Get Started with Westerns 2026Like this list

27 items

• The Searchers

  May, Alan Le

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  The 1954 book that inspired the Greatest Western Movie of All Time (American Film Institute, 2008). The author Percival Everett says of the film version the Searchers "admits to American racism and practices it.”

• Empire of the Summer Moon

  Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

  Gwynne, S. C. (Samuel C.), 1953-

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  The true story of the 40-year war between the Comanches and white settlers.

• The Cowboy Way

  Kelton, Elmer

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  Looking for classics a la Zane Grey? Try Elmer Kelton. These short stories written in the mid-1900s are filled with action and adventure. Kelton was from Texas and the state as a character looms large in these stories.

• Cimarron

  Ferber, Edna, 1887-1968

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  Settling on the Oklahoma prairie, the Cravat family helps found the town of Osage, but the father can’t settle down. Instead, it is up to his wife to pull the town together and make something of their lives. First published in 1930.

• The Bullet Swallower

  a Novel

  Gonzalez James, Elizabeth, 1982-

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  A magical realism Western set in 1895, Bullet follows Antonio on his quest to rob a train in Houston to save his family from eviction and starvation.

• Lucky Red

  a Novel

  Cravens, Claudia

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  Bridget arrived in Dodge City in 1877 without a penny to her name and is recruited to work in one of the many brothels. Cravens follows Bridget’s internal journey to love and understanding in this cinematic queer western.

• The Brave Cowboy

  Abbey, Edward

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  Burns is a classic cowboy out riding the range, but the world has moved on and he doesn’t really fit with a mid-century modern living room set. First published in 1956, it also became a movie, Lonely are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas.

• Blood Meridian

  Or the Evening Redness in the West

  McCarthy, Cormac

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  Buckle up for a bloody and honest look at westward expansion.

• Angle of Repose

  Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993

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  The Pulitzer Prize winning (1972) novel about Lyman Ward writing his grandparents’ story of settling in the West. Interestingly, as the story unfolds, it focuses much more on his grandmother, and is a fascinating look at women in the West. Stegner…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Cold Dish

  Johnson, Craig

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  The first in the Longmire series. Sheriff Walt Longmire has to investigate the death of a white man who was convicted of raping a Native American girl.

• Lone Women

  a Novel

  LaValle, Victor, 1972-

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  A fascinating look at the women who headed to Montana for the promise of free land. It’s 1915 and Adelaide has left her home in California to settle on the plains. This historic horror novel looks at race and the lives of independent women through…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Death of a Legend: Jesse James

  Henry, Will

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  Like Kelton, Henry was known as a master of the Western during their heyday of the 1950s. Will Henry was one of many pen names of Henry Wilson Allen, a screenwriter for MGM cartoons. Allen was a five-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

  An Indian History of the American West

  Brown, Dee

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  Get a more balanced perspective with this nonfiction book from 1970 that details how homesteaders drove Native Americans from their ancestral lands.

• American Indian Stories

  Zitkála-Šá, 1876-1938

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  First published in 1921, American Indian Stories is a collection of fiction and non-fiction.

• Westering Women

  a Novel

  Dallas, Sandra

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  Maggie joins a large group of women who will make the journey from Chicago to California in 1852 in search of husbands.

• Doc

  A Novel

  Russell, Mary Doria

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  Russell, known for her speculative fiction novel The Sparrow, takes aim at the story of Doc Holliday in this fictionalized account of his life.

• Little Big Man

  a Novel

  Berger, Thomas, 1924-2014

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  Dark comedy meets Western in this 1979 novel that follows Jack Crabbe who straddles the line between two worlds.

• Vampires of El Norte

  Canas, Isabel

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  Set at the beginning of the Mexican-American War in 1846, Vampires is a supernatural Western romance with a face-off between vampires and cowboys.

• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

  Jones, Stephen Graham, 1972-

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  Jones’ western horror is told across three timelines including Montana in the 1870s when the Blackfeet are being annihilated by settlers. Jones uses his horror novel to explore identity and revenge and forgiveness in the West.

• Valley of Shadows

  a Novel

  Ruiz, Rudy

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  Cisneros has hung up his badge and accepted that the shift of the Rio Grande has left his Mexican town in Texas. Now a string of murders and kidnappings force him to investigate. Shadows is a genre-bending Western-horror-mystery with elements of…Read moreRead more of this annotation