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.
Paper Book
.".. published in the year 2010 by arrangement with Simon & Schuster"--T.p. verso.
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
McMurtry, Larry
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize­-winning classic of the American West that follows two aging Texas Rangers embarking on one last adventure. An epic of the frontier and rich with complex characters, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness. ...
The quick and the dead
L'Amour, Louis
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
Wister, Owen
Paper Book
This classic tells the story of the Wyoming ranch foreman known only as the Virgianian, his courtship of school teacher Molly Starkwood, and his encounters with the murdering cattle rustler, Trampas.
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 : the illustrated edition
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
For the first time: a full-color illustrated edition of Dee Brown’s classic history of the American West! Eloquent, heartbreaking, and meticulously documented, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee follows the systematic...
The big sky : a novel
Guthrie, A. B.
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 ox-bow incident
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg
Paper Book
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...
The shootist
Swarthout, Glendon
Paper Book
This is the all-time classic novel chosen by the Western Writers of America as one of the best western novels ever wrttten. It is also the inspiration for John Wayne's last great starring role--the acclaimed 1976 film, The Shootist This special commemorative edition includes a brand new introduction...
Blood meridian, or, the evening redness in the West
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
The "masterpiece" (Michael Herr) of the New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road, No Country for Old Men, The Passenger, and Stella Maris   "Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner. I venture that...
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
Paper Book
A master of narrative momentum and suspense, Zane Grey sweeps readers into his stories and makes them feel that things are out of control, that boundaries are being burst. InRiders of the Purple Sage, the most famous novel of the American West, Grey creates a hero of epic...
Shane
Schaefer, Jack
Paper Book
The gunslinger
King, Stephen
Paper Book
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,...
Butcher's Crossing
Williams, John Edward
Ebook
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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