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Elmer Kelton
1) Many a river
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The Barfield brothers are separated by a Comanche raid. Years later, they are destined to be reunited and discover how their separate lives have changed them.
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Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country.
The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits-75 cents-a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching...
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This is a story of the early days when...
An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father. Not long ago, Mike Shannon, was bushwhacked and killed, and his death still haunts Rusty. Rusty thinks he knows the identity of Mike's killers. But with Texas now in the throes of seceding...
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Texas Rangers volume 3
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The Civil War has ended, and Union soldiers and federal officials have taken control of Texas as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. As a child, he was a captive of the Comanche, as a young man a proud member of a ranging company protecting settlers from Indian raids. Shannon's fate is intertwined with the young man accompanying him: Andy Pickard, himself but recently rescued from Comanche captivity and known by his captors as Badger...
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The Time It Never Rained helped convince the Western Writers of America to declare seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton the greatest Western writer of all time. Forged from Kelton's 1950s observations of drought-ravaged West Texas, this compelling novel tells the story of one rancher's struggle to maintain his independence despite the swirling winds of change. For decades, Charlie Flagg has eked out a living by raising cattle and sheep on his...
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Texas Rangers volume 5
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In this fifth volume of his Texas Rangers series, Elmer Kelton takes the young ranger Andy Pickard, once a Comanche captive called Badger Boy, into the midst of a bloody vendetta between hate-filled families. Pickard and ranger Farley Brackett, a former Confederate soldier, are assigned to deliver prisoner Jayce Landon to the sheriff of a neighboring county to stand trial for killing a man named Ned Hopper but from the outset the seemingly simple...
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The Smiling Country, filled with pathos and humor, is set in the last days of the Old West. Hewey Calloway may be pushing 45, but he can still rope and outride most things on four legs. Refusing promotions, he prefers to remain a simple ranch hand. But as he rides the west Texas plains, automobiles are beginning to dot the landscape. When Hewey is critically injured by a wild horse, he must admit that his world-and an age-are passing away.
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Nothing stirs up emotions in Texas like men stealing other men's horses. Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is assigned what seems to be a routine duty. West Texas horse trader Donley Bannister has killed a thug named Cletus Slocum who stole one of his horses. Ranger Pickard is to find and arrest Bannister, and bring him to trial. But the case turns out to be anything but routine. When Pickard finds him holed up with some cohorts, Bannister saves the Ranger's...
9) Bitter trail
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In Bitter Trail, Kelton tells the story of a tough teamster named Frio Wheeler whose wagons haul cotton from Texas to Mexico. Sounds like a peaceable enterprise. The problem is that the Civil War is raging throughout the South and Wheeler's cotton is to be sold for gold, gold used to buy guns and ammunition for the Confederate army.
And, added to his balky mules, the broiling heat, and killing drought of the Mexican dessert, Wheeler has even more...
10) Ranger's trail
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Texas Rangers volume 4
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In the spring of 1874 the Ranger companies that protect settlers against Indian raids and outlaw bands are being reorganized and David "Rusty" Shannon is the most sought-after veteran for reenlistment.
But Shannon has new goals for his life: He is in love with Josie Monahan, daughter of the family that adopted him, and he intends to marry Josie and take her to his farm on the Colorado River. Rusty also feels affection and responsibility for Andy...
11) Sons of Texas
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Sons of Texas trilog volume 1
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In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee.
Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters...
12) Joe Pepper
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Joe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his forty years of living on both sides of the Texas law-except face the hangman. Now, convicted of murder, Joe is about to get that privilege. But before he goes, Joe has a few things he wants to say-and a few stories that he wants to set straight.
With Joe Pepper, legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton tells a fine and moving tale of the history of...
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In the Texas backlands in 1885, twelve-year-old Joey Shipman's father dies under mysterious circumstances, and the boy is forced to live with his stepmother and Blair Meacham, a hanger-on at the farm. After the death of a black farmhand and friend, and another "accident”, that almost takes Joey's life, the boy runs away and joins forces with his only kin-Beau Shipman, a drunk and a jailbird. Beau, along with an outlaw, a San Antonio prostitute,...
14) Buffalo wagons
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Ballantine Books volume 187
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For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago, he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it. In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak is awe of a last great heard to the south-but no hunter who values his scalp dares ride south of the Cimarron and into Comanche territory. None but Gage Jameson...
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In 1875, nearly forty years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texans are still spilling blood over ownership of the Nueces Strip--a hot, dry stretch of coastal prairie that bushwackers and horse thieves have turned into a lawless hell.
Captain L.H. McNelly, a complex and determined Confederate veteran, is brought into the Nueces Strip for one purpose: to keep the peace. His measures are harsh and controversial--but McNelly wasn't sent in to be...
16) Jericho's road
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Texas Rangers volume 6
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Elmer Kelton, author of more than 40 Western adventures, has won an unprecedented seven Spur Awards. Jericho's Road follows the perilous trail of young Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, who has been assigned to control feuding ranchers on each side of the Mexico-Texas border. Caught in the middle of a potential bloodbath, Andy is determined to find a peaceful way to end the conflict.
17) Hanging judge
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Elmer Kelton, voted "The Greatest Western Writer of All Time" by the Western Writers of America, is a legend in the field of Western literature. Famous for his realistic characters and accurate depictions of the history of his home state of Texas, Elmer Kelton continues to write exceptional novels of American history.
In Hanging Judge, Justin Moffitt is eager to help keep the peace as a deputy marshal in small-town Texas. That is, until Justin is...
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From one of the West's greatest living storytellers, winner of numerous awards, including the Spur, the Golden Saddleman, and the Western Heritage Award, here is Elmer Kelton's magnificent new novel of the wildcat West Texas oil boom of the 1920s. It used to be that the worst crime in Caprock was moonshining or lying about your Saturday night date on Sunday morning-until someone struck oil. Now the scent of the stuff has brought every dreamer, drifter,...
19) Slaughter
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In the 1870's, buffalo hunters moved onto the High Plains of Texas. The Plains Indians watched hunters slaughter the animals that gave them shelter and clothing, food and weapons. The battles at and near the ruins of a trading fort, Adobe Walls, became symbolic of the struggles between hunters and the Comanche.
20) Hot iron
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In the early days of the Texas panhandle, starting a new life is hard--but keeping it is even harder.
Espy Norwood is a troubleshooter who's got troubles of his own--and more troubles find him when he lands a job on a ranch on the Texas plains. Bitter landowners plot against him, determined cattle thieves sneak right under his nose, and his own son refuses to trust or even know him. Can he catch the thieves, save the ranch, and win his son's love?...
