Product Description
Filled with action, adventure, mystery, and historical detail, the Sackett saga is an unforgettable achievement by one of America’s greatest storytellers. In The Lonely Men, Louis L’Amour spins the tale of a man who must elude an Apache trap–only to discover that his greatest enemy might be very close to home. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

happy customer
The book was shipped on time and the condition as described. I would gladly use this seller again in the future.

The Sackets
Those were the heroes of western such as Louis L'Amour loved them. The desert, passion, brutal determination to the extent of the country. The qualities that are found in North American society are clearly expressed in this good western story. I am a fan reader of Louis L'Amour.

lonely men
This was bought for my father for when he is in the hspital,Audio books are always good.Thanks

Laura

BORDERLANDS AND DESERTED RANCHOS OF SONORA AND CHIHUAHUA INTO THE SIERRA MADRE MOUNTAIN RANGE--SACKETT BOOK # 11.

This book offers the adventures of six feet three inch William Tell Sackett in the mid-1870's in the borderlands of southern Arizona Territory and eastern Sonora. He and three other 'lonely men', who banded together in Yuma, continue to ride together from Tucson into eastern Sonora and the Sierra Mountain stronghold of rancherias of the Apaches. At least two of the Apaches we meet in the book, Kahtenny and Toclani, were actual people, with Toclani serving as Apache scout with Captain Emmett Crawford, one of the better Army officers who was later killed in error within the Sierra Madre Mountain strongholds by the Mexican Army.

Tell Sackett is trying to locate and return his brother Orrin's son from Apache captivity. Two problems here: Orrin has no son, and the Apaches haven't stolen a son that never existed. Through several week's hard riding and hard living, Sackett and the 3 other men riding with him learn that he is following a lie, so they grab all the white children available from the Apaches, trying then to ride and shoot their way back to Tucson.

One of the more standout chapters of this book is Chapter 5; wherein Louis L'Amour shares some of his vast knowledge concerning the desert and how to stay alive in it. Lieutenant L'Amour, during his WWII years, had taught a survival course on just these matters and later in civilian life delighted in just taking off getting lost wandering and living in the desert. So the information shared here is information the reader can count on.

Two other important people from real life we meet along the way in this novel are Pete Kitchen and William S. Oury.Kitchen is a legendary pioneer in Arizona Territory never allowing the Apache to chase him out as true of so many other Arizona pioneers, and the 'Apache pin cushions' mentioned by Louis are from true life. And Pete Kitchen's ranch was a famous stopping place along the Tucson to Nogales trail.William Oury had once been a noted Texas Ranger, a pioneer rancher, and was at the time of this story, Tucson's first mayor. As Louis stated in another book, many books could be written on these two men alone.

One other fact Louis includes in this book concerns the 'deserted ranchos' scattered in eastern Sonora. The Spanish and Mexican ranchers had been fighting the Apaches for many years before the coming of the Americans, and the fight generally went against them. The Apaches from the time of Mangas Coloradas through Cochise pretty much controlled and owned this eastern Sonora area. The Mexican Army early on from the mid-1700's had established what they called "presidios" or 'bastions of the Spanish borderlands' which were many times themselves also wiped out by the roaming, raiding Apache war parties. The extreme desolation mentioned by L'Amour in his writing in The Lonely Men is quite accurate to the time and place.

This is a rather good read with much historical accuracy included, just the discussions of the Shoo-Fly Restaurant operated by Mrs Wallen in Tucson is portrayed exactly as it would have appeared circa 1869. So read and enjoy but also learn some history in this book by the very talented Louis L'Amour.

A classic L'Amour western.
The Lonely Men is a classic L'Amour western, a story about a group of tough westerners venturing into Apache territory both to rescue a kidnapped child and risking their lives for eachother simply because they are friends.I found this story to be more complex with more plot twists than many of the other L'Amour westerns I've read. Very much worth reading.

If there is one complaint I have about this story it's that the main character escapes from certain death so many times that it was unrealistic. ... Read more

Product Description
Four Cassettes, 7 hours
Read by David Strathaim

Tyrell Sackett was born to trouble, but vowed to justice. After having to kill a man in Tennessee, he hit the trail with his brother Orrin. Those were the years whendecent men and women lived in fear of Indians, rustlers, and killers, but the Sackett brothers worked to make the West a land where people could raise their children in peace. Orrin brought law and order from Santa Fe to Montana, and his brother Tye backed him up every step of the way. Till the day the job was sone, Tye Sackett was the fastest gun alive.

The Sacketts are the unforgettable pioneer family created by master storyteller Louis L'Amourto bring to vivid life the spirit and adventure of the American frontier. They are men and women who challanged the untamed wilderness with their dreams and their corage. From generation to generation they pushed ever westward with a restless, wandering urge, a kinship with the free, wild places, and a fierce independence. The Sacketts always stood tall and, true to their strong family pride, they would unite to take on any and all challanges, no matter how overwhelming the odds. Each Sackett novel is a comlete, exciting historical adventure, and read as a group, they form an epic story of the building of our mighy nation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Sackett audio
As with all audio books, the audio reader is almost as important as the the writer.David Strathairn is an excellent choice for this role.The L'mour book is very good and the reader is excellent!!!!!!!

day breaker
I accumualted 105 louis l'more paper back books over a 3 yr period and read every one. i found that he was extremely knowledgeable of the time he wrote about and researched every adspect.Was living in the center of the area he wrote about. i am a newbie kindle owner (1 Week)and was greatly surprised to find all of the books i had lovingly accumulated and then lost, available on kindle,i am rereading them all and starting with the beginning of the sackett series.hope all who get a chance will do the same and enjoy as much as i have

happy customer
The book was shipped on time and the condition as described. I would gladly use this seller again in the future.

wanting a refund
its in spainish and nowhere does it say so. how do i get my money back. very misleading. although the title is in spanish /it is a western/ everything else is in english.

It's worth seeing the Sacketts ride onto the scene
The first of L'Amour's famous Sackett series is the story of Tyrel and Orrin Sackett, brothers from Tennessee.Forced to leave their home for their part in the bloody end of the Sackett-Higgins feud, they hook up with gentleman scholar Tom Sunday and old time mountain man Cap Rountree, and carve out a new life for themselves in the cattle country along the Purgatoire and Santa Fe.But other men, like Jonathan Pritts, are also intent on staking a claim on the country, and they are prepared to run off the old Mexican settlers to do it.All that stands in Pritts' way is the family of a tough old Mexican don - and Tyrel and Orrin.

The Sackett family may be L'Amour's most famous creation, but they're not his best work - his real masterpieces are Kiowa Trail and High Lonesome.While The Daybreakers may not be L'Amour's best, it's definitely one of the better Sackett novels, nearly as good as Tell Sackett's debut novel and vastly better than Mustang Man, The Sackett Brand, Sackett's Land, or Lonely on the Mountain.

The Daybreakers has an epic sweep lacking in many of L'Amour's novels, covering many years.Tyrel is a thoroughly likeable character, although he is slightly bland, and his brother Orrin doesn't engage so strongly.The villainous Pritts is appropriately slimy, although he is upstaged by his daughter Laura, oneof L'Amour's more memorable villains.But Tom Sunday is the book's most remarkable feature: a good man gone bad, a hero undone by his own character flaws, and he lends the story a mournful, tragic note that is very rarely found in L'Amour's generally upbeat fiction.You keep rooting for Sunday to turn himself around, right up to the very climax of the story, and Tyrel's ultimate gunfight leaves a very different flavor in your mouth from your typical Western story's finale.

The book is a bit bloated, notably by an unnecessary diversion of the action to Montana.There is also some silly posturing (though quite typical for the day) about how Indians "never owned any land," because they were always roaming and fighting each other for it; you might just as well say that medieval Europeans never owned any land because their barons were always fighting each other for it.Nonetheless, L'Amour's respect for, and understanding of, Indian culture remains well superior to many of his contemporaries and fellow Western authors.

