Most Popular Books by Larry McMurtry

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this acclaimed novel that inspired the Academy Award–winning motion picture, Larry McMurtry created two unforgettable characters who won the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere: Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma. Aurora is the kind of woman who makes the whole world orbit around her, including a string of devoted suitors. Widowed and overprotective of her daughter, Aurora adapts at her own pace until life sends two enormous challenges her way: Emma’s hasty marriage and subsequent battle with cancer. Terms of Endearment is the Oscar-winning story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter and their struggle to find the courage and humor to live through life’s hazards—and to love each other as never before.

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.

Donated.

A new generation discovers The Last Picture Show, “about as close to gem-like perfection as a novel can.” —Thomas Powers, from the new introduction. Whereas Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is universally hailed as the greatest novel of the Old West, The Last Picture Show is increasingly recognized as a standard bearer of contemporary Western fiction. First published in 1966, this elegiac masterpiece has been better known for the Academy Award-winning film that it spawned in 1971, but this new hardcover edition affirms McMurtry’s centrality to the twentieth-century canon, revealing him as “an alchemist who converts the basest material into gold” (New York Times Book Review). Set in north central Texas in the mythical town of Thalia during the Korean War, the novel, with its heavy dose of realism. portrays the frustrated lives of the sexually charged teenagers and jaded adults McMurtry grew up with, challenging stereotypes employed by previous novelists and screenwriters who banally filled a mythic West with “cowboys and Indians.” Comparing the novel to Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, Thomas Powers brilliantly contextualizes The Last Picture Show for a new generation.

With a riotously colorful cast of highbrows, cowpokes, and rodeo queens, in its wry humor, tenderness, and epic panorama, Moving On is a celebration of our land by Larry McMurtry, one of America’s best-loved authors. Moving On is a big, powerful novel about men and women in the American West. Set in the 1960s against the backdrop of the honky-tonk glamour of the rodeo and the desperation of suburban Houston, it is the story of the restless and lovable Patsy Carpenter, one of Larry McMurtry’s most unforgettable characters. Patsy—young, beautiful, with a sharp tongue and an irresistible charm—and her shiftless husband, Jim, are adrift in the West. Patsy moves through affairs of the heart like small towns—there’s Pete, the rodeo clown, and Hank, the graduate student, and others—always in search of the life that seems ever receding around the next bend. Moving On is vintage McMurtry.

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.

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.

In Cadillac Jack, Larry McMurtry—Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove—proves his unique talent for conjuring up the real, often eccentric people who inhabit the American heartland and for capturing the peculiarly American search for new frontiers and adventure. Cadillac Jack is a rodeo-cowboy-turned-antique-scout whose nomadic, womanizing life—centered on his classic pearl-colored Cadillac—rambles between the Texas flatlands of flea markets and small-time auctions and Washington, D.C.''s political-social life of parties, hustlers, vixens, and spies. Along the way he meets a cast of indelibly etched characters: among them, the strikingly beautiful, social-climbing Cindy Sanders; Boog Miller, the tackily-dressing millionaire good ol'' boy who patronizes Jack''s business and who has more political muscle than a litter of lobbyists; Khaki Descartes, the pushy, brain-picking, Washington woman reporter; Freddy Fu, an undercover CIA agent working out of a greasy barbecue joint called The Cover-Up; and Jean Arber, the mother of two and a fledgling antique-store owner who can''t quite figure out if she''ll marry Jack or not. Wild, touching, and hilariously funny, Cadillac Jack is Larry McMurtry''s raucous social satire of sex, politics, and love in the fast lane, peopled with Americans only he could render.

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

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