The playful quartet that penned the acclaimed Once Upon A Dyke and Stake Through the Heart are back are now turning to the Wild (and Very Hot) West to bring you another collection of erotically charged, action-packed, tales--this time gleefully taking on cowboys, school marms, snake-oil salesmen, saloon girls, preachers, bank robbers and lone gundykes. With the turn of each page, you'll wonder who the hero is, who the villain is, and who gets the girl--and if it's even the right girl!

The celebrated Hollywood icon comes fully to life in this complex portrait by noted film historian and master biographer Scott Eyman. Exploring Wayne's early life with a difficult mother and a feckless father, "Eyman gets at the details that the bean-counters and myth-spinners miss ... Wayne's intimates have told things here that they've never told anyone else" (Los Angeles Times). Eyman makes startling connections to Wayne's later days as an anti-Communist conservative, his stormy marriages to Latina women, and his notorious--and surprisingly long-lived--passionate affair with Marlene Dietrich.

“A wild, rollicking ride into the heart of horse country—these essays get at what it means to love horses, in all that love's complexity.” —Anton DiSclafani, author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls A compelling and provocative essay collection that smashes stereotypes and redefines the meaning of the term “horse girl,” broadening it for women of all cultural backgrounds. As a child, horses consumed Halimah Marcus’ imagination. When she wasn’t around horses she was pretending to be one, cantering on two legs, hands poised to hold invisible reins. To her classmates, girls like Halimah were known as “horse girls,” weird and overzealous, absent from the social worlds of their peers. Decades later, when memes about “horse girl energy,” began appearing across social media—Halimah reluctantly recognized herself. The jokes imagine girls as blinkered as carriage ponies, oblivious to the mockery behind their backs. The stereotypical horse girl is also white, thin, rich, and straight, a daughter of privilege. Yet so many riders don’t fit this narrow, damaging ideal, and relate to horses in profound ways that include ambivalence and regret, as well as unbridled passion and devotion. Featuring some of the most striking voices in contemporary literature—including Carmen Maria Machado, Pulitzer-prize winner Jane Smiley, T Kira Madden, Maggie Shipstead, and Courtney Maum—Horse Girls reframes the iconic bond between girls and horses with the complexity and nuance it deserves. And it showcases powerful emerging voices like Braudie Blais-Billie, on the connection between her Seminole and Quebecois heritage; Sarah Enelow-Snyder, on growing up as a Black barrel racer in central Texas; and Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, on the colonialist influence on horse culture in Pakistan. By turns thought-provoking and personal, Horse Girls reclaims its titular stereotype to ask bold questions about autonomy and desire, privilege and ambition, identity and freedom, and the competing forces of domestication and wildness.

He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western explores the construction and representation of masculinity in low-budget western movies made from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These films contained some of the mid-twentieth-century’s most familiar names, especially for youngsters: cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. The first serious study of a body of films that was central to the youth of two generations, He Was Some Kind of a Man combines the author’s childhood fascination with this genre with an interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of the films influence on modern views of masculinity. McGillis argues that the masculinity offered by these films is less one-dimensional than it is plural, perhaps contrary to expectations. Their deeply conservative values are edged with transgressive desire, and they construct a male figure who does not fit into binary categories, such as insider/outsider or masculine/feminine. Particularly relevant is the author’s discussion of George W. Bush as a cowboy and how his aspirations to cowboy ideals continue to shape American policy. This engagingly written book will appeal to the general reader interested in film, westerns, and contemporary culture as well as to scholars in film studies, gender studies, children’s literature, and auto/biography.

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, 2007.

Presents a history of the horse through the ages, describes different horse breeds, and provides information on horse care, fitness, common ailments, and grooming basics.

Johnstone Country. Where the Sun Never Sets on Justice. Keeper of the peace, enforcer of the law, Buck Trammel has faced every kind of killer, outlaw, and prairie rat that’s crawled from the depraved depths of America’s western frontier—with a quick draw and a clean conscience . . . SIBLING RIVALRY “King” Charles Hagen is dead. The empire he carved out of Blackstone, Wyoming, by hook and by crook now lies in the hands of his children. Caleb Hagen has long stood in his father’s shadow, ambitiously plotting, and ready to stake his claim. Young and impetuous BartHagen plans to expand the family legacy across the nation. Debora Hagen’s ruthless nature believes the time has come for a queen to reign over the Hagen kingdom. Only Adam, their estranged brother, has a different plan. His vengeance against their father requires him to tear down everything “King” Hagen ever built, even if that means shedding family blood. But none of the siblings reckoned that bloodthirsty crime honcho Lucien Clay was prepared to send a murderous pack of gunslingers against them all for control of the territory. Blackstone has been ruled by lawlessness long enough. The town is Buck Trammel’s jurisdiciton. And he will protect it as judge, jury, and executioner . . . Live Free. Read Hard.

Nine novels from a three-time Newbery Honor author whose “tales of wonder, mystery, and suspense beguiled two generations of children and young adults” (The New York Times). Blending realism and fantasy, Zilpha Keatley Snyder was a master at drawing young readers into mesmerizing worlds. Collected in one volume, here are some of her most memorable and beloved novels. TheVelvet Room explores ranch life for a child of a former migrant worker. Cat Running offers a unique glimpse into one girl’s experience when her family takes in a malnourished, barefooted “Okie” during the Depression In Song of the Gargoyle, thirteen-year-old Tymmon befriends a strange and enchanted forest creature. In The Trespassers, a boy and his sister discover a secret hideaway in a deserted mansion—and maybe a ghost. And in Fool’s Gold, a group of teens discover a map that leads them through dangerous, abandoned gold mines. This treasury is a perfect introduction to the novels of one of the most revered figures in children’s literature.

The Naked Truth, by poet Allen Richey, is a story about a never-ending love between a man and a womana relationship that will last forever and a day. The context is of raw emotion put into words; it is not for the faint of heart. This story is a wild ride, with its ups and downs, laughter and tears. A few say that, while in love, only the strong survive, but sometimes it takes a strength outside ourselves to survive some of the things we live through. While writing of life and love, Richey also mixes his poetry with politics, ideas of spirituality, and some Native American wisdom. The writing is not meant to be offensive, but, rather, thought- provoking. Some of the poems hit hard at the realities of life, such as the cruelties of a tax system and simply becoming a slave to a job ("Taxpayer Blues") or surviving the hardships of life ("New Beginnings"). Each and every poem was born from a personal experience of Allen Richey, but, in a broader sense, the compilation explores the real-life circumstances that we all live through daily. In essence, Richey's poems touch the soul and help one "look past the veil."