A woman ahead of her time, Mary Breydon knew how to get things done. Raised on a Virginia plantation, she learned how to care for livestock, respect her workers, and keep good books. But after her husband is killed, Mary must provide for her young daughter by running a stage coach station on the Cherokee Trail. With the help of an Irish maid and a mysterious stranger, Mary faces challenges that even the men eagerly anticipating her failure would have a difficult time overcoming.

He left the West at the age of seventeen, leaving behind a rootless past and a bloody trail of violence. In the East he became one of the wealthiest financiers in America—and one of the most feared and hated. Now, suffering from incurable cancer, he has come back to New Mexico to die alone. But when an all-out range war erupts, Flint chooses to help Nancy Kerrigan, a local rancher. A cold-eyed speculator is setting up the land swindle of a lifetime, and Buckdun, a notorious assassin, is there to back his play.

Tough and vicious, the Fred Henry Gang had been robbing banks all along the stage route from Santa Fe to Tularosa. It was only a matter of time before they hit the sleepy town of Sentinel, and Marshal Fitz Moore knew that day had come.

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives - but one man held their futures hostage. Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford’s captives were the Travens’ sister and Dal’s tough-minded fiancée, Kate. Now Mac and Dal must take up arms once again and ride together against Ashford’s army.

"There's Always a Trail": When a stranger named Handy offered to track down Cass Bailey's stolen money for a stake in the CB range, Bailey has nothing more to lose. "Home in the Valley": Steve Mehan had done the impossible when he drove a herd of cattle from the Nevada range to California in the dead of winter. But Mehan had little time to rest before tragedy struck. "Monument Rock": It had been many years since Lona Markham's father sent her from the rigors of ranch life to a convent school. Now she's returned to a wary, careworn man who hardly seems like the father she remembers.

When Jim Locklin pays his brother, George, a visit, he finds George missing, his horse ranch taken over by his brother's estranged wife, and a shifty gambler named Chance Varrow, who seems to have become a permanent visitor.

Where the real frontier begins...A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt.... A gunfighter, tired of violence, finds himself pushed down a trail of bloody revenge.... From purple sage to gambler's gold, from a senorita's tempting smile to a splash of blood in the dust, here are stories with a distinctive L'Amour twist.

A quiet farmer defends his honor in a moment of panic and luck...only to find true courage on the run from the dead man's brothers.

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it", This volume presents eight of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

It was a name that caused the most hardened gunmen to break out in a cold sweat: Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie. Pursuing the most wanted men in the Southwest, he knew all too well the dusty trails, the bitter cattle feuds, the desperate killers, and the quiet, weather-beaten towns that could explode into mayhem with the wrong word. He had sworn to carry out the law, but there were times when he had to apply justice with his fists and his guns.

Cattle rancher Ben Kerr wants Jim and Jack Casady's prime farmland real bad. He's offered them good money, but they won't sell. When the Casady brothers find Kerr's cattle grazing on their land, surrounded by broken fences, anger rises up like bile in Jack Casady's gut, and tempers flare.

When Mac Marcy got it into his head to run his own cattle ranch, he spent five long years working for Ben Tanner at the Bar 7 to save up enough money to do just that. His dream finally realized, Mac stakes his claim on a deserted ranch in a nearby valley, and rides over to say hello to his new neighbors at the Flying K. Thing is, Mac finds more than he bargained for in the owner's pretty daughter, Sally Kenyon, who seems eager to help him get started with his own place. What Mac hadn't counted on, though, was the jealous foreman at the Flying K, Vin Ricker, who had plans of his own where Sally and the Flying K were concerned.

Ranch foreman Ward McQueen recognizes trouble when he sees it - and trouble is what the Texan sees when he spies the tracks of a wounded man in the middle of the big Tumbling K spread. In town, he learns that a tinhorn gambler has just won the ranch next to the Tumbling K in a dirty card game - and is turning his oily gaze toward the K's pretty owner, Miss Ruth Kermitt.

Johnny Buck is a young cowboy, working for the Bar W. In the process of roping an old stob-horned steer, Buck is thrown from his horse - and into a hidden cleft where he encounters the mystery of a murdered man and a bag of ore that just might be gold.

