The Collected Works of Max Brand

by Max Brand

This Halcyon Classics ebook edition contains seventeen works by western novelist Frederick Schiller Faust, better known by his pen name, Max Brand. Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.



Harrigan
Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett
Riders of the Silences
The Untamed
Trailin’
The Night Horseman
Gunman’s Reckoning
Way of the Lawless
Ronicky Doone
Ronicky Doone’s Reward
Ronicky Doone’s Treasure
Alcatraz
Black Jack
The Rangeland Avenger
Bull Hunter
The Seventh Man
The Garden of Eden

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

Nook

First published August 28, 1994

About the author

Frederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver

Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.

Reviews

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undoubtedly the thing about this book that makes the strongest impression is its incredible variety. The settings of these stories vary from the slums of New York to Golden Age Hollywood, the trenches of WWI to the rural San Joaquin valley, the Southwestern desert to villas in the south of France—the characters range from a young farmhand to a big-city mob boss to an impoverished Russian Count. Max Brand seems equally at home with all of them. All of the stories definitely bear the mark of the same writer, but there are surprises, especially if you mainly know Brand from his Western work. I was amazed, for instance, that the warmth and sweetness of "Our Daily Bread," a short, touching story of a Jewish storekeeper's family, could have come from the same man who penned the savagery of the revenge Western "Outcast Breed."

With such variety it's almost impossible to review or describe the collection as a whole. My top favorites are "Our Daily Bread," "The Sun Stood Still," "Honor Bright," "The Silent Witness" and "Miniature." And the chilling "Wine on the Desert," one of Brand's most famous Westerns—well, it's hard to say that you like a story like this, but you have to admire the craft.

Also good are "Internes Can't Take Money" (the first Dr. Kildare story), "Pringle's Luck," "The King" and "Virginia Creeper." "Fixed" is pretty good. The spy story "The Strange Villa" and the swashbuckling Italian Renaissance-era adventure story "The Claws of the Tigress" are excerpts from longer works—I remember reading a longer version of the latter in a different collection and enjoying it very much, but the excerpt here is just a brief taste.

At the bottom of the list for me are the pair of "literary" stories, "The Wedding Guest" and "A Special Occasion." Literary short stories are just not my type—they generally feel like perpetually unsolved riddles, and depressing ones at that, however well-written. Just above these would go the opening entries, "John Ovington Returns" and "Above the Law," slightly fantastical tales which show the marks of being early works, but give a glimpse of the style that Brand would develop.

(Missing from this collection are two of my very favorite Brand stories, "A Watch and the Wilderness" and "The Kinsale." If you were to combine these two with the pick of the stories I mentioned above, that would definitely be a volume I'd have on my library shelf.)

[Randall Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Wild West

Real page-turner non-stop adventure, wild wild, west. Great courses great countryside, great vistas, great characters. Worth reading again and again

[Theimp · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Kindle book. Seventeen Max Brand stories are included. None are mind-benders. They are all just fun reads. No great literature included.

[Peter Charleston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice selection of stories Frederick Faust who used the pen name Max Brand.

[Mike Ashton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I.HAVE ENJOYED THE BEST,

To read stories that sparks your imagination and your feelings is indeed a great experience. This
author did this a century ago. WOW

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting "Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett".