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

by Louis L'Amour (Author)

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

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
 

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553803573
• ISBN-13: 978-0553803570
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,098 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 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

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.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Mykal Banta (Boynton Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

14 of 14 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)

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.