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Western Fiction
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New and recommended western fiction
Updated February 9, 2024
RPL Staff
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No traveller returns : a novel
L'Amour, Louis
Paper Book
Louis L'Amour's long-lost first novel, faithfully completed by his son, takes readers on a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. Fate is a ship. As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific...
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Lucky Red : a novel
Cravens, Claudia
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A thrilling, raucous, and gloriously queer debut about a scrappy orphan bent on making her own luck in the American West--and finding friendship, romance, and her true calling along the way, now in paperback. "A powerful feminist battle cry . . . [and]...
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Rough animals : a novel
DelBianco, Rae
Paper Book
The 25 Best Thriller Books of the Summer--New York Post Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018 --Southern Living 46 Great Books to Read This Summer--Nylon Dazzling Debuts"--WYPR, "The Weekly Reader" 8 New Books You Should...
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0101816261313
W DEW
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...
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In the distance
DÃaz, Hernán
Paper Book
Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets...
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Upright women wanted
Gailey, Sarah
Paper Book
A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist! A 2021 Locus Award Finalist! A 2020 ALA Booklist Top 10 SF/F Pick! A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick! Book Riot's Best Books of 2020 So Far! Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR |...
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Red rabbit
Grecian, Alex
Paper Book
"Impossible to put down." --Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get In Trouble A ragtag posse must hunt down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts--where death is always just around the bend--in this new supernatural horror by...
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To the last man
Grey, Zane
Paper Book
To the Last Man is the story of Arizona's Pleasant Valley War, one of the most legendary conflicts of the Old West. A venomous feud between cattle ranchers, the Isbels, and sheepherders, the Jorths, plunges both families into a deadly cycle of vengeance. Yet, even as their families spiral...
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Where the lost wander
Harmon, Amy
Paper Book
In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss. The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her...
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The removed : a novel
Hobson, Brandon
Paper Book
"A haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family's reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family's way home is full--in equal measure--of melancholy and love." --Tommy Orange, author of There There ...
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Only killers and thieves : a novel
Howarth, Paul
Paper Book
"Powerful. . . . Paul Howarth brings early Australia to life, bloody warts and all, in an epic tale of murder, revenge, and colonial oppression, with very little room for redemption. The story and his words will stay with you, long after you have finished the book." -- New York Review...
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Eden mine
Hulse, S. M.
Paper Book
Winner of the Christianity Today Book Award, Fiction In Eden Mine, the award-winning author of Black River examines the aftershocks of an act of domestic terrorism rooted in a small Montana town on the brink of abandonment, as it tears apart a family, tests...
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Chenneville : a novel of murder, loss, and vengeance
Jiles, Paulette
Paper Book
Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post-Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World. Union soldier John...
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Death without company
Johnson, Craig
Paper Book
A new Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery from the author of the acclaimed The Cold Dish With his debut novel, The Cold Dish, Craig Johnson proved himself a strong new voice in the realm of literary mystery. In his newest work, Johnson again takes us to Sheriff Walt Longmires Absaroka County, Wyoming...
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Blood, guts, and glory : Smoke Jensen, American legend
Johnstone, William W.
Paper Book
One of the greatest characters in Western fiction. Two of the wildest tales of frontier vengeance from William Johnstone's classic bestselling saga. This is how Smoke Jensen became a legend. REVENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN They came in the dead of night like a pack of...
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Radiant apples
Lansdale, Joe R.
Paper Book
"Nat Love has had enough adventures for ten men. From son of a former slave, to buffalo soldier, to gun hand, to Marshal for Hanging Judge Parker. Now, entering old age, hes a train porter. A job hes happy to have, but not exactly the cream of his life. And then an unlikely train robbery and a...
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Unbury Carol : a novel
Malerman, Josh
Paper Book
The New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box returns with a supernatural thriller of love, redemption, and murder. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NEWSWEEK "This one haunts you for reasons you can't quite put your...