David Strathairn delivered a number of good readings of the Sackett novels later on, but he can't quite find his stride in The Daybreakers.He sounds exactly the same as in all the Tell Sackett novels that he read, and indeed for the first five minutes I thought Tell was the narrator; nor is Strathairn able to put the same confidence and bonhomie into the reading that he mustered in his later L'Amour performances.Strathairn also reads the name "Purgatoire" by its old French pronunciation of "Per-ga-twa," rather than rendering it as "Picketwire," the way Tyrel and virtually all Anglos would have.

I wish I had read The Daybreakers first of the Sackett novels; it's not the best, but it's close, and the novel would have had more suspense and interest if I hadn't known part of the plot from reading later Sackett novels first.It's a good, solid Western, which is all the praise L'Amour would have wanted.
... Read more

Product Description
In Sackett, Louis L’Amour introduces readers to a wandering man with a desire to settle down and build a good life.

Hard circumstances have made William Tell Sackett a drifter, but now he hungers for a place he can’t name yet knows he has to find. South of the Tetons he comes upon a ghost of a trail that leads him through a keyhole pass into a lonely, alien, yet beautiful valley—a valley that holds a fortune in gold.

Then he finds an even greater treasure: beautiful Ange Kerry, a courageous and resourceful woman. Yet the harsh ways it takes to preserve his claim and his life could be the one thing that drives Ange away forever.


From the Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Cantering across the stereotypic West
"... if the folks who believe in law, justice and a decent life for folks are to be shot down by those who believe in violence, nothing makes much sense. I believe in justice, I believe in being tolerating of other folks, but I pack a big pistol ... and will use it when needed." - Tell Sackett in SACKETT (while making a promo sound bite for the NRA)

"I'm just a man tries to do the right thing as well as he knows. Only, the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he's going to take part in his country and it government, then it's up to him to understand." - Tell Sackett in SACKETT (while espousing, perhaps, English literacy as a prerequisite for voter registration)

Last Sunday, I found myself in an unusual (for me) and precarious situation. I was left with nothing to read while waiting for my wife to conclude her gym session. (I'm not an unmitigated lump; I'd just completed my 45-minute workout. I'm just not as driven.) For all I knew, I might be lingering for a seeming eternity if she'd gotten up a good head of steam on the treadmill. Luckily, the YMCA facility we frequent has a book exchange corner where members can donate used volumes. Pawing through the inordinately large number of bodice-ripper romance novels, I discovered a dilapidated copy of SACKETT, one in a series by Louis L'Amour about the fictional Sackett family of the American Old West.

Mind you, though my Mom discovered L'Amour several years ago and I, as a dutiful son, acquired for her all of this author's books I could find - dozens upon dozens, I've never read one of his sagebrush operas myself. The novelized Old West is rarely visited by me, though Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry was magnificent, especially the incomparable TV miniseries adaptation Lonesome Dove with Robert Duvall.

I read the first twenty pages of this 150-page paperback before my wife emerged sweaty but triumphant. Surprisingly, I found the book engaging enough to take home and finish before continuing with Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever.

Here, William Tell Sackett, the oldest of three Sackett sons, is in his third decade of a hard, wandering life. While his younger brothers got themselves some book learnin', he rode the Mississippi flatboats, prospected the Nevada Comstock, fought Johnny Reb with Grant, tussled with Injuns in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Texas, and drove doggies to Montana. The reader initially finds a homesick Tell as he's on his way to New Mexico to visit Ma and his siblings and as he stumbles across an isolated gold mine first excavated by long-dead Spanish conquistadors who'd presumably gotten themselves lost in the wilderness. And where there's gold, a heap of trouble is sure to follow.

SACKETT is, I gather, Western pulp fiction at its most formulaic. The plot contains the standard elements: the square-jawed, noble (and singing!) cowboy, the faithful horse, contemptible scoundrels, weather inclement enough to kill city dudes and the otherwise foolhardy, close-run escapes, desperate shootouts, spectacularly wild terrain, lost treasure re-discovered, and, since a cowpoke's horse can provide only so much companionship and can't cook up a mess of sourdough biscuits over the campfire, the girl of the hero's fevered dreams. (There are no marauding redskins. Perhaps they'd already been slaughtered or confined to a reservation to run a gambling hall.) LONESOME DOVE is just as predictable, of course, but SACKETT's much shorter length only accentuates the recipe for the creation of such in the genre while keeping plot subtleties to a minimum; it's a very fast read. No wonder Mom went through them so quickly and kept me on the rummage for more.

I ordinarily wouldn't give SACKETT more than three stars since I suspect there's not much to distinguish it one way or another from its numerous sister L'Amour Westerns on the bookshelf. But, since the book (and probably any one its siblings) is the absolutely perfect, mindless diversion should you find yourself in the slow line at the postal orifice or immovable on a freeway stopped dead by an overturned farm produce truck, I'll gift four.

sacketts
This product was as advertised.It was in good condition, shipped and recievedas stated.I am so pleased with Amazon books that I have ordered twice since then.Thank you for making it so easy to purchase reading material of all types.

Ok book
They had a different man telling the story who was not nearly as good as the usual guy. It made a big difference. The story just didn't seem as good.

Not L'Amour's Best
This book stumbles around from one scene to the next, trying to find its stride.There are plenty of bad guys, and there's lots of gun action, but there's no sense that it's going anywhere.It just wanders from here to yonder.Which is a shame, because Tell Sackett is my favorite L'Amour character.I loved him in "Mojave Crossing," where he takes up with the spicy Dorinda.But in "Sackett," which came first, we meet his pathetic, whining, helpless girlfriend, Angie.I hope he doesn't marry her in a later book!He could do so much better!

Sackett

My name is Troy Stap and I read the book Sackett by Louis Lamoure. The main setting of this book is about Tell Sackett and the gold he finds accidentally on an abandoned canyon trail that he stumbled across. And the other part of the setting was about the outlaws who chasten gold.
The main characters in this book are William Sackett and Tell Sackett. This book takes place in the summer and winter of a year in the 1800's. In this story the main conflict is Tell finds a pure vein of gold, and as he sets up a town gold thirsty outlaws move in and shoot up William Sackett wile Tell is mining gold at his claim. He comes back from the mountains and gets the news and then makes one final run back too his claim, butt the outlaws followed him this time. He gets snowed in but he manages to get out before the outlaws kill him and the outlaws freeze to death in the mountains.
My favorite part of the book was when Tell finally met Bigilow (the leader and brother of the outlaws) and had a drink with him and just as he walked away with no conflict, but then Bigilow drew and Tell drew his .44 and shot him dead.
As for me I thought this book was pretty good overall, but if I were to change anything I would have given Tell more respect to his name and given him a higher reputation as an experienced gun fighter. The kind of readers that would enjoy this book would be those who like adventure, courageous and suspenseful books.
... Read more

Product Description

In The Sackett Brand, Louis L’Amour spins the story of a courageous man who must face overwhelming odds to track down a killer.

Tell Sackett and his bride, Ange, came to Arizona to build a home and start a family. But on Black Mesa something goes terribly wrong. Tell is ambushed and badly injured. When he finally manages to drag himself back to where he left Ange, she is gone. Desperate, cold, hungry, and with no way to defend himself, Tell is stalked like a wounded animal. Hiding from his attackers, his rage and frustration mounting, he tries to figure out who the men are, why they are trying to kill him, and what has happened to his wife. Discovering the truth will be risky. And when he finally does, it will be their turn to run.

Customer Reviews (15)

Sackett brand
Tell Sackett is only wanting a life of his own with his wife Ange, then all hell breaks loose.Ange has disappeared and a big cattle rancher wants him dead for some reason.This is an absolute good read, packed with action, emotion and I couldn't put it down.

