New Releases by Larry McMurtry

The final book of the Lonesome Dove quartet, set in the American West.

Ranging from Texas to California on a young writer''s journey in a car he calls El Chevy, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is one of Larry McMurtry''s most vital and entertaining novels. Danny Deck is on the verge of success as an author when he flees Houston and hurtles unexpectedly into the hearts of three women: a girlfriend who makes him happy but who won''t stay, a neighbor as generous as she is lusty, and his pal Emma Horton. It''s a wild ride toward literary fame and an uncharted country...beyond everyone he deeply loves. All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a wonderful display of Larry McMurtry''s unique gift: his ability to re-create the subtle textures of feelings, the claims of passing time and familiar place, and the rich interlocking swirl of people''s lives.

An unforgettable addition to his widely acclaimed body of work, The Late Child is Larry McMurtry''s tender, funny, and poignant sequel to The Desert Rose—McMurtry delivers another rich cast of characters and a heartfelt, bittersweet story that unfolds on the open road, in one woman''s search for strength, understanding, and hope. Harmony is the optimistic, resilient Las Vegas ex-showgirl who returns home one day to the news that her beloved daughter, Pepper, has died of AIDS. In an effort to come to grips with her loss, she decides she must travel to New York City, where her daughter had been living, to understand Pepper''s life leading up to her death. She manages to stay afloat, buoyed by her precocious five-year-old son, Eddie, and her two outspoken sisters as they set forth on a journey across the country, seeking answers about her daughter''s death. From Nevada to New York to Oklahoma, the eccentrics Harmony and her entourage meet nudge them closer to an inner peace with life, and a way to find hope in the future. Alive with inventive storytelling and honest emotion, The Late Child is a warm, enriching experience that celebrates the unique relationship between mother and child.

The first of Larry McCurtry''s Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove tetralogy, showcasing McCurtry''s talent for breathing new life into the vanished American West through two of the most memorable heroes in contemporary fiction: Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. As young Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call ("Gus" and "Call" for short) have much to learn about survival in a land fraught with perils: not only the blazing heat and raging tornadoes, roiling rivers and merciless Indians, but also the deadly whims of soldiers. On their first expeditions—led by incompetent officers and accompanied by the robust, dauntless whore known as the Great Western—they will face death at the hands of the cunning Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump and the silent Apache Gomez. They will be astonished by the Mexican army. And Gus will meet the love of his life.

Funny, sad, full of wonderful characters and the word-perfect dialogue of which he is the master, McMurtry brings the Thalia saga to an end with Duane confronting depression in the midst of plenty. Surrounded by his children, who all seem to be going through life crises involving sex, drugs, and violence; his wife, Karla, who is wrestling with her own demons; and friends like Sonny, who seem to be dying, Duane can''t seem to make sense of his life anymore. He gradually makes his way through a protracted end-of-life crisis of which he is finally cured by reading Proust''s Remembrance of Things Past, a combination of penance, and prescription from Dr. Carmichael that somehow works. Duane''s Depressed is the work of a powerful, mature artist, with a deep understanding of the human condition, a profound ability to write about small-town life, and perhaps the surest touch of any American novelist for the tangled feelings that bind and separate men and women.

McMurtry''s follow-up to All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers will capture a whole new audience, opening up the world of the now-millionaire Danny Deck and his strong and passionate daughter T.R.. "Mr. Deck, are you my stinkin'' Daddy?" In a furious phone call from T.R., the daughter he''s never met, Danny Deck gets the jolt of his life. A TV writer who''s retired to his Texas mansion, Danny spends his days talking to the answering machines of his ex-lovers from New York to Paris and dreaming of the characters in the sitcom he''s created. But suddenly, a hurricane called T.R. is storming into his life... In his most moving and richly comic contemporary novel since Texasville, Larry McMurtry returns to the modern West he created so masterfully in The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment. Some Can Whistle spins a tale of Hollywood glitz and Texas grit; of an extraordinary young woman and a murderous young man; and of a middle-aged millionaire running head-on into the longings, joys, and pathos of real life.

