The Strong Shall Live

They came west to stay, risking their blood to dig the gold, ride the range, conquer the greedy, and carve out a legacy of freedom. Men honed by desert fires and edged by combat with fist and gun. Women tested to the limit of endurance by an unrelenting land. Now, in a long-awaited collection of his stories, Louis L'Amour tells of the real heroes of the frontier, the survivors for whom hanging tough was as natural as drawing breath.

I am deeply humbled and give all glory to God that you are now holding this book. I do not believe anything we do is by chance, nor is anything we experience whether seemingly good or bad. Most everyone throughout life is searching for greater meaning or purpose in who they are and what they do. A longing to know and understand why they are here and what ultimately is their destiny and birthright. This book recollects the journey within I also voyaged to seek out what the truth was to these most fundamental and foundational questions. I give all praise to God for by the Spirit He has guided me and convinced me to where I am now doubtless that Jesus Christ is our Lord, Savior and Redeemer. He was literally God in the flesh who was the defining Example on who we truly are and how we should live. His life, death and resurrection to eternity is the greatest Hope and Victory in all of history. I pray with all my being that you will seek out who this Jesus is for He absolutely has won my heart, and I am confident will also win yours if you truly come to know who He is. This book is my personal journey to know and live by the truth, full of stories, experiences, sorrows, challenges, heartbreaks, hope, love, passion, desire, visions, convictions and finally the revelation, wisdom and redemption in the joy of knowing who Christ Jesus truly is to all of mankind. This work is completely from the heart and I pray you will be encouraged by it and hopefully led to a more clear confidence in who you are and why you are here, and most importantly where you are going and what your true birthright really is. I give all praise and glory to God for He is worthy through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen

For the westerner trouble came with the territory. Long grass valleys, merciless deserts, sheer rock cliffs, icy streams, hidden trails, dusty towns. These were the proving grounds of daily life. At any time violence could explode and on the frontier there was no avoiding its sudden terrible impact. In this collection of his stories Louis L’Amour guides us to some of these untamed places where men and women faced the challenge of survival. And for the first time, L’Amour also presents a selection of riveting scenes from western history that are every bit as exciting as his stories.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Merricat Blackwood protects her sister, Constance, from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers after murders occur on the family estate.