TELL SACKETT IN THE MOGOLLON RIM AREA OF ARIZONA TERRITORY--SACKETT BOOK #16


Louis dates this book between 1875-1879, with the action taking place in the Mogollon (muggy own) Rim and the Tonto Basin of Arizona Territory. The Apache wars are still in progress as we visit Camp Verde and while there are exposed to Al Seiber. Camp Verde was originally named Fort Lincoln in 1861 when established to protect people from the Apache, the post was originally manned by volunteers, and then later by regular Army in 1866.

Al Seiber, 1844-1907, is a name immediately recognizable to any reader of the Apache Wars period. Al was of German ancestry who scouted for the Army, later being chief of scouts over the Apache scouts. Earlier he had fought at Gettysburg, among other civil war battles, receiving at least two wounds. History still holds Al, or "Sibi" as he was known by Apaches, with great respect. And his times with both Tom Horn and the Apache Kid remains in the mind of any reader spending time with Dan Thrapp's 1964 biography of Al Seiber.

This western novel assumes a somewhat strange storyline in that Tell's wife, Ange Kerry Sackett, comes to harm, and is actually murdered. Not just murdered but strangled to death. It seems very much out of Louis L'Amour character in that in all his other novels he continually reinforces the thought that a woman alone would never be harmed by a man, no matter how bad that man may have been. It is therefore somewhat hard to accept, at least for me, that this is the storyline Louis chose to begin one of the Sackett novels. But there it is, and one has to deal with it to try to understand this book.

As stated in other reviews, I have all of the L'Amour books in hardcover and read them over from time-to-time. In all my reading of his books over the last 40 plus years, this is one of the more unique Sackett books. If you have not read that much L'Amour it may not strike you in that manner.

One interesting aspect, however, of this western novel is that Louis continually mentions the manner which the Sacketts will come to the aid of any Sackett in trouble. Well, in this novel he shows exactly how that would happen, using the word-of-mouth grapevine the fact that Tell is surrounded by at least 40 gunmen in the Tonto Basin area quickly causes any Sackett hearing of it to ride to Tell's assistance.

And it is always pleasant to encounter Cap Roundtree in the Sackett books. And I will let Louis himself describe Cap Roundtree: "A salty old customer, a mountain man, trapper, cowboy, all-round western man. Dry as alkali dust and twice as bitter. A tough old mountain man who had hunted gold and fought Indians and had the scars to prove it".That pretty much not only describes Cap Roundtree but can safely be applied to all the Sacketts as well.

This book will afford its readers a couple night's reading pleasure. Let'r rip!

Semper Fi.

Git Along Little Doggie
Hey, I'm all over the place as far as what I'm reading, and by golly I sometimes enjoy reading a good ol' cowboy story. It doesn't take allot of brain cells, they're usually a fast read, and usually the good guy wins in the end. That sounds pretty good to me as this world is a pretty serious place sometimes. Westerns are pure escapism for me. The Sackett series, and probably all L'Amour novels can be enjoyed by young readers and adults alike.

This is the 16th (and next-to-the-last) book in "The Sackett" series of novels that L'amour published. The series is basically a collection of stories about the fictional Sackett family who were some of the first settlers to come from England to America in the 1600's. The books follow the lives of multiple Sackett family members through several generations.The first 5 books are set in the early 1600's, and then all of the last 10 books have been cowboy stories set in the time frame of the 1870's. All-in-all I've really enjoyed the series, but some are certainly better than others. The books are also written in a way that you can pick up any one of them and read it, without ever having to have read any of the previous stories........ but it's really more fun to go through them as a series as there are always places, characters, and situations that the author refers to in a previous book, and that makes it kind of fun.

Anyway, in this story Tell Sackett is ambushed and left for dead. All of his belongings are burned, and his wife is murdered. That doesn't set well for any Sackett as they're all John Wayne/Clint Eastwood clones........no matter what........the bad guy is gonna get it. This story was extra fun as many Sackett brothers and cousins from the previous books came together to help Tell out on his quest to take care of those dastardly sidewinders.He Get Along Little Doggie......I liked this one better than many others in the series. A quick read and just some good old fashioned cowboy escapism.

The Sackett Brand
This novel sticks to your fingers and is difficult to put down.Join Tell as he struggles to survive. His future destroyed, Ange murdered, hunted and harried he eventually reaches safety. As soon as able he continues searching for her killer. A few letters from a friend bring other members of the clan riding to his aid.An explosive finish grips you by the seat of the pants.Family values at their best and a great story.

A good Sackett novel but something is missing
One of the hallmarks of the Sackett novels is the consistent concept of family members coming to the aid of other family members.In this novel, Tell Sackett, one of the roughest and toughest of a very tough family, gets in trouble.He needs help, and the word gets out.This is L'Amour's chance to really highlight that theme of family and he tries...but just misses the mark.There are scenes in the book of Sacketts that were in other books (Orlando, Logan, etc) getting the word about Tell and leaping into their saddles to join the fray.The Sacketts are gathering, and you just know that the bad guys have no clue about the storm that is about to break. But alas, that storm never breaks.The book ends with all the Sacketts lined up, ready to draw, and the fight never comes off.This is very disappointing.His other novels don't hesitate to bring about the fight - why not this one?All in all, it is still a very good book, and if you are a fan of the Sackett series it is one of the top five.Tell's anger and sadness, and his measure of revenge, are all very well handled by a master storyteller.I just wish he would have allowed his characters to mop up the floor with the bad guys! ... Read more

Product Description
Two men. One woman. A land that demanded courage--or death...

He was a man etched by the desert's howling winds, a big, broad-shouldered man who knew the ways of the Apache and ways of staying alive. She was a woman raising a young son on her own on a remote Arizona ranch. And between Hondo Lane and Angie Lowe was the warrior Vittoro, whose people were preparing to rise against the white men. Now the pioneer woman, the gunman, and the Apache warrior are caught in a drama of love, war, and honor.  


From the Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Possibly L'Amour's best novel of the old west
This western classic is based on the author's short story, "The Gift of Cochise", and further developed into one of the genre's most popular stories. Louis L'Amour's love of the west, its great lands, the Indians and the settlers who followed comes alive in this rugged tale which has interesting characters and a touch of romance. Army dispatch rider Hondo Lane happens upon an isolated ranch and befriends Angie Lowe and son Johnny, both abandoned by a ne'er-do-well husband and father. The Apaches are on the warpath and the pony soldiers are out on patrol to put down the Indian uprising. John Wayne was the star in the excellent 1953 film which portrays the Apaches as a fierce but dignified warrior tribe. It is young Johnny who is the main point of interest of both Lane and chief Vittoro who want the boy grow into manhood despite the enmity between the Apaches and the soldiers. L'Amour is said to have been one of President Eisenhower's favorite writers and enjoyed reading his tales of the old west. Actor David Strathairn is the narrator of the audiobook and expertly recreates this story for audiobook listeners.

An excellent Western
Hondo Lane has led a hard life, and it has made him a hard man. But, while acting as a dispatch rider for the cavalry in Arizona, during an Apache uprising, he is surprised to find a small ranch, run solely by a woman and her son. Hondo soon realizes that the woman has been abandoned by her worthless husband, but it is not his way to force anyone, and he will not force her to leave her ranch. But, the fate of the woman and boy preys upon his mind, and Hondo realizes that he must do whatever he can to protect them, no matter what it might cost him.

This was Louis L'Amour's first full-length novel, and it helped solidify his reputation as the king of the Western novel. Hondo is the classic strong, silent type, but he is far from cold and indifferent. In fact, Hondo is shocked by how often his thoughts return Angie Lowe and her son. I found Hondo to be an interesting mix - part tough guy, but also needing a home and family to call his own. I also liked Angie Lowe, a woman of exceptionally strong fiber, trying to protect the people and the things that she loves, reliant on no one, but needing her loved ones nonetheless.

This is an excellent Western, one that well warrants the reputation that it has gathered over the years. If you like a good story, then you will like Hondo. And, if you like a good Western, then you will love it!

