Larry McMurtry

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.

This is Larry McMurtry's ballad in prose: his heartfelt tribute to a bygone era of the American West. In his final novel, he returns to the vivid and unsparing portrait of the nineteenth-century and cowboy lifestyle made so memorable in his classic Lonesome Dove. Long Grass, Texas. Once hailed as heroes for their days of subduing drunks in Abilene and Dodge – more often with a mean look than a pistol – the taciturn Wyatt Earp now idles away his time between bottles, while the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc Holliday is more adept at poker than extracting teeth. With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears. McMurtry traces their rich and varied friendship from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver to Tombstone, Arizona to the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rendered here in his stark and peerless prose. As harsh and beautiful, and as brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of the most original American writers. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

‘McMurtry is one of our best, and Terms of Endearment is one of his finest’ – Los Angeles Times In this acclaimed novel that inspired the Academy Award-winning film, Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry created two characters who won the hearts of readers and film-goers 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 has life under control until two enormous challenges are sent her way: Emma’s hasty marriage and subsequent battle with cancer. Terms of Endearment is the story of an unforgettable mother and her feisty daughter and their struggle to find the courage and humour to live through life’s hazards – and to love each other as never before. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Taking you deep into the heart of the American West, Dead Man’s Walk is the first book in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove quartet.These are the wild days when Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call – heroes of Lonesome Dove – first encounter the untamed frontier that will form their characters.Not yet twenty, Gus and Call enlist as Texas Rangers under the command of Caleb Cobb, a capricious outlaw determined to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans. The two young men experience their first great adventure in the barren, empty landscape of the great plains, in which arbitrary violence is the only law – whether from nature, or from those whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.Danger, sacrifice and fear test Gus and Call to the limits of endurance, as they seek the strength and courage to survive against almost insurmountable odds in the West of early nineteenth-century America.Continue the series set in the Wild West with Comanche Moon.Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

The second book in the Lonesome Dove quartet, Comanche Moon, which follows on from Dead Man’s Walk, follows Rangers Gus and Call in their bitter struggle to protect the advancing West frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life. It showcases Larry McMurtry’s strong affinity for the landscape and its inhabitants with a deeply felt lyrical intensity.On the wild Texas frontier where barbarism and civilization come in many forms, Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are pitched into the long, bitter, bloody fighting under the command of Captain Inish Scull.When Scull’s favourite horse is stolen by the Comanches, he decides to track him down, leaving Gus and Call in charge. However, on their return to Austin, Gus is greeted by the news that his sweetheart is to marry another man and Call finds that the town’s most notorious woman is desperate to settle down with him and become respectable. When Scull’s wealthy wife demands that her errant husband be brought home, with feelings akin to relief the two men set off once more into the vast, untamed plains . . .Continue the series set in the American West with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove.Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for FictionImmerse yourself in the gritty realism of the American Frontier in Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty – a powerful, triumphant tribute to the American West and a masterful epic from the screenwriter of Brokeback Mountain.This is the story of a group of audacious cowboys on a perilous cattle drive across the sprawling wilderness, from Texas to Montana. Bound by duty and hardened by the relentless frontier, their shared journey embodies the enduring spirit of the West.An iconic creation by the accomplished author of The Last Picture Show and Texasville, Lonesome Dove transcends boundaries – more than an adventure, beyond any love story. The saga paints the American West with a palette of nuanced characters, from heroes to outlaws, in a narrative that is as unflinching as it is captivating.This novel, the first published, chronologically third in McMurtry’s esteemed Lonesome Dove quartet, depicts an enduring American experience. A must-read for fans of evocative Western Americana, McMurtry propels you into the heart of 19th-century America, its triumphs and betrayals bound together in a dance of heightened drama and human spirit.‘Unforgettable’ – The New York Times‘It’s like the gift of reading itself’ – Geoff Dyer, The GuardianNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

