Elmer Kelton

Author Information
Elmer Kelton's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    61 Books (6 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1920
  • Latest Book:
    November 2021
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Full Series List in Order

Buckalew Family

Long Way to Texas (Apr-1990)
Bowie's Mine (Aug-1997)
Texas Sunrise (Feb-2010)

Hewey Calloway

1 - Six Bits a Day (Nov-2005)
2 - Good Old Boys (1920)
3 - The Smiling Country (Aug-1998)

Related Books

1 - Massacre at Goliad (1965)
2 - After the Bugles (Jun-2004)

Sons of Texas

1 - The Raiders (May-2006)
2 - The Rebels (Nov-2007)

Texas Rangers

1 - The Buckskin Line (Aug-1999)
2 - Badger Boy (Jan-2001)
3 - Way of the Coyote (Dec-2001)
4 - Ranger's Trail (Sep-2002)
5 - Texas Vendetta (Jan-2004)
6 - Jericho's Road (Nov-2004)
7 - Hard Trail To Follow (Jan-2008)
8 - Other Men's Horses (Nov-2009)
9 - Texas Standoff (Oct-2010)

Texas Tradition

7 - The Day the Cowboys Quit (Jun-1971)

Book List in Order: 61 titles

  • Good Old Boys

    Hewey Calloway - 2

    “The Good Old Boys is probably the closest I have ever come to writing from sheer inspiration. Hewey Calloway and the other characters took hold of the story like a cold-jawed horse grabbing onto the bit, and about all I could do was hang on for th...

  • Buffalo Wagons

    For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it. In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak in awe of a last...

  • Shadow of a Star

    THERE'S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN Deputy Sheriff Jim-Bob McClain isn't sure he's ready to follow in his father's footsteps as the law in Coolridge County. In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But w...

  • Massacre at Goliad

    Related Books - 1

    When Texan-born Josh Buckalew met Teresa, a young and beautiful Mexican woman, it was love at first sight. But with the Alamo recently sieged and destroyed, Josh knew this rosebud love would be unobtainable on account of the war thorns harrowing the ...

  • Llano River

    When former cattle man Dundee wanders into the town of Titusville, he's broke, tired and itching for a fight. Instead, he gets a job offer...from none other than the top man in town, John Titus. Titus recruits Dundee to find out who's rustling his...

  • The Day the Cowboys Quit

    Texas Tradition - 7

    A different kind of range war erupts between cowboys and ranchers in The Day the Cowboys Quit from seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. The time is 1883, the place is the Texas Panhandle. Cowboys refuse to be stigmatized as drinkers and...

  • The Time It Never Rained

    "The Time It Never Rained was inspired by actual events, when the longest and most severe drought in living memory pressed ranchers and farmers to the outer limits of courage and endurance." -- Elmer Kelton, Seven-time Spur Awardâ€"winning author Ri...

  • The Wolf and the Buffalo

    THEY FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM THE WOLF Gray Horse. The magnificent young Comanche warrior made strong by the medicine of the wolf, skilled at stealing horses and counting coup in the war raids of his people. Through his bravery and his wisdom, he woul...

  • Eyes of the Hawk

    A feud erupts that could burn a Texas town to the ground in this classic frontier adventure from “the greatest Western writer of all time” (Western Writers of America, Inc.).Eyes of the Hawk, winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, is an...



  • Hanging Judge

    Hanging Judge and Bowie's Mine offers two classic novels of the Old West for one low price, by renowned Western writer Elmer Kelton. Hanging Judge Justin Moffitt is eager to help keep the peace as a deputy marshal in small-town Texas. That is, unti...

  • Stand Proud

    In Stand Proud, one of his most controversial novels, legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton takes on a character who is not as easy to like as he is to admire. Frank Claymore is cantankerous, stubborn, and intolerant--just the qualities that make him...

  • Dark Thicket

    One of America's greatest Western storytellers, Elmer Kelton has been voted the greatest Western writers of all time by the Western Writers of America. Dark Thicket is one of his many classic tales of the history of his home state of Texas.Young Owen...

  • Barbed Wire

    Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry thugs.Monahan's fencing opera...

  • There's Always Another Chance, and Other Stories

  • The Big Brand

  • Donovan

    Donovan was supposed to be dead. The town of Dry Fork, southern Texas, had buried him years before when Uncle Joe Vickers had fired off both barrels of a shotgun into the vicious outlaw's face as he was escaping from jail. Now, Uncle Joe has been sho...

  • The Man Who Rode Midnight

    Aging cowboy and bronco-buster Wes Hendricks just wants to be left alone on his poor ranch, even when town developers offer him big money to sell it. Wes''s grandson reluctantly tries to convince him to give up his home, but that was before he, too, ...

  • The Manhunters

    Working faithfully for a Texas rancher despite his family's warnings, Chacho Fernandez steals his payment when his dishonest employer refuses to compensate him and is falsely accused of murdering a lawman. Reprint....

  • Wagontongue

    As a slave, Isaac Jefford went to war and saved the life of his master, Major Lytton. As a free man, Isaac became one of the major's top cowhands, respected--but never totally accepted--by fellow cowboys: when they gathered around the fire to eat the...



