Classic Western Literature

A raging flood in Missouri took the lives of a married couple who barely got their three-year-old son into a cradle that carried him downstream. The parents were drowned. A kind rancher managed to pull the makeshift device to shore and wound up calling the boy Dave and raising the youngster to manhood without a known family name. The savior didn’t officially adopt the boy but they behaved as a loving father and son in adult life. A scoundrel family discovered the truth and labeled the young man a “nameless nobody.”

In O Pioneers, we meet the Bergsons, a family of farmers in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska who have emigrated to America from Sweden. When the family patriarch dies, the running of the farm falls to the eldest daughter, Alexandra, who struggles to make the farm viable and provide for the family. Eventually, the focus turns to the romantic entanglements of Alexandra and her brother as well as touching upon the enormous difficulties of running a farm at the turn of the last century.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and widely considered to be Edna Ferber’s greatest achievement, So Big is a classic novel of turn-of-the-century Chicago. So Big is the unforgettable story of the indomitable Selina Peake DeJong and her struggles to stay afloat and maintain her dignity in the face of a challenging marriage, widowhood, and single parenthood.

So manchem Karl-May-Leser wird die Geschichte vertraut vorkommen und doch wieder nicht. May arbeitete seinen ersten großen Wildwest-Roman (noch vor dem "Schatz im Silbersee" geschrieben) mit deutlichen Veränderungen in den zweiten Teil seines "Winnetou" ein. Die unverfälschte Urfassung galt lange Zeit als verschollen und ist an vielen Stellen logischer und ausführlicher als die endgültige Buchversion.

Nophai, an extremely intelligent and talented "Indian with the mind of a white man" attempts to reacclimate into the world he left 18 years earlier. A task made more difficult by the fact he and a white woman have fallen in love. Corrupt missionaries and Indian agents only add to his conflict.

Young Texas Ranger Russ Sittell is undercover searching for the head of a gang of rustlers - working with his ranger mentor and idol, Vaughn Steele. Staying undercover is difficult. Both rangers have difficulty staying focused while falling in love - can they uncover the criminals and keep love in its rightful place? Zane Grey tells the story in The Rustlers of Pecos County.

Willis Lander was once the T-Bar ranch's best bronc buster. Then came the day when a stallion as black as pitch and as mean as a rattler shattered his knee. Unable to perform the duties required of a cowboy, Willis took the only job he felt capable of handling - minding the line shack 40 miles from the ranch - and secluded himself from the pity of his peers in the Wyoming wilderness. Now, the T-Bar is being sold, leaving Willis to wonder whether the new owner will want to keep a broken bronc buster on the payroll.

Duster Dorword's first cattle drive is almost the death of him. Will he survive the harsh trail life, Mexican bandits, and a kidnapping? Rescue comes from the most unlikely place - but will it come in time?

The Wilcox and Son Detective Agency is working on its second case file, but Matthew and his son Chance are beginning to think they might have bit off more than they can chew. Their investigation into a series of claim-jumps near the booming mining community of Wallace, Idaho, suddenly turns deadly as one witness after another turns up dead. It turns out that the theft of land and mineral rights is only the beginning of a much deeper conspiracy. Matthew and Chance follow the leads as best they can, knowing full well that their investigation has turned into a game of cat and mouse.

In this third book in the Dead Man series, Marshal Matthew Wilcox heads out alone to find and capture one of the worst villains he will ever face. Heartsick, he traces a convoluted trail of murder, mayhem, and deceit...from the high gates of the Walla Walla State Penitentiary to Seattle and on into Billings, Montana. Although Matthew feels that he must bear the burden of a "deadman’s revenge" by himself, he will find help and succor in his travels from his friends, Sheriff Roy Smithers, Deputy Dicky McNulty, Calamity Jane, Liver Eating Johnson...and his son, Chance.

A tired old lawyer with a secret past and the young protégé that he rescued from a wagon train attack that killed his parents and left him an orphan are warriors in the tough town of Tombstone. Warriors of the code.... They are equally adept with the Commentaries of Law, a book by William Blackstone...and the revolver, a pistol by Samuel Colt.

The year is 1807. Josh and Gabe Dent are two brothers living on the far frontier of a young America. Their lives are jolted when their parents are brutally murdered by a gang of thieves. The two frontiersmen ride to hunt down the killers. The trail of vengeance is not an easy one. In the years that follow, Josh and Gabe find themselves answering the call of the West. But as bountiful as it is, the land is fraught with danger and bloodshed.

A classic work of Texas fiction from M.E.M. Davis, Under the Man-Fig was first published in1895. Part romance, part satire, and part realism, this entertaining novel takes place in the fictional town of Thornham on the Texas Gulf Coast. Under the sprawling branches of the ancient man-fig tree in the town square, all the male gossips of Thornham sit around and spin their colorful yarns - and in so doing, unwittingly weave a folk history of the Old South. This important work resounds with a reading from narrator Sally Darling.

From the master of the western comes a tale of love tested by the rugged life of the American Southwest. Glenn Kilbourne returned from World War I a changed man. Suffering from shell shock and disillusioned by what he witnessed, he can no longer stomach his high-flying former life in New York City. In the canyons of Arizona he finds a kind of peace with himself, and has no desire to go back to his old life. Where does this leave his glamorous fiancé Carley?

When a man known only as The Deacon set up camp outside Rookwood, a murder of crows took to unnatural, moonlit flight. The crows came to Rookwood; trouble soon to follow. Things were already strange in that God-forsaken town, but no one could have predicted the forces and fates about to meet in a dust-bowl clearing in the desert. A Preacher. A Demon. An Angel. A Gunslinger.

Young Bradon McTavish watches the bluecoats brutally hang his father and destroy everything he's known, and he escapes their wrath into the gun smoke and blood of war. Captured and paroled, only if he'll head west of the war, he rides the river into the wilds of the new territory of Montana where savages and grizzlies await. He discovers new friends and old enemies, and a woman formerly forbidden to him.

Jack Hare is a young New Englander who has decided to travel to the West. He is rescued from sure death in the Utah desert by an old settler named August Naab, a Mormon patriarch. Jack is taken to Nabb's ranch and learns that it can be a dangerous place, since it is challenged by cattle thieves and a corrupt rancher who is after Naab's water rights. The greatest danger Hare faces, though, is over Mescal, a half-Navajo shepherdess with whom he falls in love.

A mountain man can survive anything, even a cold day in hell. Nathaniel Squire is a giant of a man, and the only one Col. Leander Melton thought could lead his pack of greenhorn would-be trappers into the mountains. And deep in Blackfoot territory, Squire must teach the youths to face the ways of survival, the rage of the Blackfeet, the cunning of a traitor - and what it means to be a mountain man.

Der junge Bloody Fox wuchs als Waisenkind am Rande des Llano Estacado auf. Seine ganze Familie fiel den Stakemen, den Räubern der texanischen Wüste, zum Opfer. Immer wieder treibt der Wunsch nach Rache ihn hinaus in den Llano, wo ein geisterhafter Reiter umgeht, der ein treffsicheres Gewehr in Händen hat. Und dann ist da auch noch die geheimnisumwitterte Oase im Kaktuswald.

Winnetou und Old Shatterhand kämpfen gemeinsam mit dem jungen Martin Baumann gegen den grausamen Häuptling Hong-Peh-Te-Keh vom Stamm der Sioux-Indianer: Gelingt es ihnen, Martins Vater, den alten Bärenjäger, vor dem sicheren Martertod zu retten? Der Sohn des Bärenjägers stammt aus dem Hörbuch Unter Geiern (Band 35 der Gesammelten Werke).