The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Unabridged Selections from The Frontier Stories: Volume I [Abridged, Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Book Description

Series: Louis L'Amour | Publication Date: November 4, 2003

With more than 120 titles still in print, Louis L'Amour is recognized the world over as one of the most prolific and popular American authors in history. Though he met with phenomenal success in every genre he tried, the form that put him on the map was the short story. Now this great writer—Wall Street Journal recently compared with Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson—will receive his due as a great storyteller. This volume kicks off a series that will, when complete, anthologize all of L'Amour’ s short fiction, volume by handsome volume.

Here, in Volume One, is a treasure-trove of 35 frontier tales for his millions of fans and for those who have yet to discover L'Amour’s thrilling prose—and his vital role in capturing the spirit of the Old West for generations to come.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The spate of previously uncollected L'Amour short stories that have surfaced recently reveal L'Amour's broad talent and ability to master every genre from mystery to sports to mainstream fiction. But when readers think of L'Amour, they still think westerns, from Hondo (1953) to the Sackett epics. This collection, the first in a multivolume set, focuses on the West ("the frontier stories"), and it is vintage L'Amour. "The Gift of Cochise" opens the collection with a Hondo-like tale of a good man going to great lengths to protect the wife of a man he was forced to kill. A nameless drifter didn't have to confront the rustlers who threatened to take over his town, but after all, he was "Duffy's Man," and when you hired on, you did the tough work if you accepted the pay. L'Amour wrote about the big themes--love, courage, loyalty, honor--but he grounded them firmly in the context of daily struggles in an unforgiving land. A fine start to what will become an essential collection. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"L'Amour never writes with less than a saddle creak in his sentences and more often with a desert heatwave boiling up from a sunbaked paragraph. A master storyteller.... for reading under the stars."—Kirkus Reviews
  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739307800
• ISBN-13: 978-0739307809
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,226,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Novice Reviewer, June 25, 2004

By 

STANLEY J. HERING (VALLEJO, CALIFORNIA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1: The Frontier Stories (Hardcover)

I am 71 years young and have been reading since I was five. I think I have read about every kind of book imaginable. Since I became a mature adult, (about 50 years), one thing has become important to me. That is the ability of the author to hold my attention. I have found only three able to do that and only one consistantly. About ten years ago I started a collection of Louis L'Amour Leather Bound books. I have completed that collection and now I read about forty Louis L'Amour books a year. Every year. The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour have all been written before in other volumes. Sometimes in more than one volume but, if you are going on a trip and you want to read for enjoyment and not take several books along this book meets all requirements. It has several genre's of stories, mainly western, and it leaves a reader feeling accomplished and satisfied after completing a short story.
The world lost a great person and story teller when Louis passed on. I hope his children keep putting out his hidden works and if they do I will certainly add them to my collection, even if they are reprints from other books.

61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars L'Amour is the cure, November 20, 2003

By 

M. Dog (Everywhere and Nowhere) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1: The Frontier Stories (Hardcover)

When I was young, I overlooked Louis L'amour simply because he was so popular. My thinking being that a writer this popular must not dwell in the rarified air of the true "artist." Good God Almighty, how ignorant the young can be.

These are great stories, crafted with a sure, firm hand. After reading several of the stories, and enjoying every one, it became clear what made L'amour so enduring a writer. First, the stories are constructed like brick houses. Even the very short ones have within them a clean, pure structure. They always start off at full speed, moving very quickly through conflict and resolution. Also, they are very intriguing stories, meaning that I was curious and eager, in every single one, to discover what happens. Finally, L'amour wrote about real people. Set against the current trend in American literature to create outlandish characters, chalk full of oddball ticks and habits, L'amour's characters seemed somehow all that more memorable.

I don't know about you, but I have lost track of the number of books I have started recently, and after about 100 pages have to admit that 1) I really don't care about any of the characters. 2) I really don't care what happens next, and
3) the author is an oversensitive child, full of tricks and drama but nothing really to say.

Sound familiar? If it does, give this book a try. It's the antidote. These were stories written by a grown man that had lived a real life, and he had something to say. Luckily for us, he was also a great writer with a gift for storytelling.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Did I Wait So Long?, April 22, 2005

By 

Kathleen S. Kirkpatrick "amazonmama" (Severn, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1: The Frontier Stories (Hardcover)

I am ashamed to admit that this is the first time I ever read anything by Louis L'Amour. I like short stories, so when I saw this for $3 in a cut-rate shop, I figured, "What the heck." I am halfway through and already looking for the next volume so it is at hand when I finish that one. If you are a short story fan, buy the book. It is fabulous. If you are a writer of short stories looking for good examples, buy the book. These stories are very well written. He makes you care about the characters immediately. So much so that I am aften sad that the story is through. I want to read more about these folks! Anyway, I love it.