This 1968 novel by Charles Portis—"one of the most inventively comic writers of western fiction" (Michael Cleary)—is the basis for both the 1969 movie starring John Wayne and the 2010 film by the Coen brothers, starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. It is the story of Bible-quoting 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who has recruited the meanest U.S. Marshal she can find—the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn—to take her into Indian Territory to avenge her father's murder.

"Like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, Charles Portis's True Grit captures the naïve elegance of the American voice."—Jonathan Lethem