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The wintering place : a novel
McCarthy, Kevin
Paper Book
Dakota Territory, 1867. The O'Driscoll brothers have survived a Sioux massacre, but younger brother Michael is gravely wounded. The deserters are fleeing north with Tom's lover, Sara, when they come upon a sheltering rock by a stream down off the Bozeman Trail. If there is game here, they may...
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Head wounds
McGarrity, Michael
Paper Book
Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Doña Ana County Sheriff's Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut. The murders show all the signs of a...
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Boone's Lick : a novel
McMurtry, Larry.
Paper Book
In the Missouri town of Boone's Lick, a colorful cast of characters stands on the edge of the Western frontier ready to push west to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.
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The son
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...
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Continental divide : a novel
Myers, Alex
Paper Book
Go West, Young Man. Isn't that the advice every east coast boy has considered at least once in his life? At nineteen, almost twenty, Ron Bancroft thinks those words sound pretty good. Newly out as transgender, Ron finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, unable to...
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Across the Cheyenne River
Nesbitt, John D.
Paper Book
Russell Archer has come to Wyoming to fulfill his dream of having his own land. After one season of work on Lidge Mercer's ranch, he receives an offer to become a junior partner. Before long, however, Archer learns that Lidge was caught up in an old crime and fears for his life.Meanwhile, Archer...
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Dusk along the Niobrara
Nesbitt, John D.
Paper Book
Dunbar, working on a ranch in the Niobrara country in Wyoming, connects the death of a hardscrabble homesteader with the death of an old horse trader some fifteen years earlier. As Dunbar goes to work on a corral project in town and then on fall roundup, more murders take place--a wandering drunk...
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Outlawed : a novel
North, Anna
Paper Book
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK * INDIE NEXT SELECTION * LIBRARY READS SELECTION * AMAZON EDITORS' CHOICE * WASHINGTON POST BEST OF THE YEAR The "terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling" (R.O. Kwon)...
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Inland : a novel
Obreht, TeÌa
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife returns with "a bracingly epic and imaginatively mythic journey across the American West" (Entertainment Weekly). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time<...
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Savage country : a novel
Olmstead, Robert
Paper Book
"The year was 1873 and all about was the evidence of boom and bust, shattered dreams, foolish ambition, depredation, shame, greed, and cruelty . . ." Onto this broken Western stage rides Michael Coughlin, a Civil War veteran with an enigmatic past, come to town to settle his...
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Under Tower Peak
Paul, Bart.
Paper Book
After two tours as a sniper in Iraq, Tommy Smith has returned to his former life as a cowboy and wilderness guide in California's Sierra Nevada, hoping to reclaim the simplicity of his youth and heal the wounds the world can't see. When, high on a mountain pass, he and his partner find the wrecked...
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Picnic in the ruins : a novel
Petersen, Todd Robert
Paper Book
Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she unexpectedly crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a 'collector' of Native American...
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Sarah Jane
Sallis, James
Paper Book
A spare, sparkling tour de force about one woman's journey to becoming a cop, by master of noir James Sallis, author of Drive. Sarah Jane Pullman is a cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army...
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This side of night
Scott, J. Todd
Paper Book
In the Mexican borderlands, a busload of student protesters is gunned down in broad daylight, a violent act blamed on the Nemesio cartel. But its aging leader, Fox Uno, sees the attack for what it is: another salvo in the long-running battle for control of Nemesio itself; perhaps by a rival cartel,...
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No name : the story of a ghost town
Wheeler, Richard S.
Paper Book
Throatlatch, Wyoming, is a sinister town that preys on travelers. One of them is No Name, a drifter who lives his life without purpose. Something about the little town obsesses No Name, and he finds himself drawn into a whirl of evil -- murders and cruelties all done in the name of virtue.
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Properties of thirst : a novel
Wiggins, Marianne
Paper Book
A National Bestseller A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic: a...
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