"A wild ride through Cuba during the Spanish-American War."
--Miami Herald

"Not only his finest novel but one that transcends the limits of its genre and is worthy of being evaluated as literary fiction."
--Houston Chronicle

Before Grand Master Elmore Leonard earned his well-deserved reputation as "the best writer of crime fiction alive" (Newsweek), he penned some of the finest western fiction to ever appear in print. (The classics Hombre, Valdez is Coming, and 3:10 to Yuma were just a few of his notable works.) With his extraordinary Cuba Libre, Leonard ingeniously combines all of his many talents and delivers a historical adventure/caper/western/noir like none other. The creator of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, star of Raylan, Pronto, Riding the Rap, and TV's Justified, spins a gloriously exciting yarn about an American horse wrangler who escapes a date with a Cuban firing squad to join forces with a powerful sugar baron's lady looking to make waves and score big in and around Spanish-American War-torn Havana in 1898. Everything you love about Leonard's fiction--and more--is evident in Cuba Libre. No wonder the New York Times Book Review enthusiastically declared him "a literary genius."

Sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898--right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine--isn't the smartest thing recently prison-sprung horse wrangler Ben Tyler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But he's not dying until he gets the money he's owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And there's one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich man's side who could help Tyler get everything he's got rightfully coming . . . even when the whole damn island's going straight to Hell.

Leonard, Elmore

Elmore Leonard wrote more than forty books during his long career, including the bestsellers Raylan, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch, as well as the acclaimed collection When the Women Come Out to Dance, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. The short story "Fire in the Hole," and three books, including Raylan, were the basis for the FX hit show Justified. Leonard received the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He died in 2013.