All the pretty horses - Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses - the first volume of the Border Trilogy - tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers, almost the last American cowboy. Across the border Mexico beckons - beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.The boys' story is a classic adventure from the lost heart of the American Wild West: an adventure that within months will leave one of them dead, and the other two aged beyond any normal reckoning. It is also a grand and epic love story, and a beautifully wise novel about the passing of childhood and the loss of innocence. 'A uniquely brilliant book . . . as subtly beautiful as its desert setting' Sunday Times

'The finest action writer since Hemingway . . . a darkly shining work . . . immensely entertaining . . . executed with consummate skill and much subtlety - the effect is magnificent' Observer

'One of the great American novels of this or any time' Guardian