Eastern Wyoming, 1884 In Angel Clayton's opinion, men don't get any finer than hired hand Rowdy McGuire. The very thought of him makes her ache with need--and the sight of his golden, glistening skin only makes it worse. She knows he feels their bodies' magical, intense pull towards one another, even if the honorable cowboy refuses to admit that a drifter and a ranch owner's daughter could ever be together. But Angel is determined to get what she wants--and she wants Rowdy!

Re-read Book 5 in the romantic suspense series Operation: Midnight by New York Times bestselling author Linda Castillo. All Bo Ruskin wanted was to forget his tragic past and to reclaim his quiet cowboy life. Instead, he had orders to protect Special Agent Rachael Armitage. Furious and frustrated, Rachael would rather die than abandon her dangerous mission. For even in the safety of Bo's Montana ranch, an international crime lord was out to grant her wish. Drawn to this mysterious, hardened cowboy from her past, Rachael was certain Bo was hiding something. But first she'd have to learn the lay of the land if she were to live to learn the truth. Riding horseback through the wilderness, would these two desperadoes go down in a blaze of glory—or passion? Originally published in 2007.

"Much more than a page-turner. It’s the first essential work of cultural history of the new decade." —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Publishers Weekly best book of 2021 The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author of the behind-the-scenes explorations of the classic American Westerns High Noon and The Searchers now reveals the history of the controversial 1969 Oscar-winning film that signaled a dramatic shift in American popular culture. Director John Schlesinger’s Darling was nominated for five Academy Awards, and introduced the world to the transcendently talented Julie Christie. Suddenly the toast of Hollywood, Schlesinger used his newfound clout to film an expensive, Panavision adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. Expectations were huge, making the movie’s complete critical and commercial failure even more devastating, and Schlesinger suddenly found himself persona non grata in the Hollywood circles he had hoped to conquer. Given his recent travails, Schlesinger’s next project seemed doubly daring, bordering on foolish. James Leo Herlihy’s novel Midnight Cowboy, about a Texas hustler trying to survive on the mean streets of 1960’s New York, was dark and transgressive. Perhaps something about the book’s unsparing portrait of cultural alienation resonated with him. His decision to film it began one of the unlikelier convergences in cinematic history, centered around a city that seemed, at first glance, as unwelcoming as Herlihy’s novel itself. Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy tells the story of a modern classic that, by all accounts, should never have become one in the first place. The film’s boundary-pushing subject matter—homosexuality, prostitution, sexual assault—earned it an X rating when it first appeared in cinemas in 1969. For Midnight Cowboy, Schlesinger—who had never made a film in the United States—enlisted Jerome Hellman, a producer coming off his own recent flop and smarting from a failed marriage, and Waldo Salt, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter with a tortured past. The decision to shoot on location in New York, at a time when the city was approaching its gritty nadir, backfired when a sanitation strike filled Manhattan with garbage fires and fears of dysentery. Much more than a history of Schlesinger’s film, Shooting Midnight Cowboy is an arresting glimpse into the world from which it emerged: a troubled city that nurtured the talents and ambitions of the pioneering Polish cinematographer Adam Holender and legendary casting director Marion Dougherty, who discovered both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight and supported them for the roles of “Ratso” Rizzo and Joe Buck—leading to one of the most intensely moving joint performances ever to appear on screen. We follow Herlihy himself as he moves from the experimental confines of Black Mountain College to the theatres of Broadway, influenced by close relationships with Tennessee Williams and Anaïs Nin, and yet unable to find lasting literary success. By turns madcap and serious, and enriched by interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema, but also the story of a country—and an industry—beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

RETIREMENT FOR ONE COWBOY MEANT GETTING BACK UP ON THE SADDLE All Bo Ruskin wanted was to forget his tragic past and to reclaim his quiet cowboy life. Instead, he had orders to protect Special Agent Rachael Armitage. Furious and frustrated, Rachael would rather die than abandon her dangerous mission. For even in the safety of Bo's Montana ranch, an international crime lord was out to grant her wish. Drawn to this mysterious, hardened cowboy from her past, Rachael was certain Bo was hiding something. But fi rst she'd have to learn the lay of the land if she were to live to learn the truth. Riding horseback through the wilderness, would these two desperadoes go down in a blaze of glory—or passion?

John Schlesinger's 1969 drama, Midnight Cowboy, follows the story of naïve would-be hustler Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and ailing con man Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), set against the gritty backdrop of New York City in the late 1960s. The film received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, becoming the only X-rated film to the win the Academy Award for Best Picture. James Kendrick argues that this film, more so than its notable contemporaries, captures the immense turmoil, change and revolution that was taking place both in Hollywood and in the larger American culture of the late 1960s. He explores the film's production, reception, visual and thematic innovation, and cultural impact-not only its ground-breaking portrayal of sexuality and relationships, but also its exploration of themes of urban loneliness and socio-economic disparity. Through close analysis of the film and examination of articles, press reports, interviews and reviews from the five decades following its release, Kendrick shows how Midnight Cowboy, with its mix of visual poetry, documentary-like realism, fragmentary flashbacks, and unvarnished depiction of desperate characters on the fringes of society, offers a unique focal point for the intersection of European art cinema and the new parameters of mainstream Hollywood at the end of the classic era.

The basis for the Oscar–winning buddy film. “There is no questioning the rampant power achieved through shriveling, shattering scenes” (Kirkus Reviews). Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck’s fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel’s emotional nucleus. This unlikely pairing of Ratso and Joe Buck is perhaps one of the most complex portraits of friendship in contemporary literature. The focus on male friendship follows a strong path cut by Twain’s Huck and Jim, Melville’s Ishmael and Queequeg, Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, and Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. Midnight Cowboy takes a well-deserved place among a group of distinguished American novels that write—often with unnerving candor—about those who live on the fringe of society. “Leaves the world of innocence that is muddied by sex for a world that is innocent in the midst of sex, with a protagonist who is a sexual entrepreneur.” —The New York Review of Books

Midnight Cowboy – the story of a small-town stud’s attempt to make it big as a hustler on the streets of 1960s New York – is an indisputably iconic film. Though recognized in terms of its early adoption of Nouvelle Vague cinematography and editing techniques, and renowned for an Oscar win in spite of controversy over its X-rating, Midnight Cowboy has yet to be understood as a classic of queer cinema. Jon Towlson reclaims Midnight Cowboy as a queer text by addressing John Schlesinger as a gay author and filmmaker and providing a fresh perspective on the film’s relationship to the 1965 James Leo Herlihy novel from which it was adapted. Offering a nuanced and personal view of the film’s relevance to queer experience and queer friendship, Towlson also considers Midnight Cowboy’s production and reception and its place in Schlesinger’s filmography. Depictions of sixties New York counterculture and 42nd Street hustlers offer an opportunity for reassessment, particularly in the film's relationship to male prostitution, male relationships, and sexual identity. By shifting the perspective away from previous interpretations of Midnight Cowboy as homophobic and problematic, Towlson argues for a new interpretation of the film as a proto-queer buddy movie and a critical forerunner to films such as My Own Private Idaho and Brokeback Mountain.

THE SHOPKEEPER’S SHAME Pregnant and unmarried, Molly Thorson knows her livelihood is under threat. The last thing she needs is a distracting cowboy swaggering into view. Especially one who knows she has a secret and still looks at her with desire in his eyes.

Can't stop running from the past