Ross Hardy had made his decision. He sat in the middle of all he owned, a splendid Appaloosa gelding, a fine California saddle, a .44 Winchester rifle, and two walnut-stocked Colt .44 pistols. These were his all. It was a life that had left him rich in experience, but poor in goods of the world. The experience was the hard-fisted experience of cold winters, dry ranges, and the dusty bitterness of cattle drives.

Deadwood Gulch stars bounty hunter Cas Everett, lightning fast on the draw and deadly as a nest of rattlers. When Cas returns home and finds his ma, pa, and siblings planted in fresh graves, he vows to call down the thunder on all those responsible.

Waylaid by a pack of murdering outlaws, Daniel Strange's lifeless body is left dangling at the end of a rope. Now, a mysterious gunslinger is on the vengeance trail, packing Strange's trademark twin Colts, and answering to the same name. With fiery green eyes and a temper to match, he won't stop until every last man who killed Strange shares the same fate. And as each bullet finds its mark, his victims will die never knowing the truth: that Daniel Strange may be dead and buried, but his daughter is alive - and killing....

Harry Destry was a rough-and-tumble fighter who never lost a battle. But after six years in jail for a robbery he didn't commit, he comes back a changed man. The townsfolk believe he's beaten. They think all the fight's gone right out of him. And that's exactly what Destry wants them to think....

Pepper Paige is tired of her life as a dance-hall girl, and tired of fearing Jordan Beckett, a violent patron who has turned his attentions on her. When a stagecoach wrecks and an injured woman dies in her room, Pepper assumes her identity and leaves town.

A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of 19th-century America. While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim Wales struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom. Robbers' Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West.

Mauled by a giant grizzly and left to die, 16 year-old Jose Olano's chances for life were remote. Then, like a guardian angel, came Robert "Gray Eagle" McAllister, one-time army scout and sometime outlaw. In his flight to escape a posse, he finds the brutalized body of Jose. Knowing his decision to help Jose may mean his own death, he stays and brings Jose back from the brink of death. Thus began one of the greatest companionships ever known to the Idaho frontier.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack thought he’d seen every despicable act of cruelty and murder any man could exact on another. He thought wrong. When he stumbles upon the butchered remains of a scalp-taking massacre, he’s choked with disgust. So Burrack teams up with veteran Sheriff Boyd Tackett, who’s more than willing to help bring these vile rats to justice.

Busted out of prison by an outlaw friend, Flintlock joins a hunt for a fortune - a golden bell hanging in a remote monastery. But between the smouldering ruin of his former jail cell and a treasure in the Arizona mountains there will be blood at a U.S. Army fort, a horrifying brush with Apache warriors, and a dozen bloody showdowns with the schemers, shootists, madmen, and lost women who find their way to Flintlock's side.

Phil Sundeen thinks Deputy Sheriff Kirby Frye is just a green local kid with a tin badge. And when the wealthy cattle baron's men drag two prisoners from Frye's jail and hang them from a high tree, there's nothing the young lawman can do about it. But Kirby's got more grit than Sundeen and his hired muscle bargained for. They can beat the boy and humiliate him, but they can't make him forget the oath he has sworn to uphold.

From one of the bestselling western novelists of all time, comes another classic story. Templeton Lambeth had so desperately wanted a son - an heir to ride by his side through the vast, wild ranges just west of the Pecos River. But to his disappointment, his wife bore a girl. His hopes crushed and in denial, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a boy. In honor of Lambeth's more successful brother, they named her: Terrill.

In "The Trail to Peach Meadow Canyon", Mike Bastian has been raised by outlaw chief Ben Curry and trained in frontier skills by Curry's most trusted associates. Curry now wants to retire from leadership of the gang he has headed for years. But he is frustrated in this ambition by various factions within his gang who want to seize leadership and by Mike himself, who is not sure that he wants to lead the life of an outlaw.

Here is a time when the old west became new - the 1930s-50s - as Louis L'Amour witnessed it first-hand in Southern California before and after World War II. Many people think the age of gunmen, scheming land barons, murderous bad guys, and the determined men who stood up against them, went out with the end of the Old West around the 1890s. But, in L’Amour’s own time in the New West, there were far more bad men toting guns and making grabs for far more wealth and valuable land than in the fabled days of the Old West.

