Showing results by author "Amour" in All Categories

Val Darrant was just four years old the snowy night his mother abandoned him. But instead of meeting a lonely death, he met Will Reilly - a gentleman, a gambler, and a worldly, self-taught scholar. For 10 years they each were all the family the other had, traveling from dusty American boomtowns to the glittering cities of Belle Époque Europe - until the day Reilly’s luck ran out in a roar of gunfire. But it wasn’t a gambling brawl or a pack of thieves that sealed Will’s fate. It was a far more complex story that Val would soon uncover.

When Gaylord Riley walked away from the Coburn gang, he had money and a dream. He worked hard and built a cabin, gathered a herd of cattle, and fell in love with Marie Shattuck. But when he is confronted with false accusations of rustling and murder, Riley is forced to defend his new law-abiding way of life. Outnumbered and facing a lynching party, Riley is surprised when his old friends return to lend him a hand. But how can they help him and keep themselves out of jail?

More than any writer before or since, Louis L'Amour brought the American West to life. His action-packed stories deal with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings are historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad guys, toughs, roughs, sidekicks, and saints.

The rare letters Tell Sackett received always had trouble inside. And the terse note from his cousin Logan was no exception. Logan faced starvation or a hanging if Tell couldn't drive a herd of cattle from Kansas to British Columbia before winter. To get to Logan, he must brave prairie fires, buffalo stampedes, and Sioux war parties. But worse trouble waits, for a mysterious enemy shadows Sackett's every move across the Dakotas and the Canadian Rockies.

Hopalong rides into a firestorm of violence and betrayal. On the rain-drenched trail to the lawless town of Seven Pines, Hopalong discovers two men - one dead, the other badly wounded. Returning with medical help, Hopalong finds the wounded man has been shot through the temple. Who would commit such a murder? To find out, Hopalong hires on at Bob Ronson’s Rocking R Ranch and fights to save the Rocking R, only to find himself the target of a ruthless gunman in a life-and-death struggle for frontier justice.

Crispin Mayo was a reckless young brawler who’d left his tiny fishing village for the vast American frontier. Headed west to join a railroad construction crew, he came upon an isolated station - and a mystery. The shack was abandoned, but fresh blood spattered the floor, and the telegraph was clicking away unattended. When Mayo stepped inside and put a hand on the telegraph key, he had no way of knowing the course of his life would change forever.

“If a man won’t fight for what is rightly his, then he ain’t much account.” With this challenge from his dying father, young Shell Tucker rode out after three men who had stolen the twenty thousand dollars his father was carrying. Two of the men he hunted, Doc Sites and Kid Reese, were his friends. Dreaming of adventure, Tucker had wanted to join their gang. But now, with his father gone and the people back home desperately in need of the proceeds from the cattle drive, Shell was determined to uphold his father’s reputation and recover their money.

When young Bendigo Shafter and a ragtag bunch of travelers settle in the rugged Wyoming mountains, they quickly come to depend on a toughness and wisdom many of them never knew they possessed. Led by the beautiful and resourceful widow Ruth Macken, the settlers battle harsh winters, renegade opportunists, and the destructive lure of gold. Through these brutally demanding experiences, young Bendigo is forged into a man.

When beautiful Angelina Foley presents Tom Radigan with a Spanish grant and claims ownership of his land, he realizes he's up against a cunning and deadly opportunist. Foley wants him off Vache Creek immediately, and with 3,000 head of cattle, an outfit of hardcase gunfighters, and winter coming on, she is unwilling to take no for an answer.

As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying 80,000 barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous. But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day existence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has his own history, dreams and jealousies, longing and rage, all are connected by a deadly web of chance and circumstance. Some are desperately fleeing the past; others chase an unknown destiny.

When Tom Chantry comes west to buy cattle, he quickly runs into trouble. During a drunken scuffle in a bar, Dutch Akin challenges Chantry to a gunfight. Leaving town rather than face Akin, Chantry is quickly branded a coward. Later, when hiring men to take his herd to the railroad, Chantry faces a dilemma: No one wants to make the long, dangerous ride with a leader of questionable courage. So when French Williams, a shrewd and ruthless cattleman, makes Chantry an offer, Tom reluctantly accepts his unusual terms: Tom must remain with the drive from start to finish.

Trent came to Idaho seeking solitude. He built a cabin, broke a few wild horses, and quietly put his past behind him. Then King Bill Hale began laying claim to all the land around Cedar Bluff. When Hale's son kills one of Trent's neighbors, Trent quickly steps forward to lead the fight. Their property had been legally filed on, but Bill Hale has the men, money, and political power to steal it from them. What Hale doesn't realize is that Trent also has connections. With evidence that can ruin Hale's scheme, Trent must find a way past Hale's gang of thugs to the men who can help him.

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives - but one man held their futures hostage. Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford’s captives were the Travens’ sister and Dal’s tough-minded fiancée, Kate. Now Mac and Dal must take up arms once again and ride together against Ashford’s army.

They came by river and by wagon train, braving the endless distances of the Great Plains and the icy passes of the Sierra Nevada. They were men like Linus Rawlings, a restless survivor of Indian country who’d headed east to see the ocean but left his heart - and his home - in the West. They were women like Lilith Prescott, a smart, spirited beauty who fled her family and fell for a gambling man in the midst of a frontier gold boom. These pioneering men and women sowed the seeds of a nation with their courage....

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

He had led the posse for miles through the desert, but now Matt Keelock was growing desperate. He was worried about Kristina. His trip to the town of Freedom for supplies had ended in a shootout. If caught he would hang. Even though Kris could handle a horse and rifle as well as most men, the possibility of Oskar Neerland's finding her made Matt's blood run cold. He knew the violent and obsessive Neerland, publicly embarrassed when Matt had stepped in and stolen Kris away, would try to kill them both if given half a chance.

The abandoned cabin seemed like a good place to settle down...except for the dead man in the front yard. But Doby Kernohan and his father had traveled a long way seeking a new start, and they were in no position to be choosy. Unfortunately, the mysterious man's violent end was an omen of darker events to come, for a cycle of violence that had begun long ago was about to reach an explosive conclusion. Caught in a tangle of murder, greed, and blood vengeance, the Kernohans have no choice but to get involved.

For years, Milo Talon had been riding the outlaw trail, looking for a man who had betrayed his family. Only Hank Rossiter wasn’t the man he had been. Old now and blind, Rossiter was trying desperately to hold on to a small ranch to support his daughter, Barbara. Suddenly Talon found himself in the middle of a range war, siding with the man he’d marked for payback. But had Rossiter really changed? And could his daughter be trusted by either of them? For Milo, getting to the truth meant a long hard fight to separate his enemies from his friends - and forgiveness from revenge.

It was the only water for miles in a vast, sun-blasted desert where water meant survival. So Logan Cates naturally headed for Papago Wells. But he wasn't the only one. Fleeing the fierce Churupati and his Apache warriors, other travelers had come there, too. And when the Apaches found them, they began a siege as relentless and unforgiving as the barren land - and just as inescapable.

Using his father’s handwritten notes, journal entries, and correspondences, Beau L’Amour uncovers how and why many never-before-seen manuscripts were written - and speculates about the ways they might have ended. These selections celebrate L’Amour’s vision and virtuosity, including the first seven chapters of a powerful novel about the Trail of Tears, a chilling Western horror story, and a tale of the American Revolution featuring a character related to L’Amour’s well-known Sackett family.