1864 Poker Deck
Reproduction of a Civil War era poker deck with full-length, single-ended court figures... Click on title to view more info & larger picture.
"...Hot Biscuits, a serious book with a funny (but significant) title, is every bit as revolutionary and literary as [Owen] Wister's [The Virginian]. It is the first fresh approach to the Western in memory."Dale Walker, Former director of the Texas Western University Press and author of numerous books on the West, including the recent Pacific Destiny.
HOT BISCUITS
Eighteen Stories by Women and Men of the Ranching West
edited by Max Evans and Candy Moulton
or more than twenty years Max Evans has been trying to assemble a book of stories by working cowboysmen who were ranch hands with at least five years of paid experience and women who had either been raised on ranches or joined their husbands on a double hire-out for five years or more. With the expert help of Candy Moulton he has succeeded in collecting eighteen stories set in the Ranching West after 1920 that meet his inflexible requirements: experience plus imagination plus innate writing ability.
As Evans notes in his introduction, subdivisions, condos, and ranchettes are shrinking the Ranching West every day: "Some of those who once lived it, and those few who are so agonizingly still working it with bloodied souls, must put it down on paper. . . . If we fail to act with immediacy the truth will continue to dissipate. . . with frightening rapidity."
The stories in this anthology range as wide as the Rockies, from a murder mystery to the tale of a unique horse trainer, to a family's desperate battle against a grass and forest fire to the story of a world famous violinist. But they share a common denominator: biscuits. Almost every story includes hot biscuits as a feature of daily life in the Ranching West. Biscuits, it turns out, are more important in western life than guns and maybe more than coffee. In the West, people who could make superior biscuits received more respect than the mayor and the police chief combined.
WESTWARD:
A Fictional History of the American West
28 Original Stories Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Western Writers of America
Edited by Dale L. Walker
The American West. Just as America attracted millions to her shores by building upon a foundation of freedom, democracy, and a new start, the lands beyond the Mississippi would also attract people from all over the world with visions of opportunity and wide open spaces and provide America with legends and myths that have yet to die.
In Westward, the history of the Old American West unfolds in twenty-eight original stories written especially for this unique collection that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Western Writers of America. Featuring stories handpicked by four-time Spur Award-winning author Dale L. Walker, Westward is a time capsule of the Old American West, from the first horse ever seen by a North American Indian to a man who escaped from the Alamo, from the massacre at Mountain Meadows to Libbie Custer's great secret, from the Apache wars to the California gold rush. And such luminaries of the West as Crazy Horse, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, King Fisher, Doc Holliday, Belle Starr, John Wesley Hardin, and the one black man to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition are brought to life in these colorful and dramatic tales.
Here, the ghosts of the Old West, some already there, others lured to that vast and trackless land of the setting sun, will talk to you in this volume of short stories to be treasured.
White Hats
by Robert J. Randisi
Buffalo Bill Cody, Bat Masterson, and other legendary heroic figures of America's Old West get the royal treatment in 16 stories from esteemed Western authors.
The Portable Western Reader
by William Kittredge
A Century of Great Western Stories
by John Jakes (Editor). Hardcover
The Collected Stories of Max Brand
by Max Brand, Hardcover centennial edition
Max Brand, whose real name was Frederick Schiller Faust, was one of the most prolific writers of the pulp-fiction era. He is best known for his western novels, but as Brand (he also used more than 20 other pseudonyms), he produced almost 900 short stories. These 18 selections represent his nonwestern work--with a couple of exceptions--and showcase Faust's "serious" fiction. Of particular interest is "A Special Occasion," which features an autobiographical central character who shares with Faust a failing marriage, a clinging mistress, a drinking problem, and serious doubts about his profession. Also of interest is "Interns Can't Take Money," which marks the debut of young doctor Jimmy Kildare, perhaps Faust's most well-known character. Strangely enough, it's not the medical soap opera one might expect. Rather, it's a surprisingly good hard-boiled tale of hoods, blackmail, and ethical choices. Each entry is preceded by a detailed description of the story and its context within Faust's career. The Brand name will generate interest, and the overall quality of the stories will please even those readers who were expecting chaps and six-guns.-- Midwest Book Review
The Fatal Frontier
by Ed Gorman, et al. Mass Market Paperback
Legend
by Loren D. Estleman, et al. Mass Market Paperback
Legends and Tales of the American West
by Richard Erdoes (Editor). Paperback
Still Wild :
Short Fiction of the American West : 1950 to Present
by Larry McMurtry (Editor). Hardcover
Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, from Richard Ford, William H. Gass, and Raymond Carver to Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Annie Proulx, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken together, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. Instead of the oft-anthologized adventures of Zane Grey, readers of Still Wild will encounter Jack Kerouac's extended love letter to Los Angeles, in "The Mexican Girl," and Wallace Stegner's haunting "Buglesong," with its disturbing evocation of the cruelty lurking beneath the West's beautiful landscape.
The tales featured 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. And indeed, Still Wild demonstrates all of these qualities.
Stories of the Old West :
Tales of the Mining Camp, Cavalry Troop, & Cattle Ranch
by John Seelye (Editor). Paperback
This collection of stories portrays an Old West that is both fact and fiction. The fifty narratives are written by some of America's finest writers, including Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Jack London, Mary Austin, Ambrose Bierce, Owen Wister, Frederic Remington, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, O. Henry, and Stewart Edward White. The reader will delight in comic tales about California charlatans, prostitutes with hearts of gold, tough, taciturn, and honorable cowboys, and heroic cavalrymen. There are razor-sharp stories of settlers struggling to survive in an unforgiving and unknown land and accounts with a rare understanding of the cultures of the American Indian.
The Western Hall of Fame Anthology
Stories by Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, Elmer Kelton,
Jack London, Loren D. Estleman, and others
by Dale L. Walker (Editor), et al. Mass Market Paperback
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WESTWARD:
White Hats
The Portable Western Reader
A Century of Great Western Stories
The Fatal Frontier
Legend
Legends and Tales of the American West
Still Wild :
Stories of the Old West :
The Western Hall of Fame Anthology