Larry McMurtry

Returning home to recover from a near-fatal heart attack, Duane discovers that he has a new neighbor: the statuesque K. K. Slater, a quirky billionairess who's come to Thalia to open the Rhino Ranch, dedicated to the preservation of the endangered black rhinoceros. Despite their obvious differences, Duane can't help but find himself charmed by K.K.'s stubborn toughness and lively spirit, and the two embark on a flirtation that rapidly veers toward the sexual -- but the return of Honor Carmichael complicates Duane's romantic intentions considerably.

A collection of short stories about survival, hope and courage on the American Frontier. From the haunting story of the night Billy the Kid died, to the dramatic account of a breathtaking horse race.

Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle.

A history of the bloody massacres that marked--and marred--the settling of the American West in the nineteenth century, and which still provoke immense controversy today. Here are the true stories of the massacres at Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded Knee, among others. These massacres involved Americans killing Indians, Indians killing Americans, and, in one case, Mormons slaughtering a party of settlers. McMurtry's descriptions recall their full horror, and the deep, constant apprehension and dread endured by both pioneers and Indians. By modern standards the death tolls were small--Little Big Horn in 1876 was the only encounter to involve more than 200 dead--yet in the thinly populated West of that time, the violent extinction of a hundred people had a colossal impact. At the sites today, the taint is still powerful enough to affect locals who happen to live nearby.--From publisher description.

In this dual biography, McMurtry explores the lives, the legends, and above all the truth about two larger-than-life American figures. With his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill Cody helped invent the image of the West that still exists today--cowboys and Indians, rodeo, rough rides, sheriffs and outlaws, trick shooting, Stetsons, and buck-skin. His most celebrated protégée, the short, slight Annie Oakley--born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio--spent sixteen years with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, where she entertained Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm II, among others. Beloved by all who knew her, Oakley became a legend in her own right, and after her death achieved a new lease of fame in the musical Annie, Get Your Gun. They were cultural icons, setting the path for all that followed.--From publisher description.

"As this finale opens, Tasmin and her family are under irksome, though comfortable, arrest in Mexican Santa Fe. Her father, the eccentric Lord Berrybender, is planning to head for Texas with his whole family and his retainers, English, American and Native American. Tasmin, who would once have followed her husband, Jim Snow, anywhere, is no longer even sure she likes him, or knows where to go next. Neither does anyone else - even Captain Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, is puzzled by the great changes sweeping over the West, replacing red men and buffalo with towns and farms." "In the meantime Jim Snow, accompanied by Kit Carson, journeys to New Orleans, where he meets up with a muscular black giant named Juppy, who turns out to be one of Lord Berrybender's many illegitimate offspring, and in whose company they make their way back to Santa Fe. But even they are unable to prevent the Mexicans from carrying the Berrybender family on a long and terrible journey across the desert to Vera Cruz." "Starving, dying of thirst, and in constant, bloody battle with slavers pursuing them, the Berrybenders finally make their way to civilization - if New Oreleans of the time can be called that - where Jim Snow has to choose between Tasmin and the great American plains, on which he has lived all this life in freedom, and where, after all her adventures, Tasmin must finally decide where her future lies."--BOOK JACKET.

Anticipating the onset of her later years, Maggie leaves behind her manipulative daughters and psychoanalyst lover to accompany her best friend, Connie, for one final fling, but a series of misadventures prompts their desperate, gun-toting journey to a Texas ranch.

Continuing up the Missouri River with her wealthy English clan, Tasmin Berrybender, on the verge of motherhood and living with elusive Native American Jim Snow, witnesses her father's deterioration in the wake of her family's rise in power.

Raising her young son, Monty, Tasmin Berrybender hopes to turn him into an English gentleman despite his life on the trail toward Santa Fe, an endeavor that is compromised by painful occurrences in the lives of Tasmin's husband and father.

A companion volume to the film about the intimate relationship between two cowboys that spans many years and frequent separations includes the original story, the complete screenplay, and two essays on how the story was translated into film.

"It is 1830, and the Berrybender family, rich, aristocratic, English, and fiercely out of place, is on its way up the Missouri River to see the American West as it begins to open up." "Accompanied by a large and varied collection of retainers, Lord and Lady Berrybender have abandoned their palatial home in England to explore the frontier and to broaden the horizons of their children, who include Tasmin, a budding young woman of grit, beauty, and determination, her vivacious and difficult sister, and her brother."--BOOK JACKET.

In the Missouri town of Boone's Lick, a colorful cast of characters stands on the edge of the Western frontier ready to push west to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.

"In Still Wild, Larry McMurty celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the "coming of age" of the American frontier." "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."--BOOK JACKET.

"In a work of nonfiction - as close to an autobiography as his readers are likely to get - Larry McMurtry has written a family portrait that also serves as a larger portrait of Texas itself, as it was, and as it has become."--BOOK JACKET. "Using as a springboard an essay by the German literary critic Walter Benjamin that he first read in Archer City's Dairy Queen, McMurtry examines the small-town way of life that big oil and big ranching have nearly destroyed. He praises the virtues of everything from a lime Dr Pepper and the lost art of oral storytelling to the perfect piece of pie, and describes the brutal effect of the sheer vastness and emptiness of the Texas landscape on Texans, the decline of the cowboy, the significance of small-town rodeos (and rodeo queens), the reality and the myth of the frontier."--BOOK JACKET. "McMurtry writes frankly and with deep feeling about his own experiences as a writer, a parent, a heart patient, and he deftly lays bare the raw material that helped shape his life's work: the creation of a vast, ambitious, fictional panorama of Texas in the past and the present."--BOOK JACKET.

A comedy on a man's belated mid-life crisis at the age of 62. It strikes Texas oil tycoon Duane Moore and not even his wife of 40 years can figure out what caused it. That task is left to a pretty psychiatrist. By the author of The Last Picture Show.

Zeke and Ned is the story of Ezekiel Proctor and Ned Christie, the last Cherokee warriors -- two proud, passionate men whose remarkable quest to carve a future out of Indian Territory east of the Arkansas River after the Civil War is not only history but legend

The island couldn't be more charming with its stretches of white beaches, crystalline lagoons, and exotic bikini-clad beauties. But with three dead bodies and a voodoo priest, I had a hard time concentrating on sightseeing. It seemed superstitious to me, since nobody could solve the puzzling cause of their deaths. So with the assistance of my own lovely native doll, I had my work cut out for me-and that was simply managing to evade the long voodoo needle that was destined for my heart!

Harmony is the optimistic, resilient Las Vegas ex-showgirl who returns from work at a Las Vegas recycling plant one day to discover that her beautiful, beloved daughter, Pepper, has died of AIDS. In an effort to right herself and come to grips with her loss, Harmony leaves for New York City with her five-year-old son Eddie and her two quarrelsome sisters, Neddie and Pat, to seek out Pepper's girlfriend - and to find a way to understand and accept Pepper's death. At once an odyssey sending its characters on a journey across America - from Las Vegas to New York, to the White House, to rural Oklahoma - and a story of loss and recovery, The Late Child is McMurtry at his best. Along the way, we meet a host of engaging characters: a teenage hooker and her boyfriend, Sonny Le Song; Omar, Abdul and Salah, three Indian taxi entrepreneurs; and a dog named Iggy, who becomes a national celebrity and gets to meet the President of the United States. The eccentricities of these people are dwarfed by Harmony's family when Harmony, Eddie and Iggy make it to the Oklahoma panhandle. Having come to understand that hers are not the only human expectations to fail and that there is hope for the future, if only in the next generation, Harmony finally arrives home.