Appaloosa

By: Robert B. Parker

Narrated by: Titus Welliver

A richly imagined novel of the Old West, as spare and vivid as a high plains sunset, from one of the world's most talented performers.

It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well as I remember anything the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. Always steady, and never fast . . .

When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novel Double Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. In Appaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s.

When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary-one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.

This is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.©2005 Robert B. Parker; (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

Praise for Appaloosa

“Like the Spenser books, it’s a study of Parker’s enduring themes: buddy relationships, the weight that honor and responsibility put on a man, the consequences of violence, the way good can shade into bad and vice versa…a melancholy and sometimes moving tale of a lost but fascinating era.”—The Seattle Times

“Dryly amusing…a conclusion that had to make Parker smile as much as his readers will.”—Los Angles Times

“[Parker] takes total command of the genre, telling a galloping tale…[a] classic western… magnificent. As always, the writing is bone clean. One of Parker’s finest.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“For…readers with a hankering for the Wild West, including a high-noon shootout and all the accoutrements.”—USA Today

“Beneath the trappings of this gunfighter novel, Parker really has something to say about the nature of men and women in the Old West. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

“As always, [Parker] is a master…his plot gallops to a perfect, almost mythical ending. Like a great gunfighter, Parker makes it look easy.”—St. Petersburg Times

“If Spenser and Hawk had been around when the West was wild, they’d have talked like Cole and Hitch. Wonderful stuff: notch 51 for Parker.”—Kirkus Reviews

Well done

Well done. Hard to listen to at first. Only because I've seen the movie so many times I want to hear Vigo Mortensen' voice. It is what was in my head as I read this book as well as the others in the series. Got over it. Good job.

Wow... what a book.

I just finished listening to Appaloosa. If you like the western Genre then this is a great book. If you don't, it is still a great book. It flows well from beginning to end. It is a true Story of friendship.

Very engaging!

The story was great, the humor made me laugh, and the narrative was perfect!

The only negative thing I can say is I didn’t like the use of the “f” word so often but that seems to be the new normal anymore.

I highly recommend this audiobook to anyone who loves westerns and upholding the law and justice of the old western days.

RBP is always entertaining. RIP

this story has everything you want in an old fashioned western but written for a more modern audience. Titus Weliver is great at narrating a very good story. I only caution the language and explicit content is what you'd expect from a modern R rated western.

Good story/ great narrator

Not a western novel reader but seeing Titus Welliver was the narrator I tried it.
He made the story come alive to me