A strange old woman caked in Montana mud pens a letter to her darling daughter back East—the writer''s name is Martha Jane, but her friends call her Calamity... I am the Wild West, no show about it. I was one of the people who kept it wild. Larry McMurtry returns to the territory of his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterwork, Lonesome Dove, to sing the song of Calamity Jane''s last ride. In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance. Martha Jane—better known as Calamity—is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody''s Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity''s Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley''s shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of the tour, McMurtry turns the story of a band of hardy, irrepressible survivors into an unforgettable portrait of love, fellowship, dreams, and heartbreak.

From the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning “absolute master of ‘Western’ prose,” comes McMurtry’s electrifying take on the classic tale of Billy the Kid, the teenage outlaw of the American Old West. The first time I saw Billy, he came walking out of a cloud... Welcome to the wild, hot-blooded adventures of Billy the Kid, the American West’s most legendary outlaw. Larry McMurtry takes us on a hell-for-leather journey with Billy and his friends as they ride, drink, love, fight, shoot, and escape their way into the shining memories of Western myth. Surrounded by a splendid cast of characters that only Larry McMurtry could create, Billy charges headlong toward his fate, to become in death the unforgettable desperado he aspires to be in life. Not since Lonesome Dove has there been such a rich, exciting novel about the cowboys, Indians, and gunmen who live at the blazing heart of the American dream.

In this haunting and elegiac sequel to Duane’s Depressed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Larry McMurtry returns to Thalia, Texas, to explore emotional reinvention, erotic awakening, and the sting of midlife reintegration. Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it seems that everything has changed alarmingly. His office barely has a reason to exist now that his son Dickie is running the company from Wichita Falls, his lifelong friends seem to have suddenly grown old, his familiar hangout—once a good old-fashioned convenience store—has been transformed into an "Asian Wonder Deli," his daughters seem to have taken leave of their senses and moved on to new and strange lives, and his own health is at serious risk. It''s as if Duane cannot find any solace or familiarity in Thalia and cannot even bring himself to revisit the house he shared for decades with his late wife, Karla, and their children and grandchildren. He spends his days aimlessly riding his bicycle (already a sign of serious eccentricity in West Texas) and living in his cabin outside town. The more he tries to get back to the rhythm of his old life, the more he realizes that he should have left Thalia long ago—indeed everybody he cared for seems to have moved on without him, to new lives or to death. The only consolation is meeting the young, attractive geologist, Annie Cameron, whom Dickie has hired to work out of the Thalia office. Annie is brazenly seductive, yet oddly cold, young enough to be Duane''s daughter, or worse, and Duane hasn''t a clue how to handle her. He''s also in love with his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, who after years of rebuffing him, has decided to undertake what she feels is Duane''s very necessary sex reeducation, opening him up to some major, life-changing surprises. When the Light Goes reminds everyone that where there''s life, there is indeed hope. At once realistic and life-loving, often hilariously funny, and always moving, Larry McMurtry has written one of his finest and most compelling novels to date, doing for Duane what he did so triumphantly for Aurora in Terms of Endearment.

The earthy humor and the powerful emotional impact that set McMurtry''s Terms of Endearment apart from other novels now rise to brilliant new heights with The Evening Star. McMurtry takes us deep into the heart of Texas, and deep into the heart of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Aurora Greenway—along with her family, friends, and lovers—in a tale of affectionate wit, bittersweet tenderness, and the unexpected turns that life can take. This is Larry McMurtry at his very best: warm, compassionate, full of comic invention, an author so attuned to the feelings, needs, and desires of his characters that they possess a reality unique in American fiction.

