The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour.

THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF LOUIS L'AMOUR. Selections from The Frontier Stories, Vol. 1. Louis L'Amour. N.d. Read by John Bedford Lloyd. 3 cds. 3.5 hrs. Random House Audio. 0-7393-0781-9. $21.95. Plastic; plot notes. SA

Editorial notes on Amazon.com say that 120 titles and 270 million copies of the works of Louis L'Amour, a writer best known for his tales of the American West, remain in print. This CD collection of seven of his short stories, each unabridged, includes "The Gift of the Cochise," "Desperate Men," "The Skull and the Arrow," "Marshal of Canyon Gap," "The Defense of Sentinel," "Let the Cards Decide," and "Home is the Hunter." This is the first of a projected set that aims to have available for listening all of L'Amour's short fiction. The book from which they are drawn contains 35 stories, and it is not clear if the editors plan to go back and pick up the unrecorded tales at another time.

Lloyd reads with a naturally deep masculine resonance, and he clearly enjoys the quirky characters. His voicing has an amateur quality that would grate on many listeners but will probably not offend the average L'Amour aficionado. That is, after all, how they themselves would read these stories aloud. Millions read and reread (and love) his tales. Librarians deciding whether or not to purchase this audio recording will need to judge if L'Amour is popular within their communities. Edna Boardman, Birsmarck, ND