Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust) is one of the greatest early Western writers who has been labeled „one of the top three Western novelists of all time” and „Speedy’s Bargain” is one of 9 „Speedy” stories that have seen print in various collections. „Speedy’s Bargain” features „Speedy,” Brand’s atypical western man of action who carries no gun and relies on his wits and psychological insights to stop crooks in their tracks. In it, an outlaw holds a family at gunpoint, thre...
Superstar pulpsmith Max Brand was best known for his Westerns, but his historical adventures rank among the best stories he ever wrote. He wrote somewhere around 12 or 13 historical swashbucklers not including the seven Tizzo stories. The complete tales of Tizzo the Firebrand contains the 7 stories. „The Great Betrayal” is one of it. The series is set in early 16th Century Italy. Luigi Falcone had taken in red haired street urchin Tizzo outside of the city of Perugia. Raised ...
A good classic western by Max Brand (Frederick Faust) about the famous outlaw King Bird. The King Bird, a young, reckless and mystery bandit, whose definition of happiness is freedom, the best horse, a wonderful girl, faces difficult choices when he attempts to save an old friend’s runaway daughter from a dangerous gang of robbers. „The King Bird Rides” is a fast moving, exciting, plenty of gun play and adventure. Max Brand’s action-filled stories of adventure and heroism in ...
Accused, tried, and convicted of robbery and murder that he did not commit, Jim Seton rotted in jail for five long years. Although the townspeople said he was lucky not to hang, that wasn’t how Jim saw it. He didn’t take kindly to being railroaded. Now he was free and ready. He was an innocent man who’d been sent to hell, and he was ready, willing, and able to return the favor. „The Return of the Rancher „ is a classical western excitement at its very best by a master of the ...
Lucky Bill has the reputation of a natural battler, but he is not a cold-blooded killer. Then Bill finds himself on the wrong side of the law when he is accused of a crime he did not commit, and plenty of greenhorns and gringos set their sights on collecting the price on his head. He’s wanted by every tin star in the West and by every greedy gunslinger out for the price they can get for his no-good corpse. But Bill refuses to turn tail and run. Renowned Old West gunslinger Bi...
„Larramee’s Ranch” is another great and entertaining Max Brand novel! This is quite a change of pace for Max Brand. His hero Tom Holden is a bookish young man with a bad leg, no money, and no experience with firearms. When he sets out to make his fortune, he has no real prospects but through a series of bluffs he outwits a killer, faces down a town bully, makes a considerable bundle of money for himself. Then he announces he will marry Alexa Larrame, the beautiful blue-eyed d...
After ten years of wandering, during which he has lived the life of a gambler and learned the ways of devious men, Tom Keene returns home, only to find his father alone and dying. Old John Keene’s sole legacy to his son is a Bible, so with his father’s passing, Tom renounces his selfish, worthless past and sets out to preach to others that the greatest happiness is born of trust in one another. But Tom Keene’s good intentions are about to cost him more than he knows... Tom is...
The Montana Kid, „El Keed” south of the border, slips a marriage noose to join Mateo Rubriz, prince of Mexican outlaws, in a wild cross-border raid. The target: a gold and emerald crown stolen by the governor of Duraya from the church under his protection. In Duraya, Montana and Rubriz have no problem getting into the governor’s fort, even finding the crown. It’s the getting out that nearly undoes them!
He was smiling continually, with such an air of removal above the concerns of ordinary mortals, with such an upward lifting of the head, that his fellows in the boat had called him, from the first day of labor and thirst, „The Saint.” This novelette filled with excitement, suspense, good guys and bad, and plot twists aplenty! Brand is a masterful story teller, slowly revealing his main characters’ unique idiosyncrasies, strengths and weaknesses that make them both human and a...
An exciting saga of danger, adventure, and romance on the Western frontier. Bill Lancaster was a dangerous man that no one dared mess with. He was fast with a gun, deadly with his fists, and a bully who never let you forget who was tougher. Young Dan Cadigan however refused to be pushed. Mistaken for a quiet weakling, no one expected him to stand up to Bill Lancaster. Fighting him with his fists he made Lancaster realize that someone was tougher than he was. Desperate he used...