The final novel in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove quartet, Streets of Laredo is an exhilarating and achingly poignant tale of heroism and friendship, set in the American West.Captain Woodrow Call, Gus McCrae’s old partner, once a youthful Texas Ranger, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena – once Gus’s sweetheart.Their long, perilous chase leads them across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, deep into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Larry McMurtry's "big hearted" fiction has been lauded for "taking us places we hadn't known existed" (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books). Cadillac Jack does exactly that, inviting readers into the passenger seat of a pearl-colored Caddy with peach velour-covered seats, joining a rodeo-bulldogger-turned-antique- scout at the wheel. "Superbly comic" (Newsday), this rollicking tale echoes the cultural climate of America today, with the cagey yet charming Jack grappling with the capitol's pretentious elite. As he cruises through relationships with distinctively appealing women--including socialite boutique owner Cindy and discreet mother-of-two Jean--Jack realizes home for him will always be simply barreling down freeways in his Cadillac, wandering the country in search of another obscure treasure.Bolstered with its cast of unforgettable characters, Cadillac Jack entices with the prospect of undiscovered riches around that next bend in the road.

Forty years ago, Larry McMurtry journeyed from the sprawling ranches of his early work to the provocative Sunset Strip, creating a Hollywood fable that is both immediate and relevant in today's dynamic cultural climate. One would never guess that Jill Peel is still on the verge of stardom. Jill won an Oscar shortly after her fresh-faced arrival in 1950s Hollywood, then for the next twenty years batted away every Tinseltown producer who tried to hire her and get her into bed. Now middle-aged, she's determined to create more movie magic by directing a cast of raunchy eccentrics, including Joe Percy, an aging womanizing screenwriter, and ex-football player Owen Oarson, eager to sleep his way to leading-man stardom. Teeming with biting humor and intriguing characters that mirror the scandals of modern-day Hollywood, Somebody's Darling is a timeless story about a fiercely capable woman who dares to challenge the realities of a deceptively seductive Babel.

Larry McMurtry's Moving On, his epic first novel in the acclaimed Houston series, has long been considered a defining tale of "monumental honesty" worthy of great attention (New York Times). Preceding Terms of Endearment by five years, it is essential reading for anyone who appreciates the inherent genius of McMurtry's late twentieth-century fiction. Moving On centers on the life of Patsy Carpenter, one of his most beloved characters. After calmly finishing a Hershey bar alone in her car, a restless Patsy drives away from her lifeless marriage in search of a greater purpose. In "precise and lyrical prose" (Boston Globe), McMurtry reveals the complex, colorful lives of Pete, the rodeo clown; high-spirited cowboy Sonny Shanks; and impassioned grad student Hank. A critical work of American literature that "presents human drama with sympathy and compassion" (Los Angeles Times), Moving On unfolds a tale of perseverance and emotional survival in the modern-day West.

Hailed as one of "the best novels ever set in America's fourth largest city" (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry's "comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension" (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the "mundane happiness" of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, "El Chevy," bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour's pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully "normal" friend. Since the novel's publication in 1972, Danny Deck has "been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life" (McMurtry), a testament to the author's incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

Before embarking on what would become one of the most prominent writing careers in American literature, spanning decades and indelibly shaping the nation's perception of the West, Larry McMurtry knew what it meant to come from Texas. Originally published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's homage to the past and present of the Lone Star State, where he grew up a precociously observant hand on his father's ranch. From literature to rodeos, small-town folk to big city intellectuals, McMurtry explores all the singular elements that define his land and community, revealing the surprising and particular challenges in the "dying . . . rural, pastoral way of life." "The gold standard for understanding Houston's brash rootlessness and civic insecurities" (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), In a Narrow Grave offers a timeless portrait of the vividly human, complex, full-blooded Texan.

In Leaving Cheyenne (1963), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other early novel, the stark realities of the American West play out in a mesmerizing love triangle. Stubborn rancher Gideon Fry, resilient Molly Taylor, and awkward ranch hand Johnny McCloud struggle with love and jealousy as the years pass.