Hondo -- Better than L'Amour's usual hackery
Those who know me know I have little regard for Louis L'Amour's talent as a writer. I find much of his work laconic and unable to focus on emotional interchanges between characters in a believable way. I mean, you might as well be reading Max Brand.Brand is another writer who tells stories that are forgotten the day after you finish them. Fun, sure, and easy to blow through, and a pleasant enough time-waster. But there's not much literary meat there.Studying them won't add anything appreciable to your own growth as a writer.

L'Amour's early success stems from the fact he burst onto the scene from a marketing strategy implemented by Bantam Books. They forced independent distributors to buy his books in lots of 10,000 if they wanted to get other Bantam titles at wholesale prices. They swamped the market with his stuff and it drove other western titles off the shelves and spinning racks. Once that monster got going, it shambled onward under sheer momentum. By all accounts, and sheer sales numbers, it was a successful business model.

Okay, so he's not a good writer and even he recognized there was room for improvement. He once said: "There's bits and pieces of books that I think are good. I never rework a book. I'd rather use what I've learned on the next one, and make it a little bit better. The worst of it is that I'm no longer a kid and I'm just now getting to be a good writer. Just now."

You gotta give him credit.But whatever literary skills he lacked, he WAS at times a darn good story teller, and Hondo proves it.

This is a good novel and it deserves classic status. It has thin spots, the ones we come to expect from L'Amour. But he knows the culture of the west, has a deep respect for Native Americans and their culture, and no one besides Zane Grey expresses such a love for the outdoors and captures it so perfectly on the page.

The story itself is simple enough, and a retelling of his early short story "The Gift of Cochise" but expanded. Hondo Lane is a reserved man who was raised by Apaches. He meets a woman on the frontier and they fall in love. (There's no underlying reason they fall in love, it's the plot point L'Amour wanted.)Her young son looks up to Hondo. That's the basic story and there are lots of good, rich detail mixed in including some battles.

If you haven't read this novel I urge you to give it a try. Trust me, you could do a LOT worse than Hondo.

If you only read one L'Amour, not a bad choice
I had just come off of reading HOMBRE by Elmore Leonard when I picked up the next Western that started with an "H" on my shelf and it happened to be HONDO. I'm not always in the mood for L'Amour. Unlike Leonard, he inserts too much of himself for my taste, but you can't deny his love of the land, the people, and the genre itself. With HONDO he hit his stride early on, and, contrary to his own opinion, I'm not sure L'Amour got measurably better in his latter years. THE HAUNTED MESA still has a lonely place in my library as one of his worst, and that was right near the end of the man. But let's celebrate what's good and that's HONDO. L'Amour was ahead of his time with his sympathetic portrait of both the Apache leader and the woman that Hondo finds trying to raise a son and a life by herself in the harsh southern Arizona desert. The author is also at his most lyrical here, which was a nice contrast to Leonard's spare, cryptic style. Finally, I loved Hondo's dog--he deserved a sequel in his own right if [spoiler alert] he had lived. If L'Amour had never written another book his rep would still sit well with just HONDO. I now have a pact with myself to read more of the gentleman; heck, I might even skip past "I" and "J" and go right to "K"!

One of the best western stories ever written
This is one of the best western stories ever written. Hondo Lane is a hard and lonely man accompanied by Sam, a mongrel dog as fierce as he is. Riding as a scout for the U. S. cavalry, he is in Apache country at a time when the Apaches are on the warpath. Having lived with them for years and having had an Apache woman as a wife, Hondo knows their ways. His horse is killed in an encounter with Apaches and he walks to a small ranch. Angie Lowe and her young son have been living there alone since her husband departed for parts unknown. They strike up a friendship and there is an immediate attraction, even though Angie is repulsed by Hondo's reputation as a gunman. Hondo purchases a semi-wild horse from Angie, tames it and then rides away after kissing her.
When he gets back to the fort and reports to the commanding officer, Hondo has a run-in with Angie's husband Ed Lowe and Ed and a mercenary cohort follow Hondo out into the desert. In a major altercation between the cavalry and the Apaches under war chief Vittorio, the cavalry unit is completely wiped out. However, being a man of principle, Vittorio grants Angie and her son safety on their ranch, even though the guerilla war is wiping out nearly all the other white settlers.
Through it all, Hondo's thoughts are on Angie and her thoughts are on him. Their relationship proceeds along many sidepaths, but eventually through the war and other difficulties, they are united and are literally riding off to greener pastures. Although there is gunplay typical of westerns and the violence of the frontier war, the primary point of the story is the loneliness of Hondo and Angie and the unusual way they manage to be united in a relationship of love and companionship.
... Read more

Product Description
Performances by Mary Beth Hurt and David Strathairn
Two cassettes, 3 hours

One unremarkable June morning, Alice Goodwin is, as usual, trying to keep in check both her temper and her tendency to blame herself for her family's shortcomings.When the Goodwins took over the last dairy farm in the small Midwestern town of Prairie Center, they envisioned their home a self-made paradise.But these days, as Alice is all too aware, her elder daughter Emma is prone to inexplicable fits of rage, her husband Howard distrusts her maternal competence, and Prairie Center's tight-knit suburban community shows no signs of warming to "those hippies who think they can run a farm."A loner by nature, Alice is torn between a yearning for solitude coupled with a deep need to be at the center of a perfect family.

On this particular day, Emma has started the morning with a violent tantrum, her little sister Claire is eating pennies, and it is Alice's turn to watch her neighbor's two small girls as well as her own.She absentmindedly steals a minute alone that quickly becomes ten: time enough for a devastating accident to occur.Her neighbor's daughter Lizzy drowns in the farm's pond, and Alice - whose own volatility and unmasked directness keep her on the outskirts of acceptance - becomes the perfect scapegoat.At the same time, a seemingly trivial incident from Alice's past resurfaces and takes on gigantic proportions, leading the Goodwins far from Lizzy's death into a maze of guilt and doubt culminating in a harrowing court trial and the family's shattering downfall.Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, December 1999: In A Map of the World, appearance overwhelms reality and communalhysteria threatens common sense. Howard and Alice Goodheart, the couple atthe center of Jane Hamilton's 1994 novel, have labored mightily to create apastoral paradise in a Wisconsin subdivision. Their 400-acre dairy farm isthe last in Prairie Center, and they're working flat out to raise their twoyoung girls in a traditionally bucolic manner. Yet paradoxically, theystrike their neighbors as unacceptably modern, and have been treated asinterlopers since the day of their arrival. Howard, in love with hisvocation, chooses not to believe that they've been frozen out. But Alice,flinty and quick to judge, finds things harder. And her job as school nursedoesn't work wonders for her reputation either. Happily, there's oneexception to this epidemic of unfriendliness: their closest neighbors.Theresa and Dan, who also have two young daughters, function as a virtuallifeline for the embattled family.

But in June 1990, whatever idyll the Goodhearts have worked for comes to apermanent end. On a beautiful morning--marred by her 5-year-old's tantrumbut still recuperable--Alice looks forward to taking her children andTheresa's youngest for a swim. Distracted for several minutes, she has noidea that the 2-year-old is no longer in the house:

Lizzy had run to the pond and splashed in. It had felt good on her hot feet and she keptrunning and then she was pedaling and pedaling. She tried to grab hold ofthe water, pawing for the metal bar, a ladder rung, her mother, but therewas nothing. She clutched and flailed.... She sank. The trout that Howardhad stocked in the pond swam along through the dark water. They noticedLizzy out of the corner of their eyes. They had inherited the knowledge ofthat look, and they knew it by heart.

