AB Guthrie Jr Books in Order

In the isolated western town of Moon Dance, murder intrudes on life between barren mountains and the Freezeout badlands. Guthrie combines a frontier setting with a whodunit, bringing the town's rough characters into a mystery shaped by their surroundings.

Boone Caudill leaves Kentucky for the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, joining Jim Deakins and Dick Summers in a life of trapping and exploration. Wilderness freedom draws him deeper into a harsh world that reshapes his loyalties.

Returning to the West in 1846, frontiersman Dick Summers guides a wagon train from Missouri toward Oregon. The settlers face a difficult passage through unfamiliar country, testing their endurance and the hopes that sent them west.

Guthrie examines Kentucky through its varied landscapes, people, and enduring regional identities. His portrait moves beyond familiar stereotypes to consider the state's history, economic contrasts, farming traditions, and the strong attachment Kentuckians feel toward their home.

In Montana's cattle country of the 1880s, Lat Evans pursues prosperity among ranchers driven by love and ambition. His good intentions face pressure from a demanding landscape and the human weaknesses that accompany his rise.

This essay explores the American West's continuing hold on the national imagination. Guthrie considers its historical legacy and the stories through which Americans revisit frontier experience, drawing connections between remembered events and their enduring cultural appeal.

Guthrie recalls a Montana childhood shaped by the outdoors and follows the experiences that led him toward a writing career. Personal adventures and reflections reveal the life behind The Big Sky and The Way West.

Indiana teacher Benton Collingsworth arrives in the isolated Montana community of Arfive, where a new school promises change. His friendship with rancher Mort Ewing and clashes with frontier customs trace a town's uneasy adjustment to a changing world.

Guthrie’s short fiction follows westerners confronting danger, change and the demands of the land around them. These varied tales test courage and resilience while exploring the bond between people and nature, often with humor amid the hardship.

Maggie Magpie, Mephitis Skunk, Busy Beaver, and other animals share adventures around Pond Placid. These stories follow the pond's inhabitants and their neighboring creatures through a small natural world populated by distinctive animal characters for young readers.

A shooting at Midbury's annual picnic leaves Sheriff Chick Charleston with many possible motives and little evidence. With teenage baseball pitcher Jason Beard helping, he must untangle local grievances to identify the person behind the attack.

These environmental essays express Guthrie's attachment to Montana and his concern for the land's future. Edited by David Petersen, the collection examines humanity's tendency to damage the natural world it depends on, making explicit themes underlying his Western novels.

Between the world wars, a Montana community confronts changes threatening its landscape and way of life. Newspaper publisher Ben Tate and his older friends resist destructive ideas of progress while working to preserve the values that hold their town together.

When an unpopular Montana rancher is found dead, Chick Charleston and deputy Jason Beard investigate a community crowded with grudges. Gossip, prejudice and a second killing complicate their search while threatening the fragile peace around Midbury.

Bitter cold grips Midbury as ranchers and strip miners clash over the land's future. Sheriff Chick Charleston and Jason Beard struggle to contain the tension, then a murder at the miners' gathering place demands their attention.

Dick Summers returns to a changing western landscape, seeking retribution from Boone Caudill and renewed companionship with Teal Eye. As the open country he loves begins to disappear, his personal reckoning unfolds alongside the erosion of frontier life.

The murder of a sex worker draws Sheriff Chick Charleston and Jason Beard into an investigation across Montana's small towns. A local madam, wandering strangers and unhelpful neighboring police complicate their efforts to uncover what happened.

This volume gathers twenty-three poems written across a quarter-century of Guthrie's life, beginning in the 1930s. His first poetry collection presents a different form of his writing alongside the historical novels and prose for which he is known.

Chick Charleston and his wife travel to an English village to explore her ancestry, only for a guest at their inn to be murdered. Away from his badge, the Montana sheriff must work around unfamiliar police methods.

Marc Gaede's photographs of Western landscapes accompany portraits of writers and texts by A. B. Guthrie. The volume combines visual impressions of the region with literary excerpts, a personal essay, and Edward Abbey's tribute to Guthrie.

Drawing on decades of writing, Guthrie examines the basic skills that make fiction work. Thirty-six brief chapters use practical examples to help aspiring writers understand the craft and approach their own stories with greater purpose.