Skip to main content
C
CU Catalog
All Lists
Topic Guides
Best Westerns
Unpublished
Share
Books, that is. Not the hotel chain. A sampling of the best westerns written.
Updated October 2, 2022
Unbound Librarians
A list cannot be published until it has at least four items.
List was unpublished.
List was published.
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
True grit
Portis, Charles.
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
All the pretty horses. bk. 1
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Lonesome Dove : a novel
McMurtry, Larry.
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Hansen, Ron.
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." -...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The Virginian : a horseman of the plains
Wister, Owen
Paper Book
Dime novels had featured some rather scrawny horse-bound tenders of cattle, but not until 1902 did the cowboy become a fully realized article of American culture. That year Owen Wister, a native of Philadelphia, published the novel that established the conventions of the western. An immediate...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Centennial
James A. Michener
Paper Book
"Michener is America's best writer, and he proves it once again in CENTENNIAL." THE PITTSBURGH PRESS A stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Son : a novel
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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 ...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The shootist
Swarthout, Glendon Fred.
Digital file
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Riders of the purple sage
Grey, Zane
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Shane
Jack Schaefer
Paper Book
Shane, a stranger the Starretts take into their home in Wyoming in 1889, becomes involved in a feud between the cattle ranger and the local homesteaders.
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The dark tower : the gunslinger, bk 1
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...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Butcher's Crossing
Williams, John
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. 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,...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or
log in here.