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Best Westerns
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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
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...
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All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
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...
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Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
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...
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The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Owen Wister
A strong, silent stranger rides into the lawless lands of the western frontier, battles horse thieves, deals with unyielding scoundrels, and wins the heart of a schoolmarm. Owen Wister's 1902 classic-the first great novel of the American West-is rich in moral drama and vernacular wit. His hero-like...
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The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JOHN C. REILLY AND JOAQUIN PHOENIX A BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST AND A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Publishers Weekly * Amazon * Hudson Booksellers * Washington Post Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and...
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No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
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...
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Centennial
James A. Michener
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener's magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America's past, the story of Colorado--the Centennial State--is manifested through its...
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The Son
Philipp Meyer
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...
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Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown
The landmark, bestselling account of the crimes against American Indians during the 19th century, now on its 50th Anniversary. First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction...
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The Big Sky
Jr. A. B. Guthrie
Originally published more than fifty years ago, The Big Sky is the first of A. B. Guthries epic adventure novels of Americas vast frontier. The Big Sky introduces Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers, three of the most memorable characters in western American literature. Traveling the...
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The Ox-Bow Incident
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally...
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The Shootist
Glendon Swarthout
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Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
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...
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Little House on the Prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The third book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's treasured Little House series--now available as an ebook! This digital version features Garth Williams's classic illustrations, which appear in vibrant full color on a full-color device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices. The...
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Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey
In 1871 Utah, young Jane Withersteen is courted by Elder Tull, the leader of her polygamous Mormon church. When Jane refuses, the local Mormons persecute her. Meanwhile, Jane's friend, Bern Venters, is captured by Tull's posse and faces a harsh sentence. Jane defends him, causing even more friction...
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Shane
Jack Schaefer
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...
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The Gunslinger
Stephen King
Eerie, dreamlike, set in a world that is weirdly related to our own, The Gunslinger introduces Roland Deschain of Gilead, of In-World that was, as he pursues his enigmatic antagonist to the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea. Roland is a solitary figure, perhaps accursed,...
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Butcher's Crossing
John Williams
In the 1870s, Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek "an original relation to nature," drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher's Crossing, a small Kansas town full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. One of these men regales Will with tales of...
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