Max Brand 
The Garden of Eden 

Racetrack gambler Ben Connor knows horses. The day he first saw an Eden Gray run, he knew it was fast enough to earn a lot of money. So why not find the reclusive deaf mute who owns the Eden Grays, buy one, enter it in races and watch his fortune grow? The plans seem solid, but they’re stymied when the owner refuses to sell. The gambler must now choose: forget his scheme, or plunge deeper to see it come true.A clever and intriguing ride around track in Max Brand’s inventive mind.’Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944) was an American fiction author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns. Faust wrote mostly under pen names, and today he is primarily known by one, Max Brand. Others include George Owen Baxter, Martin Dexter, Evin Evans, David Manning, Peter Dawson, John Frederick, and Pete Morland. Faust was born in Seattle. He grew up in central California and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write frequently. During the 1910s, Faust started to sell stories to the many emerging pulp magazines of the era. In the 1920s, Faust wrote furiously in many genres, achieving success and fame, first in the pulps and later in the upscale ‘slick’ magazines. His love for mythology was, however, a constant source of inspiration for his fiction and his classical and literary inclinations. The classical influences are particularly noticeable in his first novel The Untamed (1919), which was also made into a motion picture starring Tom Mix in 1920.