Western Fiction

In his novels, best-selling author Cormac McCarthy creates a western landscape filled with characters that are both mythic and authentic. Cities of the Plain, the stunning conclusion of his award-winning Border trilogy, brings together John Grady Cole and Billy Parham—the two lifelong friends who began their adventures in All the Pretty Horses.

A wagon train winding through the remote reaches of the Rocky Mountain high country can attract plenty of scavengers - some of them human - like Vic Bedell and his gang of cutthroats. All he wants is the women, who can be traded for gold mine supplies...or used for whatever else he has in mind. But he didn't count on Preacher leading that train.

When her husband dies, leaving Sarah Perry and her infant daughter destitute and alone in the rough frontier town, the determined widow takes over his freight-hauling business. As her baby grows into a young girl, Sarah sends her to the safety and refinement of a boarding school. But when they are reunited, Sarah realizes that they now live in two different, incompatible worlds. Too Long a Stranger follows this courageous widow as she tries to regain a loving relationship with her estranged daughter.

Palmer wouldn't trade his family's land for the world. But the only way to save the ranch from financial disaster and claim his billion-dollar inheritance is to find himself a wife. His happily-ever-after would be complete if he could just hitch his wagon to the woman who sees him only as her best friend.

Driven by hope and vengeance, Carina Maria DiGratia leaves her idyllic home in Sonoma, California, for a new life in the mining town of Crystal, Colorado. Though the town has a rough element, Carina is determined that it will be the place where her dreams come true. Early on, two men vie for her trust - but neither is what he seems. Will Carina discern the truth in time to prevent tragedy?

Raised among the Blackfoot, John Hawk is a valuable asset to the US Army. As a military scout at Fort Ellis, he is able to cross the line between two worlds - and help keep the peace. But when he disobeys a direct order from his commander, Hawk is immediately dismissed from his post. That was the army’s first mistake. The second was losing track of a small mule train en route to Helena.

Civil War is brewing. Everything is about to change. Based on true events. When Regis Royle dreams, he dreams big. And since everything’s bigger in Texas, his dream is to make the Royle Ranch the biggest cattle supplier in the country. Problem is, the country is splitting apart, people are taking sides, and everyone’s gearing up for a full-blown War Between the States. Regis’s kid brother, Shepley, has enlisted in the Army. His trusted foreman “Bone” McGraw has left to rejoin the Texas Rangers. And the rail lines have been rerouted for the war effort.

One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer's Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of more than two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.

This classic Western story takes place on a cattle ranch. When a mysterious stranger comes walking into town seeking employment at the Cross-Triangle Ranch, life changes for these simple country folk.

With his work in Montana completed now that the Callahan-Warren feud has ended in marriage rather than bloodshed, Degan Grant sets out for California because it is far away from the home he wants to forget - until the US Marshal who saved his life calls in a favor. All Degan has to do is apprehend three outlaws on the marshal's list and turn them over to the law. Easy enough, he figures, for a man no one wants to tangle with. But then a bold young woman crosses his path.

The days of unrelenting rain had kept the wagon train from moving for almost a week, and the folks were getting frustrated and angry. So, rather than try to cross the swollen Platte River, the wagon master had them rolling southwest hoping to cross when its level dropped. As Joe and Faith led their tent-cart ahead of the lead wagon, they didn’t allow the foul weather to affect their good mood. But it wasn’t Mother Nature who would soon cause them grief.

Sheriff Walt Longmire is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of 25 armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back.

Even after the bombs fell, even after countries unleashed weapons beyond imagination on one another, even after lawlessness became the norm, people still expect their mail. As a deadman, I'm uniquely suited to deliver it.

A cold night, in the middle of nowhere, in a vast county in New Mexico, a lone patrolwoman comes across a pair of dead cops sitting in their cruiser. And who does she find standing over their corpses? A giant, lone drifter with one stark trait; he is menacing like a nightmare. His name? Jack Widow. To find the real killer, she'll have to partner with Widow. What seems like an ambush and execution might turn out to be something conspiratorial and far more sinister.

Elizabeth Thatcher is young, pretty, cultured, and educated. But when she journeys west to teach school in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, she's completely unprepared for the conditions she encounters. Still, she's determined to succeed at the formidable task of fitting in with the locals and shaping the hearts and minds of the schoolchildren in her care.

That night we were two perfect strangers, the town’s grumpy recluse and a gorgeous girl in the back of a bar. Until we weren’t. Because Nadia Dalca isn’t just some girl. She’s the girl I can’t have. Fourteen years younger than me and completely off-limits. My plan is to stay away, but the universe keeps pushing us together. It’s like some sort of cosmic joke, to give me a taste of something so electric—so real—something that breathed life back into me. Because I can look, but I can’t touch.

The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back. The bad news is that he's come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife - and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose grandson is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy. When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack have arrived.

Everyone knows my grandfather was a less-than-savoury human, but I didn't think he'd stick it to me in new ways after he died. I need a husband to claim my inheritance, and the sexy new lawyer in town volunteers to step in. A fake marriage is the easiest solution to my problem. Besides, it's only temporary, and it comes with perks. It's a simple business transaction. No feelings and no fuss. He's city and I'm country. He's Lexus and I'm a beat-up pickup truck. We couldn't be more different if we tried. So why does my chest hurt when I think of him leaving when our time is up?

Spur Award-winner Craig Johnson has garnered critical acclaim for his Walt Longmire mysteries. In this riveting seventh entry, Wyoming’s Absaroka County sheriff, Walt Longmire, is pushed beyond his limits. When three hardened convicts escape FBI custody in a mountain blizzard, an armed psychopath leads them up Big Horn Mountain. As Longmire struggles to track their treacherous ascent, he’ll need all the help he can get from the tribal spirits of the towering summit.

This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world.