Narrated first by Alice, then Howard, and then Alice again, A Map of theWorld moves from intimate domesticity to courtroom drama with grace andsubtlety. Hamilton wrote her book when accusations of abuse in schools andday care were peaking, yet this is not a modish work or an "issue novel"but a lasting creation of several complex lives. At one point, fed up withcivil mechanisms, Alice tells her lawyer: "'Let Oprah be the judge.... LetRobbie and me, Mrs. Mackessy, Howard, Theresa, Dan, Mrs. Glevitch--let allof us come before Oprah. Let the studio audience decide. They're nicesuburban woman, many of them, dressed for a lark. They have common senseand speak their minds.'" Apparently La Winfrey was listening, since shechose this beautifully observed novel for her book club. --KerryFried ... Read more

Customer Reviews (371)

Worth working through its' ART of literature
This book is fine literature.Hamilton is a master manipulator of the language and presses a shining star on almost every sentence.She is not easy to read.But you need to let her unique sentences and paragraphs bring you along... making you understand each character and idea like you have known them for years.The love described in this book is not the lustful, cinematic, high energy affair of youth; but the committed, stoic, embrace of moral characters.Anyone who has ever been in a public school setting knows all too well the trauma suffered by innocents because of adulterated, immoral, and/or stupic people.A family is changed by trauma in this truly moving piece!I recommend the book for anyone who wants to read a FUTURE classic. Oprah got this one right.

Great Read
Jane Hamilton is a fabulous writer. I don't say that about too many people. I felt so deeply connected with the characters of this book. The story is definitely tragic at times, but deeply moving. Beautiful writing and characters. Days after finishing it, I still think about it. Fabulously well written book!

Unpleasant Narrators, Unbelievable Details
Alice, a mother of two small children, seems constantly dissatisfied.She tends to see the worst in people and finds that she is often impatient with her older child and with the children in the elementary school where she works as a nurse.She feels like the people in their small town, where she and her husband bought a farm, don't like her.They treat her like an outcast, an interloper.

The one bright spot in Alice's life is her friendship with Theresa, also a mother of two small girls.Theresa and her husband Dan are the only friends Alice and her husband Howard have, and Alice treasures that relationship.

One morning Alice is babysitting Theresa's two girls when the smaller one, two-year-old Lizzy, drowns in Alice's pond.Everyone involved is devastated, and Alice sinks into a deep depression.In the midst of dealing with this horror, Alice is accused of sexual abuse by a troubled student at the elementary school where she works.While Alice is in prison awaiting trial, life at the farm rapidly unravels.

This book is a study in how tenuous the things are that we mostly take for granted: a job, a home, friendship, family, a marriage, a life.All can be destroyed in an instant.The events in this story are heartbreaking.

I found myself intensely disliking the narrators of this book, though.Alice was often hysterical, judgmental, and rambling.She didn't seem to like children in general, even her own.Howard was oblivious and bumbling, capable of running a farm but not of figuring out how to take care of his kids when his wife was in jail.

There were also things in this book that were hard to believe.It was hard to believe that Alice hadn't made one single friend within the school system, or in the group of traveling nurses who gave shots.There wasn't one person who thought she was innocent and would have called her husband to tell him so?There wasn't one single person they'd ever met who would be willing to babysit the girls, even if that person did think Alice was guilty?

It also seems that in the case of a school employee being accused, the school would be more likely to circle the wagons and protect one of their own, especially when it was clear that Alice would have had so little opportunity to get this child alone to abuse him.Did everyone else in the school who had interacted with him think that he was a reliable source of information?I was especially unconvinced that the steps Howard took to gather the bail money would have been permitted without some input from Alice.

The generalities of this story--a drowned child, a wrongly accused woman--were good.My attention was lost in the details, though.

A thoughtful read
This is not a book to read on an escape vacation.It is well written and easy to read, but it is very serious content.It requires reflection and dealing with dark emotions.Don't read when dealing with depression!

Hauntingly Beautiful Book
I've just finished the book, and my head is still swimming, so this may not be the most coherent of reviews.The story is simple but filled with complex, human beings.The emotions, the actions - they're so tangled - that there are no clear heroes or villains, saints or victims.There are clear divisions of black and white.Instead, there is a multitude of grays.Sometimes the grays feel lighter, nearing and purity and grace, and sometimes they grow darker, overwhelming in despair.

I loved the stories and the people.I loved the little girls - who weren't perfect angels, sometimes bratty and petty, sometimes brave and generous.SPOILERS AHEAD.I loved the triangle between the three primary characters.Their nobility and flaws and sorrow.I loved that there was never a real physical infidelity, but there was a true affair of the heart growing.And that emotional kind of temptation can be even more harrowing - more damaging.I loved that the two couples somehow found the strength to move on.

It was all so real and messy and haunting.I highly recommend the book. ... Read more

Product Description

From Elmore Leonard, the author who has influenced more writers than anyother, come two thrilling stories of law in the Old West, upheld by the barrel of a six-gun.

Customer Reviews (11)

Misleading advertising
Unfortunately I purchased this the day before Christopher Beck posted his comment pointing out that although the name of the CD is "The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard," and the cover posted with it says "unabridged," the CD is in fact only 2 of the 11 stories, or about one hour of reading.I was setting out on a 6-hour drive, and had to race back on-line and purchase a substitute by overnight, an expense I was not happy about.I just looked it up today, and it says that it is a "CD [Abridged, Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]."Good luck making sense out of that.Deconstructing it, it seems to make sense, but it certainly counts as misleading advertising at best.However, the two stories are great, and if the price for two short stories makes sense to you, then the purchase is good.

save your money
FOR TWO STORIES, THIS IS A WASTE OF MONEY

THIS ONE SAYES ITS THE 11 STORY VERSION ISBN-10: 006074992X
ISBN-13: 978-0060749927

CHECK IT OUT
AT THE TOP OF PICTURE IS THE ONLY PLACE WHERE IT SAYS 11 STORIES

WARNING:THIS HAS A BAD PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Western Stories
I like the Western stories of Elmore Leonard a lot, good descriptions, exciting and always a surspise ending, read the book twice which says a lot

Read all details
This CD came in perfect condition. It's the title that gets you. Even though it's called The COMPLETE Western Stories of Elmore Leonard...this is just 2 stories from the book. It was my fault for not reading everything. So pay attention to what you buy!

Great condition
Book is in perfect condition and fit description exactly.Make sure to account for a long delivery time. ... Read more

Product Description

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends.But then a strange car drove up their street. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed the boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective.Jimmy is an ex-con. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do horrific things.

When Jimmy's daughter is murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood. While Sean attempts to use the law to return peace and order to the neighborhood, Jimmy finds his need for vengeance pushing him ever closer to a moral abyss from which he won't be able to return.

By turns violent and pensive, Mystic River is vintage Lehane. How good is it? You may go in missing Angie and Patrick, but after a few pages you won't even realize they're gone. Lehane's noir is still black magic. --Kelly Flynn ... Read more

Customer Reviews (441)

amazing
Beautiful writing, brilliant plot, nuanced, interesting characters.Heartbreaking but gritty and real...this is one of those books you cannot put down.

Another Great Read
You may think to yourself that if you've seen the movie, there's no need to read the book and you would be wrong. This is a fantastic book and the characters are so well developed you feel each of the three friends emotions -- even though sometimes they are at odds. There's no clear villian, just three people dealing with their own demons. His writing is so amazing - he never goes into details about the child molestation, but how the character has to deal with this in his adult life. I loved it.

First-class crime fiction
With MYSTIC ISLAND Lehane makes his bones as a first-class writer of crime fiction.His characters are complex, their motivations often heart-wrenching.The murder of a 19-year-old girl brings three childhood friends back together and stirs up sins from the past that resonate with the present investigation.Lehane has a gift for conveying sorrow, loss, and the everyday disappointment in his characters' lives while keeping us totally engaged in the plot.The emotions are the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy, but the story has the ring of ripped-from-the-headlines reality.One of his best and highly recommended.

