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.
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
McCarthy, Cormac
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...
Lonesome Dove
McMurtry, Larry.
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
Ron Hansen
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
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...
The Virginian a horseman of the plains
Wister, Owen
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. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
The Sisters brothers : a novel
deWitt, Patrick
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
Son : a novel
Meyer, Philipp
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
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.
Blood meridian, or, The evening redness in the West
McCarthy, Cormac
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
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
Told by a master storyteller who, according to critic Russell Nye, "combined adventure, action, violence, crisis, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex in an extremely shrewd mixture," Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger...
The gunslinger
King, Stephen
"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
Williams, John
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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