Border Trilogy

3 primary works • 4 total works Complete

All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

Published 1 January 1983

The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself.  With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.  Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

Published 1 January 1994

This novel is from "Volume Two Of "The Border Trilogy". Set on the southwestern ranches in the years before the Second World War, "The Crossing" follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's property, Billy captures the animal but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When Billy comes back to his own home he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise."Admirers of "All the Pretty Horses" will need little encouragement...McCarthy speaks to us in the thrilling, apocalyptic tones of an Old Testament prophet. We must treasure him" - "Sunday Telegraph". ""The Crossing" is like a river in full spate: beautiful and dangerous" - "The Times". "An American epic infused with a grand solemnity" - "Sunday Times".

Cities of the Plain

by Cormac McCarthy

Published 1 January 1998

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The third volume of the award-winning Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • A darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier

The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands. To the North lie the proving grounds of Alamogordo; to the South, the twin cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. It is a life that is about to change forever, and John Grady and Billy both know it.

The catalyst for that change appears in the form of a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute.  When John Grady falls in love, Billy agrees—against his better judgment—to help him rescue the girl from her suavely brutal pimp. The ensuing events resonate with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy. Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow, humor and awe, Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic.

Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

The Border Trilogy

by Cormac McCarthy

Published 19 October 1998

Beautiful and brutal, two young cowboys come of age in The Border Trilogy – Cormac McCarthy's award-winning requiem for the American frontier.

'A landmark in American literature' – Guardian

With an introduction from Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room.

During the middle of the twentieth century, two teenage boys leave their childhoods behind across the US-Mexico border.

John Grady Cole will search for his future to the south, a friend by his side, finding adventure and barbarism in the vanishing world of the Old West.

Billy Parnham, after deciding not to kill her, will be drawn to the mountains of Mexico accompanied by a lone, pregnant wolf.

When the two boys come together as men, in the trilogy's final volume, a dangerous chain of events will bring this story to its savage, inevitable conclusion.

A stunning saga of loyalty and love, filled equally with sorrow and humour, The Border Trilogy is a powerful story of two friends growing up in a world where blood and violence are conditions of life.

'In these three fierce, desolate, beautiful novels, McCarthy has created a masterpiece' – Sunday Times

This edition collects all three novels in the Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.

Praise for Cormac McCarthy

‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren

'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series

'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain