All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (Picador, £6.99 in UK)

This first volume of what would become the Border Trilogy, was first published in 1992, some seven years after McCarthy's amoral apocalyptic odyssey Blood Meridian. It is, in fact, a gentler re-working of the earlier book. Whereas in Blood Meridian various maurauding gangs of killers and bounty hunters with whom The Kid joins up, butcher all in their path in the 1840's Texas desert, this quasi-romantic novel has a thinking hero, young John Grady Cole. He wants to be a cowboy. After his grandfather dies, the boy, despairing of his estranged parents, runs away to Mexico. The narrative is more human but McCarthy's language remains as lush, his sun as blood-red. While working on a Mexican horse ranch, Grady Cole falls in love, suffering horrific consequences. The past and the present, Mexico and the US, and the weight of that shared history defeat his love. An earthy fervour is at work throughout, celebrating life, nature and horses as well as language. It prepares the reader for the glories of The Crossing (1994). What a shame the final part, Cities of the Plain (1998), is so appalling.