More Satisfying than the Movie
My favorite Dennis Lehane books are the Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro series.These are not actually as well written as Mystic River and The Given Day, but they engage me more.I started reading his books after seeing the movies based on Mystic River, Gone Baby Bone, and Shutter Island.Lehane writes great stories, and I enjoyed Mystic River even though I'd seen the movie first. I had forgotten how it was resolved.I prefer Patrick Kenzie as narrator and having the focus on only 1 character.

Even IfYou've Seen The Movie....
Even if you've seen the movie, you should still consider reading this book. I thought I was making a mistake by seeing the movie first thinking "I already know what's going to happen". While that may have been the case, the book still captured my complete and undivided attention. As with most books that have been made in to movies, this one is exponentially better than the movie itself. Definitely a page-turner and one you won't soon forget. ... Read more

Product Description
Here is the kind of authentically detailed epic novel that has become Louis L'Amour's hallmark. It is the compelling story of U.S. Air Force Major Joe Mack, a man born out of time. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness. Only one route lies open to Mack: the path of his ancestors, overland to the Bering Strait and across the sea to America. But in pursuit is a legendary tracker, the Yakut native Alekhin, who knows every square foot of the icy frontier--and who knows that to trap his quarry he must think like a Sioux.


From the Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (86)

I wish that he had written the sequel
I first read this book simply because L'Amour wrote it. I couldn't put it down until I had finished the whole book.

What Joe Mack goes through is sometimes horrific, but it definitely worth reading.

L'Amour was going to write a sequel to this book and it never got finished. I really, really wish that he had.

L'Amour Succeeds in a Difficult Challenge
Major Joseph Makatozi, possessor of highly classified American military secrets, is captured by the Soviets and brought to a Siberian prison for interrogation.He immediately and ingeniously escapes into the frigid and hostile vastness of Siberia.Here he must survive for over a year in the wilderness, making his way towards the Bering Strait, as well as eluding the KGB, the entire Soviet army, and their surrogates, who are bent on his capture.Stories of wilderness survival, such as Paulsen's "The Hatchet" and Neihardt's "Song of Hugh Glass," are an extreme challenge for an author.How can one write a book length novel of this ilk and keep it interesting?After the hero has killed one wild goat and built one fire without matches, how does the author keep up the interest?L'Amour meets the challenge and keeps the reader riveted throughout the lengthy novel.

Very Good Story
I have read this book many times over the years since it was first published, and I picked it up for my Kindle after seeing a paperback copy for sale in the airport.Despite 30 or so years having gone by since it was originally published, and the USSR not in its original form, this one in my opinion is a timeless classic and well worth the $4.50 or so for the Kindle version.I will remember the last phrase to my grave - how many scalps will you take?

Last of the Breed
Very entertaining and historically enlightening.Mr. Lamour was well suited to and had a knack for writing informative, historical novels that keep you on the edge of your seat.

stormykimrey san angelo.tx
bestbookthateverread.first book that have ever@offered a review.had to order acopy just formykindle.one of those that@you can@tputdown/ ... Read more

Product Description

Summer, 1954.

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels s come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.

Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry; an approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing ...

Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there?

As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount. The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they my never leave Shutter Island.

Because someone is trying to drive them insane ...

Customer Reviews (649)

Good page-turner with thrilling ending
I read this book in October 2010--have not seen the movie.This is a good page-turner, but nothing revolutionary.I will probably see the movie now, but I don't expect to get that much out of it.I wonder if I would have even liked the book if I saw the movie first, because this is one of those stories with a puzzle that makes you want to find out how all the pieces fit together.If I knew the ending, I don't think I would have been as interested.

So happy to get it.
I was so excited to receive Shutter Island in the mail. It came in great shape and so far it's every thing I had hoped for.
I love Dennis Lehane as an author, and cannot wait to read all his titles. Thanks to Amazon I no longer have to search all over the county for certain titles I am looking for.
Love it, Love it, Love it!

Page turner!
Interesting how all the reviews are under the Spanish Edition book... I certainly did not read this in Spanish!!

Anyhow, this was a great book - my first Dennis Lehane.Love the twist.The movie was pretty good, but like in most situations, this book was much better than the movie.Glad I read it first!

Well Written but isn't Worth the Content
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Genre: Psychological thriller, horror

Shutter Island is a well-crafted book. It is gripping, well written, it flows nicely, and the plot is sound. But the book falls short because of some of its content, and a poor ending.

The year is 1954 and U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels goes to Shutter Island, a mysterious hospital for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients, Rachel Solando. He and his partner only just arrive when they realize that Ashecliffe is not what they appear to be. And neither is Teddy.

Was he sent to Ashecliffe to investigate a missing patient, or to find out if they really approach psychiatry in ways including drug experimentation, terrible surgical trials, and deadly countermoves against Soviet brainwashing?

In the end, though, we find the answer to all of our questions to be worlds away from what we originally thought, bringing the book to a dark, brooding, and unhappy close.

Over all, Shutter Island brings us into a fast-paced, gripping 1950's psychological thriller involving interesting characters and a foreboding setting, a hospital for the criminally insane. All of this looks very promising if you're looking for a good chilling mystery. And for most of the book, Dennis Lehane kept good on his promise for a great thriller. His tone was dark, and his writing style fitted the mood perfectly, dipping us into Teddy Daniels's mind and telling us his thoughts.

Slowly, Lehane revealed the intricate folds of the story through flashbacks, dreams, and odd scenes that I couldn't quite tell if it was actual events, or Teddy's dreams. But it all fit together in the end when I finally understood it all.

The characters were definitely well done. Teddy was the perfect trying-to-be-brave macho U.S. Marshal who obviously had some problems but did well to hide them. His partner was the light-hearted comic relief that such a dark book needs, and the supporting cast, a scattering of mysterious orderlies, doctors, and nurses, along with some intimidating villainous overseers, a deputy warden, and the warden himself--obviously the mad scientist Teddy knew they were.

I was very pleased with the way Lehane played out the story out and made the characters interact, and the atmosphere he created with Ashecliffe hospital looming in the background with all of the secrets it held.

For the book he was writing, Dennis Lehane certainly achieved his purpose. A frightening thriller with a huge twist I might have glimpsed in the distance, but never would have guessed. It's obvious Lehane likes to play with characters by the way he tantalizes Teddy, and makes him interact with other characters, like the deputy warden, the villain of the book. Lehane doesn't fall too heavily into the common writer faults, like excessive use of passive voice, adjective and adverbs, and dragging dialogue. In truth, I thought his dialogue was accurate for each of the characters, and well played out. I wasn't bored by long conversations.

I saw no glaring faults and few errors that could easily be avoided. Over all, his writing is simple, fast-paced, and gripping. Having not read any of his other works, I can't compare this to what else he's written.

Overall, I found this book to be extremely interesting and a wonderful read, and would highly recommend it to most anyone who likes a gritty psychological thriller that will keep you reading late into the night with a flashlight and all the lights on...

...Except for two things. There were two flashback/dreams that Teddy experienced that I thought wholly inappropriate and unnecessary. It made me hesitant to read on because of it, and made me pull out of the story. It didn't add to the book at all, rather, it depleted the book significantly. So, this is the first reason I would refrain from recommending this book.

The second reason is the use of excessive strong language. This too took away from the book, though not quite as much as the inappropriate content. A slight scattered usage of language would be expected for the genre, but the frequent pervasive language was extremely grating after experiencing it for the whole book.

For these two reasons I won't recommend the book to anyone.

I still have to touch briefly on one more aspect. I didn't enjoy how the book ended. I can understand it completely, but I wouldn't have ended the book in that way. Teddy was a character that Lehane developed extremely well, and the ending caused me to certainly feel sorry for him, but detached me from him someone. I felt somewhat cheated that I had put all of my emotions on the line for this guy for him to turn out as he did.

The book was thoroughly enjoyable, though some editing is highly necessary to rid this book of all of its problems. The ending, though not completely satisfying, was endurable and fitting for the book it was. I would rate the book 5 stars for the writing and great story, but as a whole, it's worth about 2 and a half.

