The Rebels Sons Of Texas And Long Way To Texas

It is the mid 1830s and a growing flow of American pioneers into Mexican Texas has sown the seeds of revolution. In the midst of the turmoil are the Lewis brothers – Andrew, Michael, and James – scions of Mordecai Lewis, who crossed the Sabine River into Texas a decade past. Now the news along the Texas frontier is of a young general, a self-styled "Napoleon of the West," named Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who wants to stamp out any gringo talk of independence from Mexico and oust the American interlopers from Texas. Standing in opposition to Santa Anna is the former governor of Tennessee and veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian battles, Sam Houston, who is gathering a volunteer army to meet the Mexican forces. Against the heroic, bloody backdrop of the Texas War of Independence--the battles of Gonzalez, San Antonio de Bexar, Goliad, the Alamo and San Jacinto--the Lewis men and their families join such rebels as Jim Bowie, James Fannin, Ben Milam, Juan Seguin, James Butler Bonham, William Barret Travis, and David Crockett, in wresting Texas from Mexican rule. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee. Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters a Spanish patrol determined to repel all American invaders. After a bloody skirmish leaves their father dead, Michael and Andrew find their way back to their Tennessee farm. Five years later, after the Spanish government in Mexico City has agreed to permit 300 American families to settle in Texas, the Lewis brothers have their opportunity to re-enter Texas. They ride to the frontier town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where Michael falls in love with Marie Villaret, daughter of a wealthy French landowner, then cross the Sabine to find Stephen F. Austin, a Missouri entrepreneur in charge of the new American colony. But the Lewises are considered interlopers and horse thieves and are dogged by a patrol led by the same ruthless Spanish offer who killed their father five years before Sons of Texas is the first volume in a trilogy that follows the lives and adventures of the Lewis family through the era of the Alamo and Texas Independence under Sam Houston. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"One thing is certain," a reviewer in True West Magazine recently said, "as long as there are writers as skillful as Elmer Kelton, Western literature will never die." Few would disagree with the assessment of the man whose peers voted the "Best Western writer of all time" and whose 50 novels form a testament and tribute to the American West. But who is that Texas gentleman with the white Stetson and rimless eyeglasses whose friendly face appears on so many book jackets? Sandhills Boy is Kelton's memoir, a funny and poignant story of "a freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd, a sheep ready to be sheared," growing up in the wild, dry, sandhills of West Texas. The son of a working cowboy and ranch foreman, Elmer was expected to follow in his father's footsteps but learned at an early age that he had no talents in the cowboy's trade. Buck Kelton called Elmer "Pop," said he was "slow as the seven-year itch," and reluctantly supported his son's decision to become a student at the University of Texas, and, eventually, a journalist and writer. Kelton's life in ranch and oil patch Texas during the Great Depression is told with warm nostalgic humor animated with stories of the cowboys and their wives and kids who gave the time and place its special flavor. He writes with great feeling of his service in WW2 in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and the romantic circumstances in which his life changed in the village of Ebensee, Austria. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In Bitter Trail, Kelton tells the story of a tough teamster named Frio Wheeler whose wagons haul cotton from Texas to Mexico. Sounds like a peaceable enterprise? The problem is that the Civil War is raging throughout the South and Wheeler's cotton is to be sold for gold--gold used to buy guns and ammunition for the Confederate army. And, added to his balky mules, the broiling heat, and killing drought of the Mexican dessert, Wheeler has even more serious matters to contend with: His wagons are attacked, his cotton bales are burned, he is captured and tortured by bandidos in league with Union sympathizers, and he is betrayed by his best friend--his former partner and brother of the woman he loves! At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"The Buckskin Line tells of Texas' chaotic early years, when a ragtag group of irregular volunteers fought to defend the far edges of settlement from incursion by Indians and frontier outlaws. In time, they would become known as the Texas Rangers."—Elmer Kelton This is a story of the early days when... An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father. Not long ago, Mike Shannon, was bushwhacked and killed, and his death still haunts Rusty. Rusty thinks he knows the identity of Mike's killers. But with Texas now in the throes of seceding from the Union, Rusty has his hands full fighting for the law in lawless Texas and for the life of the woman he loves. If that were not enough of a burden, Rusty is also heading for a showdown with the Comanche warrior who killed his family over twenty years ago. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Books 6 & 7 in Elmer Kelton's acclaimed Texas Rangers series, offered together at one low price Jericho’s Road “This is Jericho’s Road. Take the Other.” When young Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is assigned to the Texas-Mexico border, he learns the meaning of this ominous notice on the edge of a great tract of land above the Rio Grande. Rancher Jericho Jackson is at war with a similarly ruthless cattle baron on the Mexican side of the river. The two men are rustling each other’s cattle, raiding and killing on both sides of the border, and heading for a bloody showdown—with only Pickard and his fellow Texas Rangers standing between them. Hard Trail to Follow Former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is following the plow in West Texas when he learns that his friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing, has been killed during a jailbreak led by a man called Cordell. Reinstated as a Ranger so he can get justice for Tom Blessing, Andy pursues Cordell even as evidence mounts that the escaped man did not kill Blessing. Pickard will see justice done no matter what it takes. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Compiled for the first time in book form, seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton's short story collection, Wild West. From rodeos to rustlers, from ranch life to the outlaw trail, Elmer Kelton’s take on the human condition shows us life in Texas as it was back then: simpler, but harder, with danger always present. Readers will meet several unforgettable characters, including a young veteran who overcomes his PTSD to fight a fire ravaging his town, a sheriff who continues to chase bandits despite having lost his job, and a frontier housewife who refuses to let her home be held hostage by dangerous criminals—even when all seems lost. Equally fascinating are the rancher and his wife who protect their adopted son when his abusive biological father returns unexpectedly, and the two women whose argument over a prospective lover leads to a no-holds-barred rodeo barrel race. As in all of Elmer Kelton’s work, readers will, once again, encounter the timeless strength of the human heart and the human spirit when everything else has gone awry. Filled with adventure and imbued with a love of the time, the people, and the place, these stories take us from the earliest days of the Wild West well into the twentieth century, each one embodying a passion for life that’s as wide as Texas sky. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.