Louis L'Amour books in order

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) was an American writer of Western novels and short stories, author of Hondo and the Sackett family saga, whose books had sold more than 320 million copies by 2010.

He was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in Jamestown, North Dakota, on 22 March 1908 and died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on 10 June 1988. He served in the United States Army during the Second World War. His early books include the poetry collection Smoke from This Altar (1939), and in 1950 he wrote four Hopalong Cassidy novels for hire under the name Tex Burns, which he later disowned. His 1952 Collier's story "The Gift of Cochise" was the basis of the 1953 film Hondo, and his novelisation, Hondo, published by Gold Medal Books in 1953, became a bestseller.

He later wrote chiefly for Bantam Books, under a contract for three books a year. The Daybreakers (Bantam, 1960) was the first Sackett novel he wrote, though five later books are set earlier in the family's history; the series runs to seventeen novels. When he died, almost all of his 105 works were in print. He won the National Book Award in 1980 for Bendigo Shafter and received the Congressional Gold Medal (awarded 1982, presented 1983) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984).

For collectors. The 1953 Gold Medal Books edition of Hondo is his breakthrough book, and The Daybreakers (Bantam, 1960) is the first published Sackett novel.