[Tax-chick]

I agree with you to a point on Hornblower. His personality is annoying (more in the books than in the TV series.) However, the action, the use of language, the development of leadership skills are outstanding.

I found Owen Wister a bore. Louis L'Amour is having fun, even if he dangles a modifier, misplaces an antecedent, and allows a subplot to fade off into the mist without resolution, on occasion.

[AnAmericanMother]

If you like the action in Hornblower, you will LOVE the Jack Aubrey stories or Captain Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy. That book is definitely an adult story as too much of it would go right over a kid's head (Marryat gets in some serious licks against socialism -- in the early 1800s!) But a kid might really like one of his other books, The Children of the New Forest. A Cavalier's children are thought to be dead after the Puritans burn his house to the ground. But they are sheltered by an old family servant in a cottage in the New Forest. I enjoyed it very much as a child, and I have re-read it a couple of times.