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
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
Paper Book
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and...
Lonesome dove
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...
The 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." -...
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
Wister, Owen
Paper Book
Loosely based on the Johnson County War of 1892, a bloody clash between big landowners and small ranchers in Wyoming, Owen Wister's The Virginian is the classic saga of a man who embodied the spirit of a growing nation--a novel that inspired five movie versions and the popular TV series.
The Sisters brothers
deWitt, Patrick
Paper Book
From the author of 'Ablutions', 'The Sisters Brothers' is an offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother who are on the trail of a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold...
No country for old men
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border...
Centennial
Michener, James A.
Paper Book
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...
The son
Meyer, Philipp
Paper Book
A TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer. Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil...
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling historyThe New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down" Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent,...
The big sky : a novel
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
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
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...
Shane
Schaefer, Jack
Paper Book
He rode into our valley in the summer of 89, a slim man, dressed in black. Call me Shane, he said. He never told us more. There was a deadly calm in the valley that summer, a slow, climbing tension that seemed to focus on Shane. There s something about him, Mother said. Something . . ....
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...
Butcher's Crossing
Williams, John
Paper Book
**NOW A MAJOR FILM** BY THE AUTHOR OF STONER Will Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living. In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he...

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