Great book
This is truly a great book. A wonderful thriller. I won't say to much because I don't want to be a spoiler. Boy, this will give you something to wrap your head around. ... Read more

Product Description
This work is set during Christmas of 1951. Los Angeles is a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L. A. P. D. detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.Amazon.com Review
James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential is film-noir crime fiction akin to Chinatown, Hollywood Babylon, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Jim Thompson. It's about three tortured souls in the 1950s L.A.P.D.: Ed Exley, the clean-cut cop who lives shivering in the shadow of his dad, a legendary cop in the same department; Jack Vincennes, a cop who advises a Police Squad-like TV show and busts movie stars for payoffs from sleazy Hush-Hush magazine; and Bud White, a detective haunted by the sight of his dad murdering his mom.

Ellroy himself was traumatized as a boy by his party-animal mother's murder. (See his memoir My Dark Places for the whole sordid story.) So it is clear that Bud is partly autobiographical. But Exley, whose shiny reputation conceals a dark secret, and Vincennes, who goes showbiz with a vengeance, reflect parts of Ellroy, too.

L.A. Confidential holds enough plots for two or three books: the cops chase stolen gangland heroin through a landscape littered with not-always-innocent corpses while succumbing to sexy sirens who have been surgically resculpted to resemble movie stars; a vile developer--based (unfairly) on Walt Disney--schemes to make big bucks off Moochie Mouse; and the cops compete with the crooks to see who can be more corrupt and violent. Ellroy's hardboiled prose is so compressed that some of his rat-a-tat paragraphs are hard to follow. You have to read with attention as intense as his—and that is very intense indeed. But he richly rewards the effort. He may not be as deep and literary as Chandler, but he belongs on the same top-level shelf. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (110)

Another Major Ellroy Work
This is another major novel by one of America's great -- though slightly unsung -- writers.

There's nothing secret about this one, its just a great book.
This is a great book. Really, great. Why? It offers insight into basic human motivations suck as greed, lust, and the desire for fame. These base motivations drive the characters forward into a place where they become complex and interesting. The book also offers a good story and great plot. The only problem with Ellory might be, and this is only to say might be, the fact that too much of whats involved in the story all seems to run together, but fair too easily. Other than that, the book is one the best ones I have read. Get it and enjoy.

Gritty, Haunting, And Way Over The Top
The movie version of "L.A. Confidential" was a show I never wanted to end. The novel was another matter.

James Ellroy's Los Angeles is a depraved sinkhole of villainy and vice, where a cop's idea of bracing a suspect is breaking his skull or mangling his hand. Women trade on male weakness for easy money. Everyone is ultimately corrupt. "You want to know what the big lie is? You and your precious absolute justice!" a rape victim tells her avenger before stabbing him in the back.

If you are into that sort of thing, I can't imagine a better Charon for your journey to the underworld than Ellroy. His prose style tends to the dense and hyperbolic, but he's never dull. His ear for characters is magnificent, and he relates matters quickly with a minimum of detail and a jazzy blend of racial invective, profanity, and slang that makes you feel you are one of the damned circa the 1950s, riding a buzz of bennies and Charlie Parker to who knows where.

There's even glimpses of humor. One actor who performs as a kind of ersatz Mickey Mouse shakes off a sordid story with a half-bored shrug: "Jack, I'm tres Hollywood. I dress up as a rodent to entertain children. Nothing in this town surprises me."

Problem is, Ellroy doesn't make me care for one darn minute. Maybe I'm spoiled from the movie, which boils down the story into a straightforward whodunit without sidetracking me into a gruesome set of serial killings or a death-porn angle like the book does, tying them all together unconvincingly at the end. Maybe I needed to read the two prequel novels in Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet" series to understand the backstory better. But oftentimes, I felt Ellroy's predilection for macho posturing and morbid detail getting in the way of a story that only springs to life in bursts here and there, however tightly it is presented in the overall.

Fans of the film will be happy to know many of the brilliant characters from that exist here, too, in deeper and sometimes more compelling form. Brutal policeman Bud White, played in the film by Russell Crowe, is even more unhinged in the book, though you understand if not sympathize with his fury. His antithesis and archenemy, Sgt. Ed Exley, Guy Pearce in the film, has a deeper backstory involving phony war hero status and an over-privileged background he rebels against. Like other reviewers here note, Exley is the central character if anyone is, and with the plot running in 40 different directions, you appreciate his centering effect on the narrative.

"L.A. Confidential" is described by other reviewers as hard to put down. I can't agree, because I did put it down often, and paid a price when returning to find a minor plot point suddenly in the foreground of the story. Ellroy shifts around like that because he's a meticulous plotter, even when his overall story is less than full-baked. I am not as meticulous a reader, and paid a price. But something about the way Ellroy wrote kept me from engaging the novel more closely. He's worth reading, just a mite cold in his view of life and prone to mess.

Nihilistic, Brutal Descent into LA's Vice Abattior
"LA Confidential" is not a novel to be read so much as it is a novel to be re-read, possibly 3 or more times.At nearly 500 pages, yes, that's asking a lot of a reader, but Ellroy and "LA Confidential" are well worth the stretch.But be warned--Ellroy never hesitates to shock with the vilest and most depraved extremes of human depravity and evil. "LA Confidential" unflinchingly serves up an intoxicating broth of '50's style, hairy-armpit men's sweat-magazine action, highly complex plotting, sick SICK crime intrigue along with historical based "faction" inspired by the LA police dept's long and sordid history of corruption.

Fans of the 1997 movie should DEFINITELY make the effort to experience the source material here.Brian Helgeland (who won an Oscar for his screenplay) did an outstanding job adapting Ellroy's novel, and I agree captured the spirit and essence of the novel.BUT so MUCH had to be left out to make a 2 hour movie.I would say 60% of the novel got left "on the cutting room floor" to adapt for screen. This is reason enough I think for movie fans to take a run at the novel, not only to see everything the movie had to miss, but also, to appreciate what a complex yarn Ellroy spun here AND certainly the bang-up adaptation Helgeland squeezed out of it.

It is the understatement of the year to just say James Ellroy is cynical in extremis about humanity in general."LA Confidential" has got to be absolutely as hard-bitten as crime fiction can get, and it seems like good is only done incidentally. Once every corrupt and predatory angle is played, some benefit is reaped by innocents only after these feral human pit-bulls tear each other to shreds. Maybe one gunsel or bent cop will find a whisper of a conscience during a lull in the bloodshed and double-dealing and provide readers with some backhanded facsimile of a happy ending.

So what's the appeal, then?Partly it's just the lurid shock of vicariously experiencing Ellroy's eternal midnight of California damnation.But let's give him awestruck credit for his tough, relentless, flint-edged plotting and dialogue that keeps you up way later than you should every night, to read just "one more chapter".I should also add that the blood and guts carnage is also heavily salted with wicked, biting humor to counterbalance the crime squalor AND further amaze you with Ellroy's prowess.If you have the stomach for crime noir this hard edged, I have never read anyone who does it better than Ellroy does.

I concede I may not be the sharpest crayola in the box, but as indicated in my opener, "LA Confidential" is SO dense and multilayered, with an unforgivingly huge cast of characters, that it is very easy to get lost or confused.All the better to read it again--and again--and grow into full appreciation of the elaborate elegance of the plot and to better appreciate the artistry--yes--of Ellroy's writing.It certainly helped me to have seen the movie first so I could picture the actors' faces while reading of them in the novel. But I am confident the novel packs no less of a punch even if you haven't seen the movie.

Once "LA Confidential" hooks you, step up to The Black Dahlia for more fact-based and equally grisly LA crime horror, then see Ellroy really soar with American Tabloid: A Novel, then sequel The Cold Six Thousand: A Novel, where his parallel universe of gang crime and political corruption goes national, fictionalizing the Bay of Pigs, JFK assassination, Howard Hughes' lunatic Las Vegas days, the nefarious J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Kennedy, MLK, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, & much, much more.

