Zane Grey Box Set: Four Western Classics

Zane Grey, the bestselling author of sixty-five Western novels, is one of the most recognized and respected writers of Western fiction. His works have been translated into twenty-three languages and have been made into more than one hundred movies.

This box set includes four Zane Grey classics in paperback at a great value price: Robbers' Roost, Desert Heritage, Shepherd of Guadaloupe, and War Comes to the Big Bend.

--Robbers' Roost: A Western Story--

A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of nineteenth-century America.

“He was a young man in years, but he had the hard face and eagle eye of one matured in experience of that wild country. He bestrode a superb bay horse, dusty and travel-worn and a little lame. The rider was no light burden, judging from his height and wide shoulders; moreover, the saddle carried a canteen, a rifle, and a pack. From time to time he looked back over his shoulder at the magnificent long cliff wall, which resembled a row of colossal books with leaves partly open. It was the steady, watchful gaze of a man who had left events behind him.”

So begins Jim Wales’s story in Robbers’ Roost. While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom.

Robbers’ Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West.

--Desert Heritage: A Western Story--

Jack Hare is an Easterner who has come west for his health. In Salt Lake City he is mistaken by Dene’s outlaw gang for a spy and must flee the town to escape them. He is found suffering from exhaustion and exposure in rough country by the wealthy Mormon rancher August Naab. As he is nursed back to health at Naab’s ranch, Hare becomes aware that Naab’s holdings are being threatened by both Dene’s rustlers and an unscrupulous Gentile land-grabber named Holderness.

Hare also comes to know Mescal, originally an orphan of a Spanish father and Navajo mother, taken in by Naab and promised in marriage to his eldest son, Snap. August Naab does not believe in violent resistance to Holderness’s incursions. To save Hare from Dene and his gang, Naab has him accompany Mescal to his sheep camp, located in an isolated valley fastness, and it is there that the two fall in love, even though Mescal knows that she is morally bound to marry Snap Naab.

Packed with adventure, action, emotion, and unforgettable characters, Desert Heritage represents one of Zane Grey’s finest literary achievements. And its vivid evocation of the Painted Desert of Arizona is without equal in the genre.

--Shepherd of Guadaloupe: A Western Story--

A soldier returns home to find his parents displaced and their property stolen in this classic Western.

“He leaned propped against the rail of the great ship, in an obscure place aft, shadowed by the life-boats. It was the second night out of Cherbourg and the first time for him to be on deck. The ridged and waved Atlantic, but for its turbulence, looked like the desert undulating away to the uneven horizon. The roar of the wind in the rigging bore faint resemblance to the wind in the cottonwoods at home—a sound that had haunted him for all the long years of his absence. There was the same mystery in the black hollows of the sea as from boyhood he had seen and feared in the gloomy gulches of the foothills.”

So begins Zane Grey’s The Shepherd of Guadaloupe. After surviving the brutality of the First World War, Clifton Forrest returns home to find that his childhood home was stolen from his family. With his parents robbed of their property and the area under the firm control of his old acquaintance, Lundeen, Cliff must fight both his enemy and his ailing body to regain the right to a peaceful life on the land he once called home. The Shepherd of Guadaloupe tells Cliff’s heroic journey as he battles Lundeen while juggling his love for his parents and the love of Lundeen’s daughter, Virginia.

--War Comes to the Big Bend: A Western Story--

A wheat farmer is torn between allegiances while fighting to keep the woman he loves in this epic of the First World War!

It’s 1917, and the United States is about to enter the First World War. The wheat farms of rural Washington State have become an important resource in winning the war. Kurt Dorn is a wheat farmer born of a German father and an American mother, and his family’s farm contains some of the finest wheat grown anywhere. But a Bolshevik band, calling itself the Industrial Workers of the World, led by a spy financed by imperial Germany, and, secretly, by a German wheat magnate, seeks to stop Dorn’s wheat from getting in Allied hands.

Meanwhile, Dorn has fallen in love with Lenore Anderson, the daughter of a wealthy farmer who wants Dorn to supervise his empire and prevent the destructive WWI from ruining everything. But Dorn loses the battle to keep his farm, and instead of fighting from the home front, decides to take up arms and enlist in the US Army. Dorn will now be forced to choose between his patriotism, his love for Lenore, and his desire for revenge in a tale that spans continents and delivers a sobering message of the horrors of war.

Heavily edited upon its original publication in 1918, this edition of War Comes to the Big Bend has been restored from Grey’s original handwritten manuscript, and showcases the full vision of a master storyteller.

Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Zane Grey was born on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. He was best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the American frontier. The critically acclaimed Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) has become one of the bestselling and most popular books of all time. Over one hundred films, television episodes, and program series, including Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater, have been based loosely on his novels and short stories, a record that remains unbroken. He died on October 23, 1939, at his home in Altadena, California.