Who is Louis L'Amour

1.) Louis L'Amour started writing under the name Tex Burns. Thats a cool name.

2.) Louis L'Amour writes in 19th-century American West which is a great context for action, adventure, love and dispair.

3.) Louis L'Amour had, by the time of his death, published some 100 books, with nearly a third of them had been made into films.

Big Country: Stories of Louis L'Amour, Vol. 1

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." The two stories in this collection provide a good sample of the kinds of people he had in mind.

The Black Rock Coffin Makers

Two men in the isolated town of Tucker want the XY ranch--Jim Walker and the ruthless Wing
Cary--and one of them wants it badly enough to kill for it.

The Black Rock Coffin Makers is a tale of suspense and danger, with chases, posses,
shootouts, and double-crosses, all for possession of the XY ranch.

A Man Called Trent

A Man Called Trent opens on nester Dick Moffitt lying dead where he was killed by King Bill Hales
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.

The Rider of Lost Creek

Lance Kilkenny's gun is believed to be the fastest in the West, but once the gunfight is over, he disappears. Most folks don't even know what he looks like. Some time back, Mort Davis saved Kilkenny's life after he was shot up. Now Davis needs Kilkenny's help. He has filed a claim on a water hole near Lost Creek in the live oak country. The district is dominated by two wealthy cattlemen, Webb Steele and Chet Lord, each one desiring for himself the water hole that Davis claims. Beautiful Nita Riordan owns the local saloon, and between her charms and the feuding ranchers, Lance Kilkenny has his work cut out for him.

The Rider of the Ruby Hills

"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. He had fought Comanches and rustlers, hunted buffalo and horse thieves.

Now he was going to ride for himself, to fight for himself."

Riders of the Dawn

In Riders of the Dawn, a young gunslinger is changed for the better by a meeting with 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."

Showdown on the Hogback

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.

The Trail to Peach Meadow Canyon

Orphaned as a child, Mike Bastian was taken in by the legendary outlaw Ben Curry, raised and trained to take over his empire of crime. Today, Mike is the quickest draw and the stealthiest tracker around, and Ben Curry is getting ready to retire. To test Mike's wings, he has set him a task: the planning and execution of a gold-train robbery.

Now, as he prepares for his first criminal job, Mike must decide whether to follow the path that has been set before him or to carve out a destiny of his own. If he assumes the position of gang leader he will face deadly competition from within Curry's band; yet if he refuses, he may not be allowed to leave the pack alive. The dilemma is further complicated when he falls for Drusilla, Ben Curry's real daughter, who knows nothing of her father's career. Either way Mike chooses, a showdown is in store.