After 8 years in prison for murder, Jimmy Geary returns to his town Yellow Creek, and his past, and an ambush. Jimmy was very happy to see town again. But there are three men who aren’t happy to see Jimmy Geary return, and they conspire to make his stay this time very short... Neatly plotted and briskly told, it illustrates Max Brand’s remarkable gift for storytelling. One of the greatest western authors of all time, Frederick Faust wrote under sixteen different pseudonyms, i...
This great book by Max Brand tells the story of honest, hard working Phil Slader, the son of a notorious murdering outlaw, who had sworn not to follow the footsteps of his father, a feared and hated gunman. Phil was adopted by the man who put a bullet in his father’s heart. Watched and expected every day to explode into the lawless ways of his father, young Phil patiently waits to come of age to leave the servitude of his father’s killer and find the truth of his death. Could...
Les Burchard owned the local gambling palace, half the town, and most of the surrounding territory, and Walt Devon’s thousand-acre ranch would make him king of the land. The trouble was, Devon didn’t want to sell. In a ruthless bid to claim the spread, Burchard tried everything from poker to murder. But Walt Devon was a betting man by nature, even when the stakes were his life. The way Devon figured, the odds were stacked against him. So he could either die alone... or takes ...
You don’t get a much more evocative opening than that for a Western novella called „Werewolf”, and the story lives up to both its title and that opening in ways you won’t expect from Max Brand who did write some fantastic fiction. On that bitter night Chris Royal walks into Yates Saloon to escape the storm where Cliff Main, gun happy brother of killer Harry Main, is looking for trouble over a girl both like. Words are exchanged, and there is the smell of cordite in the air. C...
The name Max Brand is synonymous with great adventure and quality. Good men gone bad fill the pages of this Western trio, with stories of outlaws, horse thieves and a rowdy ranch hand who turns to stage robbery. This book contains three short novelettes: „The Nighthawk Trail”, „Vamp’s Bandit” and the title story, „Rifle Pass”. In „Rifle Pass”, ageing Sheriff Thomas Weller has one major problem: his son Dick Weller. Dick cannot seem to apply himself to anything. In a desperate...
His name was Jim Silver, but they called him Silvertip. Jim Silver, the man with tufts of silver hair over each temple, the man who sometimes looked like a horned devil in the moonlight, hungered for action as most men hunger for food. And he found plenty when bank robber Jim Lovell sought his protection – because, unknown to Silvertip, Lovell was packing a half-million dollars in stolen cash along with his Winchester. And the men he’d double-crossed had shot their way out of...
One of the most prolific writers of all time, he wrote more than 500 novels and nearly 15 million words under the pen name of Max Brand and seventeen others. Alongside Zane Grey, the western section of any bookstore is usually packed with Max Brand titles. „The Jackson Trail” is another outstanding western that demands your attention. In it, Jesse Jackson is riding where the law feared to go... Packed with enough action and interesting twists to please even the most die-hard ...
Max Brand is an American writer, considered one of the best authors working in the Western genre. A gunman’s reckoning is his understanding, and here, we have several gunmen and women, one in a main role, whose understandings of life ineluctably draw them together. „Gunman’s Reckoning” is a psychological novel, with roots in Greek tragedy and with twists worthy of far better known writers.
„Lindley Parker Sessions, commandant of the Yard, stood with his hand on his hips and looked up. There is a saying that even the Devil would make a sailor if he could only learn to look up. However, the Rear Admiral was not staring at the leech of a sail; he was watching the ironworkers as they ran up a new portion of the ways. Welders did most of the construction in the Yard, but for lack of them at this point, Lieutenant Commander Henry Jervis, who supplied the engineering ...
Twelve-year-old Tommy is left to fend for himself. Thanks to endurance, ingenuity and a wonderful union with the grizzly bear, whose mother he helped, the boy survives. When Tommy gets older, he and the bear set off for the valley, where they prevent the killing of an indestructible horse. The horse, bear and Tommy become legend – and the expedition is about to capture or kill Tommy.
At 30, Bill Naylor had spent half his life behind bars. Free again, and while looking for a new job, he saves a man from drowning. For Bill Naylor, there are all the others in the world, when it comes to being an outlaw, and there is Barry Christian. For Bill, Christian is the best, and the two wind up together, so Bill is all too ready to do the toughest thing that Christian has to throw his way. It involves killing Silvertip. It is Naylor’s chance to prove himself, and he...