The Last Picture Show (1966) is both a rambunctious coming-of-age story and an elegy to a forlorn Texas town trying to keep its one movie house alive. Adapted into the Oscar-winning film, this masterpiece immortalizes the lives of the hardscrabble residents who are threatened by the inexorable forces of the modern world.

A stunning literary debut, Horseman, Pass By (1961) exhibits the "full-blooded Western genius" (Publishers Weekly) that would come to define McMurtry's incomparable sensibility. In the dusty north Texas town of Thalia, young Lonnie Bannon quietly endures the pangs of maturity as a persistent rivalry between his grandfather and step-uncle, Hud, festers, and a deadly disease spreads among their cattle like wildfire.

Larry McMurtry burst onto the American literary scene with a force that would forever redefine how we perceive the American West. His first three novels-- Horseman, Pass By (1961), * Leaving Cheyenne (1963), and The Last Picture Show (1966)-- all set in the north Texas town of Thalia after World War II, are collected here for the first time. In this trilogy, McMurtry writes tragically of men and women trying to carve out an existence on the plains, where the forces of modernity challenge small- town American life. From a cattleranch rivalry that confirms McMurtry's "full- blooded Western genius" (Publishers Weekly) to a love triangle involving a cowboy, his rancher boss and wife, and finally to the hardscrabble citizens of an oil- patch town trying to keep their only movie house alive, McMurtry captures the stark realities of the West like no one else. With a new introduction, Thalia emerges as an American classic that celebrates one of our greatest literary masters.*Just named in 2017 by Publishers Weekly the #1 Western novel worthy of rediscovery.

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is one of Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry's most vital and entertaining novels, a wonderful display of his ability to recreate the subtle textures of feelings, the claims of passing time and familiar places, and the rich interlocking swirl of people's lives.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 neighbour as generous as she is lusty; and his pal, Emma Horton. Ranging from Texas to California on a young writer's journey in a car he calls El Chevy, Danny embarks on a wild ride towards literary fame and an uncharted border country.

This is Larry McMurtry's ballad in prose: his heartfelt tribute to a bygone era of the American West.Larry McMurtry has done more than any other living writer to shape our literary imagination of the American West. With The Last Kind Words Saloon, he returns to the vivid and unsparing portrait of the nineteenth-century and cowboy lifestyle made so memorable in his classic Lonesome Dove. Evoking the greatest characters and legends of the Old Wild West, McMurtry tells the story of the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Long Grass, Texas. Once hailed as heroes for their days of subduing drunks in Abilene and Dodge – more often with a mean look than a pistol – the taciturn Wyatt now idles away his time between bottles, while the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc is more adept at poker than extracting teeth. With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears.McMurtry traces the rich and varied friendship of the heroic pair from the town of Long Grass to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, then to Mobetie, Texas, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, culminating with the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rendered here in McMurtry's stark and peerless prose. As harsh and beautiful, and as brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of the most original American writers.

Bittersweet, funny and touching, Larry McMurtry's The Desert Rose is the story of Harmony, a Las Vegas showgirl. At night she's a lead dancer in a gambling casino; during the day she raises peacocks. She's one of a dying breed of dancers, faced with fewer and fewer jobs and an even bleaker future. Yet she maintains a calm cheerfulness in that arid neon landscape of supermarkets, drive-in wedding chapels, and all-night casinos. While Harmony's star is fading, her beautiful, cynical daughter Pepper's is on the rise. But Harmony remains wistful and optimistic through it all. She is the unexpected blossom in the wasteland, the tough and tender desert rose.

In this acclaimed novel that inspired the Academy Award-winning film, Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry created two unforgettable characters who won the hearts of readers and film-goers 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 story of an unforgettable mother and her feisty daughter and their struggle to find the courage and humour to live through life's hazards – and to love each other as never before.