Best Westerns

Books, that is. Not the hotel chain. A sampling of the best westerns written.
Updated October 2, 2022
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
True Grit
Charles Portis
Paper Book
This book is Portiss most famous novel and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Arkansas in the 1870s, who sets out one winter to avenge the murder of her father.
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Audiobook
All the Pretty Horses - the first volume of the Borders Trilogy - tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons - beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic...
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 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
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...
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...
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
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.B. Jr Guthrie
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 ...
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
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
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Audiobook
America's Original Pioneer Girl Pa Ingalls decides to sell the little log house, and the family sets out for Indian country They travel from Wisconsin to Kansas, and there, finally, Pa builds their little house on the prairie. Sometimes farm life is difficult, even dangerous, but Laura and her...
Shane
Jack Schaefer
Paper Book
This classic Western is a profoundly moving story of the influence of a singular character on one boy's life. The Starrett family's life forever changes when a man named Shane rides out of the great glowing West and up to their farm. Young Bob Starrett is entranced by this stoic...
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
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
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,...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.