Only time will tell whether Ellroy gets recognized as a literary worthy like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson got to be.Whether he does or not may not be settled in our lifetimes, but that should certainly not inhibit our enjoyment of Ellroy's brass-knuckled work today.If you won't get squeamish when the going gets rough, "LA Confidential" is your ticket to some top shelf crime mystery.Best enjoyed while sipping cheap bourbon on the rocks (cigarettes optional, but definitely era-appropriate).

Rewarding in the Extreme
This third in James Ellroy's LA Quartet series of LAPD novels is an ambitious, profound and highly entertaining exploration of post-war Los Angeles power and corruption. The shotgun-blast writing style is initially disconcerting (I was going whaaaa???? for the first several pages), but once you get into Ellroy's rhythm, you'll be fine. He's one of the most original stylists writing today, and here his approach ideally suits the material.

The three main characters, ambitious rich boy Ed Exley, showboat cop Jack Vincennes, and brutal, tender Bud White, are all richly drawn, deeply flawed, and fully human. The many supporting characters, some actual historical figures, some inspired by historical figures and some fictional, are fascinating and fill appropriate places in the complex narrative. You must read closely and read all the way through as there are many interweaving plots and themes: police corruption, tabloid journalism, a prostitution ring, pornography, drugs, organized crime, plastic surgery, and seriously twisted skeletons in the closet of an animator/amusement park developer inspired by Walt Disney. If your mind is only half-focused, or you stop part way through and pick up the book several days or weeks later, you'll be lost.

Others differ, but for me, this is the best of the quartet and works just fine as a stand-alone. There's high drama, plenty of humor, lots of fun guessing who the real-life models for some of the characters might be--I've enjoyed Googling the character names to learn more about the real-life figures--and brutal, hard-won redemption.

Curtis Hanson's film adaption is of necessity boiled down--the movie is plenty complex with most of thenovel's subplots removed--but brilliantly done. Still, read the book for the full story. You won't be sorry. ... Read more

Product Description

Kurt Vonnegut is a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as "a true artist"* with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

Customer Reviews (93)

welcome to the monkey house
the novel is good but the shipping time was very lengthy wanted it sooner other than that the product was as discribed

Fantastic Collection
Welcome to the Monkey House is a fantastic collection of Vonnegut. These short stories allow the reader to view the world through the eyes of Kurt Vonnegut. I recommend this to all. If you like these short stories check out his Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction.

This Book Saved My Life
I know the title of my review sounds exaggerated but it isn't.Allow me to explain.Ten years ago I had Postpartum Depression.Postpartum Depression is such a small phrase for the crushing mental agony I experienced.Each day seemed worse than the last and I counted the hours until my husband returned home so that I could retreat from myself for a few hours by walking around the block.

I know there are support groups and a lot more women have come out and talked about their experiences, but at the time I lived in a smallish, conservative community and for the first month all I had was my husband, a psychologist I met with once a week and Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut probably sounds like a strange choice of reading for someone who is depressed and anxious, but this short story collection sustained me through one of my darker days.

Here's what I did, I read the first story.The story seemed a little slow to me, but I forced myself to savor each word and every sentence.I promised myself that if I could read one story, I could get through the next hour.Sometimes I lost the thread and had to go back and reread entire paragraphs, but the stories are so engrossing that soon I felt the tortuous shadows hovering around me retreat until I came to the end.Then I started all over again.I read Harrison Bergeron three times, sometimes I read aloud as I fed my baby.My voice was weak and scratchy at first but as the story progressed, I could hear myself speaking in a more normal tone.

I know what your thinking.Therapy by literature?That's ridiculous.But I'm not trying to prescribe this for everyone, not even one person, I just wanted to share my experience of this amazing little book.

Anyway, I'm not saying that people should read this because it is a great work of American fiction or because everyone should read Vonnegut, at least once, before dying, I think it is worth reading because it is good.The stories are as fresh and innovative as when he first wrote them (my opinion) and they are fun, sad, scary and thoughtful.

My Favorite Vonnegut Book
This is my favorite Vonnegut book, and I've read most of them. The stories are very original and short enough to hold my attention. I recommend it highly, especially if you are new to Vonnegut.

Loved it
This book has cemented my love for KV as an author. He is capable of giving exactly enough of the right details to create the perfect sense of 'wow, that was interesting', in every single story. I have only read three or four other KV books, (Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle among them), but after having read this I am now in the process of ordering every book I can find by him. That a story like the Euphio question that raises such powerful issues (for instance, does the creator of a machine have the rights to prevent it's proliferation? Is happiness "bought" as valuable happiness "earned"? Does "easier" always correspond to "better"?), and forces their consideration in so few pages (17!) is amazing. His style is natural, and makes you want to continue reading, within three days (week-days (during which I was taking a full graduate-level course load)) I had read it, cover to cover. I would unreservedly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a book that will make you think. ... Read more

Product Description

Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier—with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. The New York Times-bestselling Grand Master of suspense deftly displays the other side of his genius, with seven classic western tales of destiny and fatal decision . . . and trust as essential to survival as it is hard-earned.

Customer Reviews (8)

For those who enjoy western fun
I like the short story format.These short stories are no exception (if you enjoy westerns).A few of these are far better than others, but the book is good on a whole.Surprisingly, one of the weaker stories (but still good) is the title story.The best story in the collection of seven, is the story called "The Captives."This is more than a short story, but less than a novella.It gives the writer a chance to develop some characters and gives more time for the story to evolve.I really ate this story up.I plan on moving onto a full length western novel by Leonard.You may know this name from the GET SHORTY story or movie.

Pardner, Let Me Say They Are Short Stories Not Novels
Ok, first off this is a collection of short stories. It is not a novel, does not even pretend to be. That being said, you might not like this itemif you feel a need to know when a cowboy cooks biscuits, makes water in the mesquite, or remembers his old sweetheart. There are other works for that, such as Lonseome Dove or Last Stand At Saber River, or How the West Was Won. If you need that much detail, skip this book. It does not have it. If you can handle a quick trip to the old west this book is for you. Leonard does provide grit and quick thinking in each story. The tails are chock full of emotion and action without being overdrawn. So, if you can handle a tail in which every action of the characters is not included but this book. If not ride down the trail.

Good
This is a good set of tales by Elmore Leonard, whose writing is lean and efficient, but could do with a few more details.

Some Great Little Stories
I bought this for "3:10 to Yuma," after seeing the most recent version of the film and then the Glenn Ford version (which is now my favorite), and it was interesting to see what a simple story inspired both films, and how the tale grew in the telling (the short story begins at the hotel!). But I ended up enjoying most of these short Western gems and appreciating how well Leonard crafts his tales with grit and humor and the pure desire to entertain.

The Movie was better
This story, from which the movie was taken, is not carried off as well as the movie----which is generally the reverse. This story is kind of 3rd class fiction, and not very endearing to the reader----at least this reader. ... Read more

Product Description
Private collection, NOT an ex-library copy, "Hondo" (Western) by Louis L'Amour, read by David Strathairn, Unabridged, 4 cassettes, Books on Tape, not in orginal contained but placed in a hard shell case. Both case and tapes look like new. ... Read more

Product Description
Playaway is the easiest way to listen to a book on the go. An all-in-one format, the player and content are combined in one 2 ounce unit and it comes with everything you need to start listening immediately. No separate player needed, no CDs, no downloads - just press play!

"Two Presidential candidates - one a rising Illinois legislator, the other a bombastic US Senator. Obama and McCain? Think again. In this transcendent Broadway play, the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates tackle the day's most passionate issue - slavery. Their battle comes to life through the eyes of Adele Douglas, wife of candidate Stephen Douglas. Challenged by the charming man from Illinois, she reexamines her basic beliefs about the American concept of freedom. "Evocative, inspiring and stirring theatre..."" raves The New York Times." ... Read more