Writing with characteristic grace and wit, Larry McMurtry tackles the full spectrum of his favorite themes -- from sex, literature, and cowboys to rodeos, small-town folk, and big-city slickers. First published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the classic statement of what it means to come from Texas. In these essays, McMurtry opens a window into the past and present of America''s largest state. In his own words: "Before I was out of high school, I realized I was witnessing the dying of a way of life -- the rural, pastoral way of life. In the Southwest the best energies were no longer to be found on the homeplace, or in the small towns; the cities required these energies and the cities bought them...." "I recognized, too, that the no-longer-open but still spacious range on which my ranching family had made its livelihood...would not produce a livelihood for me or for my siblings and their kind....The myth of the cowboy grew purer every year because there were so few actual cowboys left to contradict it...." "I had actually been living in cities for fourteen years when I pulled together these essays; intellectually I had been a city boy, but imaginatively, I was still trudging up the dusty path that led out of the country...."

In this tale of high-spirited and terrifying adventure, set against the background of the West that Larry McMurtry has made his own, By Sorrow’s River is an epic in its own right with the return of the formidable, young Tasmin Berrybender. At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the “Sin Killer” and mother to their young son, Monty. By Sorrow’s River continues the Berrybender party’s trail across the endless Great Plains of the West toward Santa Fe, where they intend, those who are lucky enough to survive the journey, to spend the winter. They meet up with a vast array of characters from the history of the West: Kit Carson, the famous scout; Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; two aristocratic Frenchmen, whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a party of slavers; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other astonishing characters who prove, once again, that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look. Most of what is there is dangerous and hostile, even when faced with Tasmin’s remarkable, frosty sangfroid. She is one of the strongest and most interesting of Larry McMurtry’s characters, and she stands at the center of this powerful and ambitious novel of the West.

From the most prolific author to write on all things Western, Larry McMurtry follows the rise of international celebrity "Buffalo" Bill Cody, tracker, part-time Indian scout and showman, and his most famous and celebrated star, Annie Oakley, the gifted woman sharpshooter, and how they became the first of America''s great superstars. From the early 1800s to the end of his life in 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody was as famous as anyone could be. Annie Oakley was his most celebrated protégée, the ''slip of a girl'' from Ohio who could (and did) outshoot anybody to become the most celebrated star of Buffalo Bill''s Wild West Show. In this sweeping dual biography, Larry McMurtry explores the lives, the legends and above all the truth about two larger-than-life American figures. With his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill helped invent the image of the West that still exists today—cowboys and Indians, rodeo, rough rides, sheriffs and outlaws, trick shooting, Stetsons, and buckskin. The short, slight Annie Oakley—born Phoebe Ann Moses—spent sixteen years with Buffalo Bill''s Wild West, where she entertained Queen Victoria, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, among others. Beloved by all who knew her, including Hunkpapa leader, Sitting Bull, Oakley became a legend in her own right and after her death, achieved a new lease of fame in Irving Berlin''s musical Annie, Get Your Gun. To each other, they were always ''Missie'' and ''Colonel''. To the rest of the world, they were cultural icons, setting the path for all that followed. Larry McMurtry—a writer who understands the West better than any other—recreates their astonishing careers and curious friendship in a fascinating history that reads like the very best of his fiction.

As he crisscrosses America—driving in search of the present, the past, and himself—Larry McMurtry shares his fascination with this nation''s great trails and the culture that has developed around them. Ever since he was a boy growing up in Texas only a mile from Highway 281, Larry McMurtry has felt the pull of the road. His town was thoroughly landlocked, making the highway his "river, its hidden reaches a mystery and an enticement. I began my life beside it and I want to drift down the entire length of it before I end this book." In Roads, McMurtry embarks on a cross-country trip where his route is also his destination. As he drives, McMurtry reminisces about the places he''s seen, the people he''s met, and the books he''s read, including more than 3,000 books about travel. He explains why watching episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show might be the best way to find joie de vivre in Minnesota; the scenic differences between Route 35 and I-801; which vigilantes lived in Montana and which hailed from Idaho; and the histories of Lewis and Clark, Sitting Bull, and Custer that still haunt Route 2 today. As it makes its way from South Florida to North Dakota, from eastern Long Island to Oregon, Roads is travel writing at its best.

