Max Brand
Author
Summary
The fifty empty freights danced and rolled and rattled on the rough roadbed and filled Jericho Pass with thunder, the big engine was laboring and grunting at the grade, but five cars back the noise of the locomotive was lost. Yet there is a way to talk above the noise of a freight train just as there is a way to whistle into the teeth of a stiff wind. This freight-car talk is pitched just above the ordinary tone-it is an overtone of conversation,...
2) Trailin'
Author
Summary
Twists and turns abound as a man with no prior wilderness experience tracks the cold, calculating killer of his father across the open plains and mountains of the Wild West.
Author
Series
Summary
Max Brand's first novel and one of the first in the genre of Westerns along with Zane Gray. Has everything a Western needs: a unbeatable stallion, other horses, a semi-tamed wolf, a young lady "purtier than any filly", unbounded plains, hills, and mountains, untamed skies and weather, and of course--desperados. (Goodreads)
4) The untamed
Author
Lexile Measure
820L
Summary
With uncanny abilities, Whistlin' Dan Berry keeps the toughest of situations under control. The protagonist of Brand's first western novel was radically different from earlier, more realistic characters. In 'The Untamed', readers are introduced to the modern conception of the west as a violent world of fairy tale.
Author
Series
Summary
The Great West, prior to the century's turn, abounded in legend. Stories were told of fabled gunmen, whose bullets always magically found their mark, of mighty stallions, whose tireless gallop rivaled the speed of the wind, of glorious women, whose beauty stunned mind and heart. But, nowhere in the vast spread of the mountain-desert country was there a greater legend told than the story of Red Pierre and the phantom gunfighter, McGurk.
These two...
Author
Summary
Follows the tracks of young Lew Dorset as he searches for his father, from pre-Civil War Virginia to the prairies of the West. Lew battles the Cheyenne, and shelters with the Sioux, absorbing their culture while his friend Chuck Morris marries an Indian woman. When Lew later tries to reconcile Chuck with his abandoned wife and son, he falls into great danger.
8) Alcatraz
Author
Series
Summary
A horse who had been bred to race escapes his masters home and gets used to freedom, but at a terrible price. Can he survive those who are trying to hunt him down? Nothing proves straightforward as the hunt closes in.
9) Black Jack
Author
Summary
After an outlaw is killed, his baby son is adopted by his lover. What will become of this boy? Brand keeps the reader in suspense as this classic tale of good versus evil, in the same person, unfolds.
Author
Summary
"Doc Willis, despite the nickname, is just an unemployed cowboy in The Valley of Jewels. Daggett Valley holds many secrets from the past, including a now deserted mining camp. It is there that Buck Logan lures Willis with the promise of great riches to be gained. What Doc doesn't even suspect is that he is to play a part in a most subtle feat of deception in which an old man, William Daggett, will be conned into believing that he is reliving his past....
Author
Summary
Though young, he'd built a far-reaching bad reputation. Denver knew him as the Doctor; Texans called him Montana; Idahoans called him Texas. But when he gets arrested for vagrancy, he tells the sheriff he is Alfred Lamb. Will it stick when a rancher needs his help to battle cattle rustlers?
Author
Summary
Published in 1919, this tells the story of Andrew/Andy, raised by his uncle to shoot and ride horses. Andrew is content with living a quiet life in a Western town, until a bully picks a fight. Andy knocks him out, and the guy hits his head on a rock. Andy goes on the run, thinking he's a murderer and subconsciously gravitating towards the lawless sector. (Goodreads)
Author
Summary
Peter Dunstan is a big rancher who wants to become bigger, to control more land. So when he buys Dr. Henry Morgan's ranchland that has been unsuccessfully converted to farming, it is his intention to return it to open range. The only stipulation the doctor makes is that Dunstan must retain Sandy Sweyn, who has more or less been Dr. Morgan's ward. Though the man is of age, he is generally considered a half-wit, even by the doctor. Still, Sandy has...
Author
Summary
The exciting tale of a young gambler, a horse, and the bond that will change the both of them forever.
Hoping to make a man out of him, Alfred Larribee's father sends his son to live with his cousin's family out West. Alfred is lazy and listless, and spends his early days there drinking, gambling, and doing everything he can to avoid his share of work.
Everything changes with the appearance of Sky Blue, a magnificent stallion that seemingly can't...
Author
Summary
"Tom Fuller, a scrupulously honest fellow, a person of extraordinary physical strength and owner of a savage horse, Rusty, that he alone was able to tame, is generally regarded as a half-wit. He has been summarily fired from every job he has ever had and even comes to regard himself as a failure. He makes one more try when he is hired on as a blacksmith's assistant by Boston Charlie. Finally here is a job that Tom can perform successfully, and his...
19) Old Carver Ranch
Author
Summary
After ten years of wandering, during which he has lived the life of a gambler and learned the ways of devious men, Tom Keene returns home, only to find his father alone and dying. Old John Keene's sole legacy to his son is a Bible. With his father's passing, Tom Keene renounces his selfish, worthless past and sets out to try to each others that the greatest happiness is born of trust in one another. Tom even gets a chance to demonstrate his new way...
Author
Summary
Al is a fiddle foot. In fact, he has been riding the rails, and when he jumps off from the blind baggage of a passenger train just before it passes the railroad yards outside Jumping Creek, two railroad detectives use fists to subdue him before putting him in Sheriff Timothy Drayton's jail. Paradise Al looks like a Pendleton, the powerful local clan that is feuding with the Draytons. That resemblance, with a little help from Al, is enough to get him...