Abe Lincoln had never set his sights on becoming president; after all, he'd grown up in a log cabin on the frontier and had hardly any formal schooling. But as the question of slavery threatened to destroy the United Sates, this self-taught lawyer with a sharp mind and passion for justice found himself at the center of the greatest debate the nation had ever faced.

The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America's western territories, even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country, it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils while surveilling, deceiving, and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" ( Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.

Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death by a no-good outlaw. Mattie convinces one-eyed "Rooster" Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. In True Grit, we have a true American classic, as young Mattie, as vital as she is innocent, outdickers and outmaneuvers the hard-bitten men of the trail in a legend that will last through the ages.

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries. Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive.

National best-selling author and New Mexico native Michael McGarrity takes listeners to the wild territory of the late 19th-century American Southwest for this epic tale. After the deaths of his wife and brother, John Kerney gives up his West Texas ranch and heads south in search of a new home. Soon Kerney is offered work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory - a job that will forever change his life.

Samuel Moses Cardiff had a plan. He would graduate from the Teachers College in Albany, secure himself a position as a school master and ask his long-time girlfriend to marry him. He had a plan and just one thing stood in his way, the Civil War. Samuel graduated college the summer Fort Sumter was fired upon and he returned home in time to be enlisted into the 42nd New York Infantry Regiment. His life was put on hold.

Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener's magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America's past, the story of Colorado - the Centennial State - is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; and the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe.

Texas: a land of sprawling diversity and unparalleled richness; a dazzling chapter in the history of our nation; a place like no other on Earth. Through the remarkable lives of four families, this epic saga spans four centuries and two continents and charts the dramatic formation of several great dynasties from the age of the conquistadors to the present day. A richly compelling novel of a proud people eager to meet the challenge of the land, Texas is James Michener's most magnificent achievement.

When Luke Cardiff returns from college to his small family horse ranch in Missouri, he leaves Stella May, the girl he cares about, behind when he’s sent to Amarillo, Texas, to take care of family business. In the back of his mind, he’s always suspected there’s more to his horse-loving school teacher father than meets the eye. While in Amarillo, he discovers that his father’s past life was one of violence, murder, and mayhem - something Luke’s mother was never allowed to talk about.

In 1964, Little Big Man gave us the reminiscences of Jack Crabb - a white orphan raised among the Cheyenne - who returns to "civilized" society, where (among other things) he tangles with Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok, and ends up as the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand. At the end of Little Big Man, Jack's supposed death at age 111 cut short his tale.

Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent 60 years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite enduring hardships we can barely imagine today, Facey always saw his life as a "fortunate" one. A true classic of Australian literature, his simply written autobiography is an inspiration. It is the story of a life lived to the full - the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.

If anyone can smell an investment opportunity, it's railroad men and big city bankers. They're not the kind of folks that Sheriff Mackey is used to dealing with. But greed is greed, and if anyone knows how money can drive men to murder, it's the sheriff of a boomtown like Dover Station. But when Mackey is forced to gun down a pair of saloon rats, it brings a powderkeg of trouble - with a quick-burning fuse of vengeance named Alexander Duramont. This bloodthirsty psychopath wants to kill the sheriff for killing his buddies.

They just wanted to get home for Christmas...but fate had other plans. It's December 1890. A Texas rancher named Big Jim Conyers has a deal with Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Forth Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed.

Back East, they told tall tales about Marshal Clay Halser, the fearless Civil War veteran who became known as the “Hero of the Plains” for his daring exploits in the Wild West. But the truth, as revealed in his private journals, is even more compelling.