The complete collection of Larry McMurtry''s major four-volume series following the Berrybender family—aristocratic, English, and fiercely out of place—on their journey to see the American West as it begins to open up. Sin Killer It is 1830, the dawn of a new era in America''s growth, when Lord and Lady Berrybender embark on a journey up the Missouri River to explore the frontier and to broaden the horizons of their children: Tasmin, a budding young woman of grit, beauty, and determination, her vivacious and difficult sister, and her brother. As they journey by rough stages up the Missouri, they meet with all the dangers, difficulties, beauties, and temptations of the untamed West. For Tasmin, these temptations include Jim Snow, a frontiersman, ferocious Indian fighter, and part-time preacher known up and down the Missouri as "the Sin Killer." The Wandering Hill Abandoning their luxurious steamer, which is stuck in the ice near the Knife River, the Berrybenders make their way overland to the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers to spend the winter in conditions of siege at the trading post of Pierre Boisdeffre. By now, Tasmin is a married woman, or as good as, living with the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow, pregnant with his child and about to discover that he has secrets he hasn''t told her. For his part, Jim is about to discover that in taking the outspoken, tough-minded, stubbornly practical young aristocratic woman into his teepee he has bitten off more than he can chew... By Sorrow''s River The Berrybender party once again takes to the trail, across the endless Great Plains of the West towards Santa Fe, where they intend—those who are lucky enough to survive the journey—to spend the winter. Along the way, they meet up with a varied cast of characters from the history of the West—Kit Carson, the famous scout; Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; two aristocratic Frenchmen whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other astonishing characters who prove once again that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look. Folly and Glory Under irksome, though comfortable, arrest with her family in Mexican Santa Fe, Tasmin Berrybender—who would once have followed Jim Snow anywhere—is no longer even sure she likes him, or knows where to go to next. Neither does anyone else—even Captain Clark, of Lewis & Clark fame, is puzzled by the great changes sweeping over the West, replacing red men and buffalo with towns and farms. As the Berrybenders embark on a desperate journey to New Orleans—starving, dying of thirst, and in constant, bloody battle, with slavers pursuing them—both Jim Snow and Tasmin find themselves forced to choose among conflicting loves, and finally decide where their futures lie.

Set in the late-nineteenth century, this novel chronicles a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, and follows the lives of Gus and Call, the cowboys heading the drive, Gus''s woman, Lorena, and Blue Duck, a sinister Indian renegade

In a prolific life of singular literary achievement, Larry McMurtry has succeeded in a variety of genres: in coming-of-age novels likeThe Last Picture Show; in collections of essays likeIn a Narrow Grave; and in the reinvention of the Western on a grand scale in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,Lonesome Dove. Now, inBooks: A Memoir, McMurtry writes about his endless passion for books: as a boy growing up in a largely "bookless" world; as a young man devouring the vastness of literature with astonishing energy; as a fledgling writer and family man; and above all, as one of America''s most prominent bookmen. He takes us on his journey to becoming an astute, adventurous book scout and collector who would eventually open stores of rare and collectible editions in Georgetown, Houston, and finally, in his previously "bookless" hometown of Archer City, Texas. In this work of extraordinary charm, grace, and good humor, McMurtry recounts his life as both a reader and a writer, how the countless books he has read worked to form his literary tastes, while giving us a lively look at the eccentrics who collect, sell, or simply lust after rare volumes.Books: A Memoiris like the best kind of diary -- full of McMurtry''s wonderful anecdotes, amazing characters, engaging gossip, and shrewd observations about authors, book people, literature, and the author himself. At once chatty, revealing, and deeply satisfying, Books is, like McMurtry, erudite, life loving, and filled with excellent stories. It is a book to be savored and enjoyed again and again.

Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, Brokeback Mountain is her masterpiece. Brokeback Mountain was originally published in The New Yorker. It won the National Magazine Award. It also won an O. Henry Prize. Included in this volume is Annie Proulx''s haunting story about the difficult, dangerous love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. Also included is the celebrated screenplay for the major motion picture "Brokeback Mountain," written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. All three writers have contributed essays on the process of adapting this critically acclaimed story for film.

In perhaps his finest "contemporary" novel since Terms of Endearment, Larry McMurtry, with his miraculously sure touch at creating instantly recognizable women characters, and his equally miraculous sharp eye for the absurdities of everyday life in the modern West, writes about two women, old friends, who set off on an adventure -- with unpredictable and sometimes hilarious results.As Loop Group opens, we meet Maggie, whose three grown-up daughters have arrived at her Hollywood home to try and make her see sense about her life, which isn''t easy, first of all because their own lives are a mess, and secondly because as far as Maggie is concerned her own life makes perfect sense. She is self-supporting, running a successful "loop group" dubbing movies, she has a lover (admittedly he is married, and her psychoanalyst, and very old), and leads a busy life that intersects with lots of interesting -- all right, bizarre -- people.Still, her daughters push her into having a few second thoughts about her life, and these are reinforced when her best friend, Connie, seeks an escape from her own world of complex and difficult relationships with men. Since neither high-end nor low-end shopping seems to relieve their angst, and since a succession of sad events takes place that shakes Maggie to the core, she conceives the idea of driving to visit her Aunt Cooney''s ranch near Electric City, Texas, and the two women prepare for the trip by buying a .38 Special revolver (which leads to unexpected trouble along the way). This road trip will end by changing their lives.Tangling along the way with Hopi Indians, with a bearded vagrant who turns out to be an old acquaintance, with the theft of their car (and their revolver), and with every possible variety of cardsharp, faker, charmer, and crook, the two women eventually proceed through the desert landscape to Electric City and discover some home truths about life. When they return to Hollywood, they find that one of Maggie''s old friends, an ancient MGM producer, has left her a gift that enables her to make a new start to her life and to bring a new measure of sanity to her family and friends.Alternately hilariously funny and profoundly sad -- even tragic -- Loop Group is a major Larry McMurtry novel and a joy to read.

The final volume of the The Berrybender Narratives, and an epic in its own right.

Journeying up the Missouri River in 1830, the wealthy Berrybenders encounter the challenges of the untamed American West before Tasmin Berrybender falls in love with frontiersman and part-time preacher Jim Snow.

Set against the bitter frontier strife between Texans and the Comanche, Texas Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call battle Buffalo Hump, the enigmatic war chief, and Gus'' long-time nemesis, Blue Duck.

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 by white representatives of the U.S. government was a tragic turning point in the history of the West. A mythic figure puzzled over by generations of historians, Crazy Horse emerges from McMurtry''s sensitive portrait as the poignant hero of a long-since-vanished epoch.

"Using as a springboard an essay by the German literary critic Walter Benjamin that he first read in Archer City''s Dairy Queen, McMurtry examines the small-town way of life that big oil and big ranching have nearly destroyed.

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove and his screenwriting partner Diana Ossana,Pretty Boy Floyd is a fast paced-novel about the price of fame and the corruption of innocence based on the true life story of Charley Floyd.

Ranging from Texas to California on a young writer''s journey in a car he calls El Chevy, "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers "is one of Larry McMurtry''s most vital and entertaining novels. Danny Deck is on the verge of success as an author when he flees Houston and hurtles unexpectedly into the hearts of three women: a girlfriend who makes him happy but who won''t stay, a neighbor as generous as she is lusty, and his pal Emma Horton. It''s a wild ride toward literary fame and an uncharted country...beyond everyone he deeply loves. "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" is a wonderful display of Larry McMurtry''s unique gift: his ability to re-create the subtle textures of feelings, the claims of passing time and familiar place, and the rich interlocking swirl of people''s lives.