Used Westerns

Used to, I had no idea what authors to look for in the western sections at a used book store. These days, I have a much better idea, but the sections are SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than what they used to be. There are fewer people reading westerns, and those used books that are left tend to be pretty beat up.

But I found some treasure. First, two more Marvin Albert novels, which you can see in the lower left of this picture. Second, a slew of Fawcett Gold Medal books by authors I don’t know. Any older Gold Medals, though were probably edited well and will at least be good. Maybe they’ll be great. If you enlarge the picture, you’ll see that some &*&%^! wrote X-P over the front and sides of a number of the books. Nice going, dipwad. Way to ruin a book forever.

Let’s see. On the right are nine Gordon Shirreffs novels, three of them double-sized featuring two shorter novels a piece. Morgan Holmes has been telling me good things about Shirreffs for years. And there’s also Lost Stage Valley, by Bonham, which Hocking says is supposed to be on a list of one of the 50 greatest westerns written, and The Cage, by Talmage Powell. I really dug Powell’s private eye series, and these were all .89 cents, so, why not? Lastly, there’s a Brian Garfield title, and I’ve been reading some good reviews of his work lately.

That’s not all, and doesn’t include some other treasures, like Peter Corris novels and some other bits, but I have to get to work.