Best Westerns

Books, that is. Not the hotel chain. A sampling of the best westerns written.
Updated October 2, 2022
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True Grit
Charles Portis
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Charles Portis's True Grit is "an epic and a legend" (Washington Post), a story of danger and adventure in the Old West--the basis for two award-winning films, the first starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role, as...
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture from Columbia Pictures starring Matt Damon, produced by Mike Nichols, and directed by Billy Bob Thornton. The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who...
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize­-winning American classic of the American West that follows two aging Texas Rangers embarking on one last adventure. An epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the...
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Ron Hansen
Paper Book
"Recalls the literature of Americana by John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, Willa Cather, and Hamlin Garland . . . Hansen has broadened our perception of the West in much the same way as the best historians . . . and proven himself one of our finest stylists of American historical fiction." -...
The Quick and the Dead
Louis L'Amour
Paper Book
In 1876 Wyoming, the gun is the only law. Con Vallian knew the best way to stay out of trouble was to mind his own business. Then he stopped for a cup of coffee at a stranger's campfire and found himself guiding the McKaskels, a family of greenhorn Easterners, across the prairie - fighting a pack of...
The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Owen Wister
Paper Book
Considered the greatest western of all time-- "When you call me that, smile " finds its origins in the book--this classic tells the story of the Wyoming ranch foreman known only as the Virginian, his courtship of school teacher Molly Wood, and his encounters with the murdering cattle rustler,...
The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
Paper Book
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an...
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
Paper Book
Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy’s first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy. Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot...
Centennial
James A. Michener
Audiobook
CENTENNIAL is a celebration of the stunning panorama of the West, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past. This is the story of the land and its people -- of Lame Bever, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; of Levi Zendt, fleeing with his...
The Son
Philipp Meyer
Paper Book
Philipp Meyer, the acclaimed author of American Rust, returns with The Son: an epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th...
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown
Paper Book
Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling historyThe New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down" Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent,...
The Shootist
Glendon Swarthout
Paper Book
This is an extremely well-written Western and gives the reader vivid insight into the workings of the mind of a wanderer and gunman.?Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sunday Advocate  By the author of The Homesman, now a major motion picture The Shootist...
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
Paper Book
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the...
Little House on the Prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Paper Book
Based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie is the third book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams.  Laura Ingalls...
Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey
Paper Book
This splendid, powerful, classic novel was written in 1911, but for over ninety years it has existed only in a profoundly censored version, one that undermined the truth of the characters and the integrity of Zane Grey's masterpiece. In this restored edition, with text based on Grey's original...
Shane
Jack Schaefer
CD
This unforgettable story of the friendship between a farm boy and a gunman struggling to escape his dark past was made into a critically acclaimed movie in 1953 that became a classic standard for Westerns. Shane, a mysterious traveller and ex-gunfighter, enters into the life of Joe Starrett and...
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
Paper Book
"An impressive work of mythic magnitude that may turn out to be Stephen King's greatest literary achievement" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), The Gunslinger is the first volume in the epic Dark Tower Series. A #1 national bestseller, The Gunslinger...
Butcher's Crossing
John Williams
Audiobook
In his National Book Award-winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher's Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to...

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