To save his hometown, Civil War veteran Dick Hodson must lead a desperate cattle drive---with a trail party made up of raw, greenhorn children.

Link Bonner never wanted to gain a reputation as a fast hand with a six-gun and the will to use it. But sometimes circumstances drive the lives of men even beyond their own desires. Bonner was such a man, always in the middle of trouble he was not looking for. It took a woman to change Bonner and losing her made life and death of little consequence to him. But the man he was also changed the West for the better. Without his kind, many more innocent people would have died. To the end he fought for what he thought right, down to the last bullet.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have given up robbing banks and trains and are now ranch owners, and are waiting to hear from the Governor of Wyoming about a possible pardon. While in Buffalo, Wyoming, to buy supplies, they have an unfortunate encounter with Luther Greeley, an outlaw from a rival gang based at Hole-in-the-Wall, during which Sundance is badly wounded. Butch takes him to the nearby home of a friend to recover. As a worried Butch watches over his injured partner, he thinks back to their first meeting and to the events that led up to their partnership. It all began in the town of Green River, Wyoming, and a chance meeting between them when they were young, then using their names Leroy and Lonzo....

The Real Western Canon

Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.

Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination -- one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex.

Contributors
Wallace Stegner * Dave Hickey * Dao Strom * Dagoberto Gilb * William Hauptman * Jack Kerouac * Ron Hansen * Diana Ossana * Robert Boswell * Tom McGuane Louise Erdrich * Max Apple * Mark Jude Poirier * Rick Bass * Jon Billman * Richard Ford * Raymond Carver * Annie Proulx * Leslie Marmon Silko * William H. Gass

Sam Heggarty returns home to hunt for the gunmen who robbed and executed his father. As he makes his way back, he witnesses another murder and stumbles across a clue to the people responsible for his father's death. Sam becomes caught up in the chase to track down an escaped prisoner as he partners up with ageing lawman, County Sheriff Lewis Leeming. He discovers that the one person who may hold the key to the identity of his father's murderers is someone that everyone else is intent on killing. Heggarty will have to save the life of a man involved in his father's death.

Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. All they do know is that they opted into the programme and that if they try to leave, they will end up dead.For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her - and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway, it's simmering with violence and deception, heartbreak and betrayal, and it's fit to burst.

When Sheriff Cornelius Doyle is killed, his estranged son Kane sets out to find the culprit, hoping to reconcile with a family that doesn't want to know him - but he soon discovers that his father's apparently honourable life was a lie. The sheriff had become a legend when he killed the notorious outlaw Jesse Sawyer, but Kane discovers that the facts are at odds with the legend, as Jesse is still alive. With the sheriff's murder apparently being connected to the events of ten years ago, Kane hopes that Jesse can lead him to the killer. Instead he uncovers a dark secret that will not only put his life in peril, but could make it impossible for his family to ever accept him.

La Frontera Publishing presents Broken Promises, its latest collection of thirteen fictional short stories and one novella about the Wild West from America's newest Western writers, authors who may become tomorrow's legends of Western literature.

The West was built on a handshake and a promise. But sometimes those promises were broken, and the consequences could be fearful. Whether it was the nation's broken promises to tribal leaders or a vow to revenge a wounded heart, the price would have to be paid in blood and tears.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters-losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

The Navajo called them the Anasazi: an enigmatic race of southwestern cliff dwellers. For centuries, the sudden disappearance of this proud and noble people has baffled historians. Summoned to a dark desert plateau by a desperate letter form an old friend, renowned investigator Mike Raglan is drawn into a world of mystery, violence, and explosive revaltion. Crossing the border beyond the laws of man and nature, he will learn the astonishing legacy of the Anasazi -- but not without a price. Set in the contemporary Southwest, "The Haunted Mesa" draws on Louis L'Amour's extensive knowledge of Indian lore and mysticism. In this extraordinary book L'Amour tells a tale of epic adventure that takes his readers across the most extraordinary frontier they have ever encountered.

With her sassy humor and sexy cowboys, USA Today bestseller Carolyn Brown launches her new Longhorn Canyon series. Every summer Cade Maguire looks forward to opening his Longhorn Canyon Ranch to underprivileged city kids. But this year, he's having no luck finding a counselor for the children--until Retta Palmer walks through his door. Flat broke after selling everything she owns to pay for her father's medical bills, Retta is thrilled to hear of an opening for a counselor position. She's not as thrilled about the ranching part, or the sexy cowboy with beautiful blue eyes who's her new boss. After being left at the altar two years before by his fiancee, Cade isn't sure he can take another heartbreak. And Retta isn't even sure she wants to stay. But the sparks between them are absolutely undeniable. And with a couple of lovable kids and two elderly folks playing matchmaker, Cade and Retta may find that the best way to heal is with each other.