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
Charles Portis
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
Cormac McCarthy
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...
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
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
Ron Hansen
Ebook
A powerful novel of the infamous Western outlaw and his killer: "The best blend of fiction and history I've read in a long while" (John Irving).   By age thirty-four, Jesse James was already one of the most notorious and admired men in America. Bank robber, train bandit, gang...
The Quick and the Dead
Louis L'Amour
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
Owen Wister
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
Patrick deWitt
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
Cormac McCarthy
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
James A. Michener
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
Philipp Meyer
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
Dee Brown
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
Jr. A. B. Guthrie
Paper Book
THE BIG SKY is the first of A.B. Guthrie's epic adventure novels of America's vast frontier. It is a story as great as the land that inspired it, sweeping westward from Kentucky, up the Missouri River into Indian Country. Towering above the novel is Guthrie's unforgettable hero, Boone Caudill, a...
The Ox-Bow Incident
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Paper Book
Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incidentis 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
Glendon Swarthout
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
Cormac McCarthy
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
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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
Zane Grey
Paper Book
No book has a better claim to have invented the myth of the American West. It is 1871 in Cottonwoods, Utah. This is the story of the gunman, Lassiter, and the Mormon rancher, Jane Withersteen.
Shane
Jack Schaefer
Paper Book
In this true Western classic Jack Schaefer tells the story of a mysterious stranger who finds himself in the Wyoming Territory joining local homesteaders in their fight to keep their land and avoid the intimidating tactics of cattle driver Luke Fletcher. While trying to leave his gunslinging days...
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
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, who...
Butcher's Crossing
John Williams
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,...

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