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
Portis, Charles
CD
Mattie Ross, a fourteen-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death by a no-good outlaw. Mattie convinces one-eyed "Rooster" Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. In True Grit, we have a true American classic, as young...
All the pretty horses
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen...
Lonesome dove : a novel
McMurtry, Larry
Paper Book
A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember. Now a blockbuster television event.
The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford
Hansen, Ron
CD
Jesse James was a fabled outlaw, a charismatic, spiritual, larger-than-life bad man whose bloody exploits captured the imagination and admiration of a nation hungry for antiheroes. Robert Ford was a young upstart torn between dedicated worship and murderous jealousy, the "dirty little coward" who...
The quick and the dead
L'Amour, Louis
Paper Book
When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men-men who would follow him and try to...
The Virginian : a horseman of the plains
Wister, Owen
Paper Book
In the untamed West, pioneers came to test their fortunes -- and their wills. The Wyoming territory was a harsh, unforgiving land, with its own unwritten code of honor by which men lived and died. Into this rough landscape rides the Virginian, a solitary man whose unbending will is his only guide...
The Sisters brothers
deWitt, Patrick
Paper Book
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, RIZ AHMED, 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...
No country for old men
McCarthy, Cormac
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...
The son
Meyer, Philipp
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 : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee.
Paper Book
Doumented account of the decimation of Native Americans in the last half of the 19th century, told from the Indian viewpoint.
The big sky
Guthrie, A. B., Jr.
Paper Book
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. B. Guthrie, Jr., The Big Sky is a classic portrait of America's vast frontier that inspired the Western genre in fiction. The Best Novel of the American West as chosen by members of the Western Literature Association ...
The shootist
Swarthout, Glendon Fred
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, or, The evening redness in the West
McCarthy, Cormac
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
Wilder, Laura Ingalls
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
Grey, Zane
CD
A gentile sage rider is about to be whipped by the Mormons to coerce the rich and beautiful Jane Withersteen to marry against her will. In desperation, Jane whispers a prayer, "Whence cometh my help!" Just then, an unlikely hero, the infamous gunfighter Lassiter, routs the persecutors and is drawn...
Shane
Schaefer, Jack
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
King, Stephen
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...

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