  • Joe Pepper

    Joe Pepper and Many a River are two complete novels of the American West at one low price, from legendary western writer Elmer Kelton.Joe PepperJoe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his fort...

  • Long Way to Texas

    Buckalew Family

    Lieutenant David Buckalew and his men had left Texas on a march westward to claim the entire Southwest for the Confederacy. But defeat after humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union army has stranded Buckalew and nineteen battle-weary survivors i...

  • Honor at Daybreak

    From one of the West's greatest living storytellers, winner of numerous awards, including the Spur, the Golden Saddleman, and the Western Heritage Award, here is Elmer Kelton's magnificent new novel of the wildcat West Texas oil boom of t...

  • Slaughter

    Although Crow Feather and his Comanche tribe rule the southern plains, Confederate veteran Jeff Layne and his party of desperate hide seekers, traveling from Dodge City, refuse to be turned back from their trek. Reprint....

  • Elmer Kelton Country

  • The Far Canyon

    A sequel to the Spur Award-winning Slaughter finds hunter Jeff Layne returning to Texas to find himself caught up in a border war, and his old enemy Comanche Crow Feather trying to escape with his family from reservation life....

  • The Pumpkin Rollers

    In the cattle drives of the Old West, pumpkin rollers were green farmboys, almost more trouble than they were worth. When Trey McLean leaves his family's East Texas cotton farm and sets off on his own to learn the cattleman's trade, he's about as ...

  • Cloudy in the West

    In the Texas backlands in 1885, twelve-year-old Joey Shipman's father dies under mysterious circumstances, and the boy is forced to live with his stepmother and Blair Meacham, a hanger-on at the farm. After the death of a black farmhand and friend, a...

  • Bitter Trail

    Bitter Trail Tough teamster Frio Wheeler hauls cotton from Texas to Mexico. But as the Civil War rages through the South, Wheeler must contend with the most difficult challenges he’s ever faced, including imprisonment with the bandidos in league w...

  • Bowie's Mine

    Buckalew Family

    Daniel Provost is the son of a farmer. Living up to his father's high standards for the farm is very hard work, but his life is basically comfortable and a loving woman is waiting to become his wife. When a well-traveled stranger, bearing a story of ...



  • Texas Rifles

    The new Confederacy, facing into the Union cannon, had too much on its hands to send troops to the Texas frontier to hold back the Indians. Instead, it authorized the State of Texas to raise its own troops.Many kinds of men drifted into the Texas Mou...

  • Hot Iron

    With Hot Iron and The Time It Never Rained, this omnibus by legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton offers two complete novels of the American West at one low price Hot IronIn the early days of the Texas panhandle, starting a new life is hard, but keep...

  • The Smiling Country

    Hewey Calloway - 3

    Elmer Kelton introduced Texas cowboy, Hewey Calloway, one of the most beloved characters in Western fiction, almost thirty years ago in The Good Old Boys. The novel was transformed into a memorable 1995 TV film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spac...

  • Legend

    in Legend

    Seven winners of the Spur Award--including Elmer Kelton and Loren D. Estleman--come together to document the life of the legendary Lyle Speaks, from his tormented childhood to his years as a cattle rancher and his regrettable exploits in between. Ori...

  • The Buckskin Line

    Texas Rangers - 1

    "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." -...

  • Captain's Rangers

    With Captain's Rangers and The Day the Cowboys Quit, this omnibus by legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton offers two novels of the American West at one low priceCaptain’s RangersIn 1875, nearly forty years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texan...

  • Badger Boy

    Texas Rangers - 2

    Two books in one from the Texas Rangers series by the beloved Western writer Elmer Kelton: Badger Boy and The Way of the Coyote Elmer Kelton, most honored of all Western writers, writes of the formative years of the Texas Rangers with the knowledge ...

  • Way of the Coyote

    Texas Rangers - 3

    The Civil War has ended, and Texas is in turmoil as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. But in a land overrun with murderous outlaws, vengeful Union soldiers, and ever-dangerous bands of Comanche, "going home" is just as difficult ...

  • Ranger's Trail

    Texas Rangers - 4

    Ranger's Trail Spring of 1874: Ranger companies are being reorganized and David "Rusty" Shannon is the most sought-after veteran. But he has a new goal: to marry Josie Monahan. He also feels responsibility for Andy Pickard, who he rescued from the C...

  • Texas Vendetta

    Texas Rangers - 5

    Texas Vendetta, fifth in Elmer Kelton's memorable and critically acclaimed Texas Rangers series, is filled with the author's always engaging characters and is set against the historically accurate backdrop of the turmoil of post-Civil War Texas. Rang...



  • After the Bugles

    Related Books - 2

    Two novels from seven-time Spur Awardâ€"winning author Elmer Kelton, "truly a Texas legend" (former Texas Governor Rick Perry), After the Bugles and Llano River. After the BuglesJoshua Buckalew has left behind the deserted battlefields that claimed h...

  • Jericho's Road

    Texas Rangers - 6

    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 learn...

