Elmer Kelton
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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...
2) Stand proud
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Frank Claymore is not easy to like -- to admire, maybe, but not to like. He is cantankerous, stubborn, and intolerant -- the very qualities that make him a success as an open-range cattleman on the West Texas frontier. In one of his most memorable novels, acclaimed Western writer Elmer Kelton follows Frank Claymore's life from the time of the Civil War to the dawn of the 20th century -- through marriage, births, deaths, and a creeping change in the...
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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 assigned to the wrong marshal, a "hanging judge" who is as famous for his ruthlessness as he is for his commitment to justice. When Justin's boss hangs a controversial criminal, Justin must defend himself against an army of friends and relatives, desperate for revenge.
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Elmer Kelton writes of his beloved home country of West Texas in these two novels of cowmen and cow country. In Pecos Crossing, two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, have been cheated of six months' hard-earned salary by their rancher boss Larramore and intend getting what is due to them. In Shotgun, Texas rancher Blair Bishop has to contend with a rival cowman who is turning his herd loose on Bishop's land, and with a mean customer...
5) Bitter trail
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Teamster Frio Wheeler's efforts to haul cotton from Texas to Mexico in the midst of the Civil War are hindered by dangerous weather conditions, violence, and betrayal.
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In the cattle drives of the Old West, pumpkin rollers were green farm boys, almost more trouble than they were worth.
When Trey McLean leaves his family's East Texas cotton farm and sets off on his own to learn the cattleman's trade, he's about as green as they come. But, Trey learns fast. He learns about deceit when a con man cheats him out of his grubstake and about love when he meets the woman he's destined to marry.
And, when luck finally sets...
10) Six bits a day
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When his brother, Walter, decides he wants to settle down with a girl he just met and become a farmer, fun-loving Hewey Calloway saves him from this "fate worse than death" by getting them both hired on a cattle drive, taking them into the exciting world of cattle barons, rival cowboy gangs, and rustling.
12) Many a river
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Relocating to western Texas with their sharecropper parents in the mid-nineteenth century, Jeffrey and Todd Barfield are separated by a Comanche attack that leaves their parents dead, and are reunited years later on opposing sides in the Civil War.
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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...
15) Barbed wire
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"Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red-painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land-hungry thugs. This fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school, open-range baron of the huge R Cross spread. Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Monahan--and neither side takes...
16) Shadow of a star
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Deputy Sheriff Jim-Bob McClain isn't sure he's ready to follow in his father's footsteps as the law in Coolridge County. In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But with tough Sheriff Mont Naylor to back him up he figures he can handle whatever comes his way. Jim-Bob's first real assignment is no piece of cake. He must escort a ruthless outlaw into the hands of justice. All seems well with the lawless...
17) Dark thicket
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A wounded Confederate soldier returns home to find the state of Texas bitterly divided by the Civil War.
19) Buffalo wagons
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Buffalo hunter Gage Jameson ventures into Comanche territory in search of the last great herd, despite the dangers awaiting him.
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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,...