Glendon Swarthout

The Shootist is John Bernard Books, a man of principle and the only surviving gunfighter in a vanishing American West. He rides into El Paso in the year 1901, on the day of Queen Victoria's demise, there to be told by a doctor that he must soon confront the greatest Shootist of all: Death himself. In such a showdown against such an antagonist, J. B. Books cannot win. Most men may end their days in bed or take their own lives, but a mankiller...

"Young Gillom Rogers has just given the coup de grace to a famous gunfighter involved in a bloody saloon shootout in 1901 El Paso, Texas. After swiping J.B. Books's matched Remington pistols off his body, Gillom thinks he may be able to ride this spectacle to fame and glory as the last shootist. But Gillom is an eighteen-year-old with lots of growing up to do, and showing off his new pistols quickly gets him into a gunfight he didn't bargain for....

When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs to join her.