  • Sons of Texas

    Mordecai Lewis and his sons Michael and Andrew ride into the Spanish province of Texas to hunt wild horses, planning to sell the animals back home in the Tennessee canebrakes. The expedition proves fatal for Mordecai and leaves the Lewis boys in peri...

  • Noose Of Fate A Western Quartet

    Here are four short novels by a veteran and master of Western fiction. In the title story, "Noose of Fate," Breck Coleman finds himself sworn in as a deputy sheriff in a showdown between the small ranchers and Hardy Young's Circle S Ranch. It seems a...

  • Six Bits a Day

    Hewey Calloway - 1

    "Six bits," or seventy-five cents: a cowboy's daily wage in Hewey's era. Fiddle footed Texas cowboy Hewey Calloway, in this prequel to Elmer Kelton's prize-winning The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country, ventures out to West Texas with his brot...

  • The Raiders

    Sons of Texas - 1

    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 a...

  • Pecos Crossing

    You don’t rip a cowboy off and walk away -- A rip-roaring Western adventure from the Spur Award winner and “heir to the Louis L’Amour legacy” (Booklist).Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, young, hard-working cowboys from Fort Concho, Texas, hav...

  • Brush Country

    To Elmer Kelton, the brush country of southwest Texas is home. Nobody knows Texas's history, people, beauty, and dangers as well as this greatest of Western writers.Barbed Wire, the first novel in this omnibus, is the story of one-time cowboy Doug Mo...

  • The Rebels

    Sons of Texas - 2

    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 ...

  • Hard Trail To Follow

    Texas Rangers - 7

    In this, the seventh novel in Kelton's acclaimed Texas Ranger series, former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard ("Badger Boy" as he was known as a youth living among Comanches), leaves his fiancee's farm in north central Texas. He begins to track the man, Lut...



  • Many a River

    In seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton's Many a River, two brothers are orphaned and separated--only to be reunited as enemies on opposing sides of the Civil War.The Barfield family, Arkansas sharecroppers, are heading west with their s...

  • The Way of the West

    Collected here for the first time are three exciting novellas of the Old West, written by three of the West's greatest, most admired writers. In Elmer Kelton's Long Ride, Hard Ride, a retreating Confederate troop has seized a Union cache of munitions...

  • Other Men's Horses

    Texas Rangers - 8

    Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, newly married and unsure of himself and his choice of career, is given what appears to be a routine assignment: find and arrest a horse trader named Donley Bannister who is accused of murder. The difficulty begins after And...

  • Texas Sunrise

    Buckalew Family

    In Massacre at Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American newcomers. Revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but his brother Joshua fears, since Joshua is in love with a Mexican girl. The story touches on the...

  • Sandhills Boy

    “[A] charming memoir of renowned western novelist Kelton’s early years in the saddle, at the desk and in the trench . . . a pleasure through and through.” -- Kirkus ReviewsVoted the “Best Western writer of all time” by his p...

  • Texas Standoff

    Texas Rangers - 9

    In Texas Standoff, Ranger Andy Pickard and his partner, Logan Daggett, are sent to central Texas to investigate a series of killings and cattle thefts. The two biggest cattlemen in the area blame each other for the violence, but it seems to Andy that...

  • Wild West: Short Stories

    WILD WEST is the first ever short story collection of western adventure from seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. From rodeos to rustlers, from ranch life to the outlaw trail, Elmer Kelton’s take on the human condition shows us lif...

  • Hard Ride

    Bandits, outlaws, romance, and adventure abound in HARD RIDE, the second-ever collection of tales of the American West from renowned, seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. Each of Elmer Kelton’s superb stories of the West showcase t...

  • The Cowboy Way

    No one writes the old west like Seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. In The Cowboy Way, Kelton captures the action, adventure, brotherhood and betrayal of the old west, chronicling the highs and lows of cowboy life in these sixteen stor...

  • Law of the Land

    An action-packed collection of stories of the old West, Law of the Land includes the never-before-published "Biscuits for a Bandit." Sixteen stories, where good meets bad, and everything in between, from the legendary author of the west, Elmer Kelto...

  • Horsehead Crossing

    • / Historical
    • Buy Buy

  • Shotgun

    • / Historical
    • Buy Buy

    Two thrilling Westerns from the legendary bestselling author Elmer Kelton, Shotgun and Six Bits a Day ShotgunRancher Blair Bishop of Two Forks, Texas, has too many enemies…and they're closing in. Macy Modock, whom Bishop sent to prison ten years a...

Award-Winning Books by Elmer Kelton

Buffalo Wagons
1957 SPUR Award -- Western Novel
The Day the Cowboys Quit
1971 SPUR Award -- Western Novel
Eyes of the Hawk
1981 SPUR Award -- Western Novel
The Far Canyon
1994 SPUR Award -- Novel of the West
Slaughter
1992 SPUR Award -- Novel of the West
The Time It Never Rained
1973 SPUR Award -- Western Novel
Way of the Coyote
2002 SPUR Award -- Western Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Elmer Kelton has published 61 books.

Elmer Kelton does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Law of the Land, was published in November 2021.

The first book by Elmer Kelton, Good Old Boys, was published in January 1920.

Yes. Elmer Kelton has 6 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
Author Series
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