Literary Fiction Western

The second son of Brazos Fortune, Samuel, is somewhat the lost sheep of the Fortune family. After he is run out of Texas, he ends up hiding out with his father and brother. Although he struggles to escape the consequences of his previous lifestyle, he refuses to talk about the past. Brazos has to deal with sending Samuel back to Texas to make amends or allowing him to have a new start in Dakota.

In McGuane's first novel set in his famed American West, Patrick Fitzpatrick is a former soldier, a fourth-generation cowboy, and a whiskey addict. His grandfather wants to run away to act in movies, his sister wants to burn the house down, and his new stallion is bent on killing him: all of them urgently require attention. But increasingly Patrick himself is spiraling out of control, into that region of romantic misadventure and vanishing possibilities that is Thomas McGuane's Montana.

Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.

Reverend Maloney isn't the world's greatest spiritual advisor. He drinks gin out of his coffee cup and has sex dreams about the Holy Ghost. His best friend Eli isn't perfect either, but he's a chess genius, so Maloney sees an opportunity in traveling around the country so Eli can win major chess tournament after chess tournament (while Maloney pockets Eli's winnings).

After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.

In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son, Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered plains. Twelve-year-old Caleb nurses his mother back to health, cleaning her wounds and keeping her fed, before they leave their home to seek retribution on the men who committed this heinous crime.

A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of 19th-century America. While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim Wales struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom. Robbers' Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West.

Evangeline Keating came West because she had to: after her husband's passing, she needed to build a new life for her young daughter, and marrying a stranger from Montana Territory was her best chance. After a difficult winter journey, she arrives at an isolated outpost called Springwater Station. But the handsome man who's come for her is not her husband-to-be, and Evangeline soon finds herself thrust into a most inconvenient - and highly improper - arrangement.

Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.

At the center of this searing fever-dream of a novel are two men - a killer awaiting trial and a troubled young deputy - sitting across fromeach other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: JohnGload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration; and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest.

When Corporal Elijah Russell's superb horsemanship is revealed during a firefight in northern Iraq, the young Army Ranger is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. Elijah's task is to train the Green Berets - fiercely loyal to their enigmatic commander, Captain Wynne - to ride the horses they will use to execute this mission through treacherous mountain terrain. But as the team presses farther into enemy territory, the nature of their operation only becomes more mysterious, and Wynne's charismatic power takes on a darker cast.

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible loss and their place in it. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl's story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is headed for Yuma, escorting Harvey "Cisco" Lang to prison and Adele Simpson to safety. He knows full well of their shared romantic history, and even though Adele swears she's done with Cisco, Burrack is keeping a hard eye on her as well as on the outlaw. But his companions are the least of his worries. A ruthless cattle baron has put a five-thousand-dollar price on Burrack's head - and every low-life bounty hunter and bandit across the Painted Desert is looking to claim it…

It’s springtime in Oklahoma, and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. Nerves at the abandoned summer camp where he and his fellow oddballs are crashing have been on edge since the arrival of a teenager named Coral, unceremoniously dropped off from her family’s minivan one afternoon. Adding to her aura of mystery, Coral doesn’t say a word. Ever.

Men with…more. More powerful. More heart. More guts and grit and sometimes…dimensions beyond. That’s the Marshalls, brothers Quinn and Josh and their cousin Case: strong, handsome and sexy protectors who will tackle evil in any of its forms to guard and keep safe those they love. This set includes Texas Refuge, Texas Star, and Texas Danger.

Three-book boxed set of small town love stories rich with emotion, ripe with secrets, scandals and sexual tension: Texas Secrets: Former SEAL Boone Gallagher returns to the only home he's ever known only to find that the ranch has been willed to a stranger who doesn't want it—and he must keep her there for thirty days, or it will be lost to them both. Texas Lonely: A loner who’s lost faith in love is the only hope for a mother and child on the run. Texas Bad Boy: Disgraced bad boy has his chance for revenge against the beautiful society girl who chose money over his love.

This is the second boxed set in the much-loved Sweetgrass Springs series about a little town where hearts go to heal. Texas Rebel: A former rebellious teen turned billionaire’s reunion with his teenage sweetheart and a secret baby he never knew about. Texas Blaze: What happens when a shark lawyer in stilettos has a fling with a hot firefighter determined to find Suzy Homemaker? Texas Christmas Bride: All he wants is the girl he thought he’d lost forever.

Cornelia Rose — armed with her midwifery training, as well as literature and history knowledge, thanks to older brothers’ education and books — embraces the opportunities that life in the metropolis of New York provides. In love and happily married to Obadiah Wright, her life is a fairytale of abundance, but it takes an unexpected turn with Obadiah’s decision to heed the call of the West.

In 1909, struggling to farm his remote homestead and raise three sons, widower Oliver Milliron desperately needs help. A housekeeper’s ad in a Milwaukee newspaper, “Can’t cook but doesn’t bite,” leads him to hire her sight unseen. When perky Rose Llewellyn arrives, she brings along her brainy brother, Morris. Though Rose whistles through her work at the Milliron house, and Morris becomes teacher at the one-room school, these two newcomers conceal a past that is colorful and infamous.