In the first in this trio of Western stories by Louis L'Amour - "Black Rock" - Jim Gatlin, a Texas trail driver, arrives in the town of Tucker where he finds himself quickly drawn into the middle of an all-out battle for the XY Ranch when, due to a case of mistaken identity, he kills the segundo of Wing Cary's Flying C Ranch. Gatlin is a dead-ringer for Jim Walker, who, like Cary, wants control of the XY. Gatlin is thrown into a situation in which all he can do but fight for his life.

Tom Kedrick is hired by a financial syndicate to run off a gang of vagrants and outlaws who are occupying a sizable strip of land that the syndicate has filed, claiming it is unusable swamp. To Kedrick's dismay, these "vagrants and outlaws" turn out to be hard working ranchers and farmers who have improved the lands they have claimed and are determined to resist any effort to disenfranchise them.

These stories are vintage L'Amour: A hard-bitten cattle driver is pitted against a man trying to steal his woman, the disappearance of a thousand head of cattle, and a plot to frame him for murder....A private eye visits a remote mining town on a case involving a sexy widow, an uneasy lawman, and a fortune in gold buried in an abandoned mine shaft....A country boy with a good right hand must fight not only his vicious opponent in the ring but the ruthless gangsters who'll do anything for profit-even commit cold-blooded murder....and more.

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

Tom Kedrick earned his stripes during the Civil War, fought Apaches, and even soldiered overseas. But in the high desert country of New Mexico, the battle-hardened Kedrick is entangled in a different kind of war, fueled by greed and deception. Hired by Alton Burwick to drive a pack of renegades and outlaws off the government land recently set aside for an Indian reservation, Kedrick begins to notice that things are not as they seem. As his suspicions grow, he realizes that he may be fighting on the wrong side of a land swindle.

A collection of two stories by beloved Western writer Louis L'Amour. In "The Sixth Shotgun", Leo Carver has been sentenced to hang for holding up a stage, killing the driver and the guard, and stealing the gold they were transporting. He is convicted despite his protests of innocence, but questions soon arise over what really happened. "The Rider of the Ruby Hills" is the story of Ross Haney, who rides into Ruby Hills country hoping to settle down. What he finds is an intense rivalry between the two big ranches and a rustler who is taking full advantage of the situation.

Ross Hardy had made his decision. He sat in the middle of all he owned, a splendid Appaloosa gelding, a fine California saddle, a .44 Winchester rifle, and two walnut-stocked Colt .44 pistols. These were his all. It was a life that had left him rich in experience, but poor in goods of the world. The experience was the hard-fisted experience of cold winters, dry ranges, and the dusty bitterness of cattle drives.

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it." This volume presents nine of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the humanside of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are six stories penned by America's favorite Western author.

There will never be another Western writer like Louis L’Amour. A legendary author and indisputably the greatest storyteller in his genre of all time, L’Amour captivated millions of readers and has sold well over three hundred million copies of his works, which includes nearly ninety novels and countless short stories. Mistakes Can Kill You highlights an essential selection featuring nine of L’Amour’s earlier short stories, sometimes written under the pen name Jim Mayo, that exemplify the rugged morality of the best Western writing.

Wagon trains heading west were forced to defend themselves against Indians, cope with injuries and illness, and struggle to find food. The group of easterners Rock Bannon was scouting for faced another problem. They were being deceived. When he warned them to remain on the Humboldt Trail, Sharon Crockett and the others refused to listen. Mort Harper, a stranger riding a beautiful black mare, had dazzled them with his charm and good looks. The southern route was the best way to go, Harper told them. But best for whom?

In "A Man Called Trent," nester Dick Moffitt lies dead, killed by King Bill Hale's riders. His son Jack and adopted daughter Sally, who witnessed the murder, go for safety to a cabin owned by a man called "Trent" - an alias for Kilkenny, who is seeking to escape his reputation as a gunfighter. In "The Rider of Lost Creek," Lance Kilkenny is the fastest gun in the West, but once the gunfight is over, he disappears. Some time back, Mort Davis saved Kilkenny's life.

Kate Lundy, owner of the Tumbling B, and Conn Dury, her foreman, told Tom the rules: men from the cattle drives are forbidden on the north side of town. People appreciated the money the cowboys spent but thought them too coarse to be near their homes. Enticed to come calling by Linda McDonald, daughter of one of the leading citizens, Tom Lundy broke the law and crossed the line. Later that night, he was dead. Outraged by her brother's murder, Kate vows to destroy the entire town.