Best of
Western

1988

Dances with Wolves


Michael Blake - 1988
    Thievery and survival soon forced him into the Indian camp, where he began a dangerous adventure that changed his life forever. Relive the adventure and beauty of the incredible movie, Dances with Wolves.

Passage West


Ruth Ryan Langan - 1988
    With her sister and hard-drinking father in tow, she needed all her strength for the long trek westward. But Abby could hold her own with any man, until she met a rugged gunman named Rourke...a man who roused the unspoken yearnings of her passionate soul.Rourke was a battle-scarred Union veteran, hired to guard the wagon train. A loner by choice and by fate, his heart was moved by Abby's plight--though the young beauty proudly refused his aid. Yet with the wagons rolling on through dusty plains and treacherous deserts, a tenderness bloomed between them as he taught her how to survive in a brutal land. Mile by mile, she grew to adore this magnificent man, and when he touched her she longed to be his alone. But as she tasted rapture's first, wild depths, she faced a bitter secret from the gunman's violent past. With Rourke in mortal danger, they would challenge destiny itself--to save the love and happiness they discovered on a perilous...Passage West...

Blood Valley


William W. Johnstone - 1988
    Reissue.

Guns of Apache Springs


John Legg - 1988
    Until he meets the beautiful prostitute Addie Heller. But Guthrie can’t avoid trouble, not with his background. Tensions mount as a corrupt mayor and his gun-totin’ henchmen aim to take over the town, including the fancy bordello owned by friendly, helpful Ma Snow, and Guthrie is called on to use his skills. But just as Guthrie is making headway in calming the town, the past returns in the form of Luke Taggart. And the violence explodes as Guthrie faces off with Taggart and his vicious gun pals.

Frontier Woman


Joan Johnston - 1988
    Introducing the unforgettable Creed dynasty, transporting us back to a wild, lawless frontier, Frontier Woman brings us a stirring, passionate story of Texas Ranger Jarrett Creed and the free-spirited beauty who captures his heart ... a woman sworn to love no man....Captured by Comanches as a boy, Jarrett Creed grew to manhood torn between two worlds. But with the young republic under siege from ravaging Mexican armies and marauding Indian tribes alike, he made his choice. Now, as a secret government mission brings the Texas Ranger to lovely Cricket Stewart’s door, he must choose again.The youngest daughter of a wealthy gentleman planter, Cricket lives life as she pleases and vows never to be a wife to any man. Until the day Jarrett Creed saves her from avenging Comanches ... by claiming her as his bride.The last thing either expects is to fall in love. But as a traitorous conspiracy and a secret tragedy test their newfound union, a wild-spirited beauty and a Texas lawman will discover just how far they will go for their precious homeland ... and for a love that could free them from the sorrows of the past....

The Witch of Goingsnake: And Other Stories


Robert J. Conley - 1988
    Several stories, including the one from which the collection takes its name, deal with the spiritual world. In the title story a man and his family are devastated by the evil powers of a tsigli, a witch. In other stories "medicine" is used to more constructive ends. Some of the stories feature human-animal transformations, the ability to become invisible, and the power to manipulate events. In the context of the Cherokee world such stories are not fantasies. They are stories about reality—the reality known to Cherokees.The collection also includes tales of Cherokee "outlaws," one of the most intriguing aspects of Cherokee history to Cherokees and non-Cherokees alike. Set in the days of Indian Territory, before Oklahoma statehood, these stories provide a taste of the wild West, seasoned with Cherokee cultural experience.Still other stories describe modern-day Cherokees confronting the past and the present and continually struggling to find a place in the white people's world while maintaining a Cherokee belief system and way of life. Some Cherokees confront ignorant whites, others confront ignorant Cherokees, and still others simply make their own way, dealing with each other, with outsiders, with their environment, and with their spirituality in uniquely personal, albeit Cherokee, ways.Clearly, these stories differ from stories that grow out of a European tradition, for behind them lie completely different cultural referents; different notions about interpreting events, time, and language; and a different view of the purpose and art of storytelling. Their author speaks with a clear Cherokee Indian voice to show how these cultural characteristics have survived centuries of abrupt change and to give readers an understanding of the fullness and humanity of the Cherokees as a people.As Wilma P. Mankiller, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, says in her foreword to the stories: "Much has been written about the Cherokee people. Not enough has been written by the Cherokee people. The subtle nuances of language, the memories of tribal life, and the strong sense of the past and its integration with the present are lost even to the most gifted non-Cherokee writer. There is a movement among contemporary Cherokee writers to produce more indigenous literature. Robert Conley is a leader of that movement."

All the Western Stars


Philip Lee Williams - 1988
    A story of two men chasing a hurrying sundown. Jake Baker, a seventy-three-year-old former construction worker who walked the high steel, suddenly finds himself ill and relegated to an old folks' home by his insensitive niece. There he regains his health and meets Lucas Kraft, the shell of a famous novelist, a former National Book Award winner who is searching for the remnants of his talent and his life. Two men from vastly different backgrounds with a commonbond-they're both on the run. Running from their pasts, from their mortality, from the fear of dying unfulfilled. Jake and Lucas break out of the nursing home and head west. Like children, they want to be cowboys; like old men, they want to experience life, raw and thrilling, once more while they can. Lucas wants to find a range ware where he can prove his manhood: "I will become part of legend, and they will write songs about me, how I rode in from the East and became one of them so fast, how I helped rid them of the civil robber barons from town." Jake wants proof that he's still emotionally alive, and he finds it in the comforting arms of Betty Silver, a good-natured, foul-mouthed woman who is searching for her estranged daughter. As broad as the western sky. As warm as a Texas summer night. ALL THE WESTERN STARS, the beguiling second novel from Philip Lee Williams, will hold you as surely as barbed wire, as gently as a hug.