he runs into troubles of his own. The long pursuit of Garza leads them all across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.
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Dead Man's Walk

Dead Man's Walk

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Dead Man's Walk is the first, extraordinary book in the epic Lonesome Dove tetralogy, in which Larry McMurtry breathed new life into the vanished American West and created two of the most memorable heroes in contemporary fiction: Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. As young Texas Rangers, Gus and Call have much to learn about survival in a land fraught with perils: not only the blazing heat and raging tornadoes, roiling rivers and merciless Indians but also the deadly whims of soldiers. On their first expeditions--led by incompetent officers and accompanied by the robust, dauntless whore known as the Great Western--they will face death at the hands of the cunning Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump and the silent Apache Gomez. They will be astonished by the Mexican army. And Gus will meet the love of his life.
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The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove comes a powerful coming-of-age novel set in the American West. In Thalia, Texas, Larry McMurtry epitomizes small-town America and through characters reintroduced in Texasville and Duane’s Depressed, captures the ecstasy and heartbreak of adolescence. The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most memorable novels, and the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love. Populated by a wonderful cast of eccentrics and animated by McMurtry's wry and raucous humor, The Last Picture Show is a wild, heartbreaking, and poignant novel that resonates with the magical passion of youth.
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When the Light Goes

When the Light Goes

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

In this masterful and often surprising sequel to the acclaimed Duane's Depressed, the Pulitzer Prize- and Oscar-winning author of Lonesome Dove has written a haunting, elegiac, and occasionally erotic novel about one of his most beloved characters. Duane Moore first made his appearance in The Last Picture Showand, like his author, he has aged but not lost his vigor or his taste for life. Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty, West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it seems that everything has changed alarmingly. His office barely has a reason to exist now that his son Dickie is running the company from Wichita Falls, his lifelong friends seem to have suddenly grown old, his familiar hangout, once a good old-fashioned convenience store, has been transformed into an "Asian Wonder Deli," his daughters seem to have taken leave of their senses and moved on to new and strange lives, and his own health is at serious risk. It's as if Duane cannot find any solace or familiarity in Thalia and cannot even bring himself to revisit the house he shared for decades with his late wife, Karla, and their children and grandchildren. He spends his days aimlessly riding his bicycle (already a sign of serious eccentricity in West Texas) and living in his cabin outside town. The more he tries to get back to the rhythm of his old life, the more he realizes that he should have left Thalia long ago -- indeed everybody he cared for seems to have moved on without him, to new lives or to death.The only consolation is meeting the young, attractive geologist, Annie Cameron, whom Dickie has hired to work out of the Thalia office. Annie is brazenly seductive, yet oddly cold, young enough to be Duane's daughter, or worse, and Duane hasn't a clue how to handle her. He's also in love with his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, who after years of rebuffing him, has decided to undertake what she feels is Duane's very necessary sex reeducation, opening him up to some major, life-changing surprises.For the lesson of When the Light Goes is that where there's life, there is indeed hope -- Duane, widowed, displaced from whatever is left of his own life, suddenly rootless in the middle of his own hometown, and at risk of death from a heart that also doesn't seem to be doing its job, is in the end saved by sex, by love, and by his own compassionate and intense interest in other people and the surprises they reveal. At once realistic and life-loving, often hilariously funny, and always moving, though without a touch of sentimentality, Larry McMurtry has opened up a new chapter in Duane's life and, in doing so, written one of his finest and most compelling novels to date, doing for Duane what he did so triumphantly for Aurora in Terms of Endearment.
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