"What was achieved and destroyed, what was made up and forgotten in the American West as the continent was mapped, the natives were displaced, and exploits were transformed into legends? In this new collection, Larry McMurtry profiles explorers and martyrs, hucksters and scholars - figures in the West's enduring yet ever-shifting mixture of myth and reality."--BOOK JACKET.

Features contemporary short works of the Western genre, including contributions from writers not usually associated with Westerns such as Jack Kerouac and Wallace Stegner, as well as stories from Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich, and Raymond Chandler.

"In 1999 Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to her son in her final days, his mother makes a stunning revelation of a previous marriage and sends McMurtry on a journey of an entirely different kind." "McMurtry...

Harmony is a Las Vegas showgirl. At night she's a lead dancer in a gambling casino; during the day she raises peacocks. She's one of a dying breed of dancers, faced with fewer and fewer jobs and an even bleaker future. Yet she maintains a calm cheerfulness in that arid neon landscape of supermarkets, drive-in wedding chapels, and all-night casinos. While Harmony's star is fading, her beautiful, cynical daughter Pepper's is on the rise. But Harmony...

Augustus McCrae and Woodrow call, longtime friends and former Texas Rangers, steal over a thousand head of cattle from rustlers south of the border and recruit an unlikely crew of hands to drive the herd 3,000 miles north to Montana.

This sequel to Lonesome Dove pits legendary Texas Ranger Woodrow Call against his deadliest adversary ever.

"Legends cloud the life of Crazy Horse, a seminal figure in American history but an enigma even to his own people in his own day. This biography looks back across more than one hundred and twenty years at the life and death of this great Sioux warrior who became a reluctant leader at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. With his uncanny gift for understanding the human psyche, Larry McMurtry animates the character of this remarkable figure, whose betrayal...