Westerns bestsellers

Lamentations

“Historian Carol Kammen creates a moving, lyrical dramatization of the events of the first wagon train to set out for Oregon in 1842, told in the voices of the women in the company. From various backgrounds and different parts of what was then the United States, young and old, the girls and women bring us along on the long trek through unknown territory, noting their fears and hopes, through hardship and joy. A fictional sister to Isabella Bird’s classic A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, this is a lovely historical novel.”

Nora, Bookstore1Sarasota

Now an award-winning Netflix film by Jane Campion, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst: Thomas Savage's acclaimed Western is "a pitch-perfect evocation of time and place" (Boston Globe) for fans of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain.


Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of... Read more »

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

“A raucous romp through a nearly lawless post-Civil War American West. Ming Tsu’s story is captivating and impossible to put down; the cast of characters is just too unique to forget or dismiss. A blood-crusted gem of a tale.”

Jamie Fiocco, Flyleaf Books

If you enjoyed Die Trying, then you’ll love Down Range.

“Garret Kohl is a special forces army hero turned undercover DEA agent. But, most of all he is a Texas cowboy with a big heart who will fight for the underdog and his family even if he must stretch the law and risk not only his career but also his life. When Garrett blew his cover in Kabul and killed the insurgents who massacred an entire village, the CIA used this as leverage to force Garrett to take custody of the 10-year-old Afghan boy, Asadi, whose life Garrett had saved. The boy witnessed the massacre and was needed to testify but he needed to be kept safe and out of sight until the CIA and Afghan government could get things together for a trial. What happens when Garrett and Asadi end up back in Texas is like a Jack Reacher novel on steroids. White knuckle non-stop action from one of the newest heroes to grace the covers of a book.”

Nancy, Fiction Addiction

The Cold Millions

“The gorgeous writing, vivid setting, compelling characters, and engrossing story aren’t even the best parts of this novel. Instead, I just keep marveling at how Jess Walter takes events from history to illuminate our present while keeping them rooted in their own time, from the labor movement to class, race, and gender equality and civil rights issues, to protests and freedom of speech. The northwest in 1909 has never been so relevant. Beautiful Ruins was a hard act to follow but, amazingly, Walter manages it with aplomb.”

Ariana Paliobagis, The Country Bookshop

"Narrator Angela Dawe’s warm voice varies seamlessly to capture the many characters, their fear, fortitude, and, in some cases, vileness. There is nothing subtle about this adventure, but it is exhilarating and hard to resist." -- Washington Post

From the bestselling author of Prayers for Sale, Sandra Dallas' Westering Women is an inspiring...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Perfection.” –The Wall Street Journal

The bestselling author of Wonder returns with an enthralling adventure about a boy on a quest to rescue his father, with only a ghost as his companion and a mysterious pony as his guide.... Read more »

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp.... Read more »

News of the World

“News of the World may be slight in size but it's expansive in story, scenery and characters. I found myself cheering out loud for Captain Kidd and Johanna at times and crying at others. The narration by Grover Gardener greatly added to my enjoyment of this book. He did an amazing job of capturing the characters of Captain Kidd and Johanna.”

Myrna, Content

Inland

“Inland is a beautifully narrated by voices that are rarely heard in a story of the American west. Lurie, an immigrant from the middle east, and Nora, a pioneer wife struggling to survive, are both haunted by ghosts of their past. The dry arid desert provides a perfect backdrop for the events, relationships and challenges these two characters face. Obrect writes with dialogue present and past creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere in some places of the novel and nightmarish realism in others. This novel lays bare the struggles, relationships, personalities and conflicts that provided the foundation of the wild untamed west. This novel was epic, expansive, and completely nourishing of spirit.”

Ellen, Avid Bookshop

Simon the Fiddler

“Texas is not a typical setting for a novel staged at the end of the Civil War and the chaotic months immediately after. A skinny fiddle player and an indentured servant are not the typical romantic western protagonists. But the story of these two, along with a host of lovable and despicable support characters, vivid descriptions of the country and culture of Texas in the mid-1860s make Simon the Fiddler a winner. Add in the masterful voice of narrator Grover Gardner and this is an unforgettable audiobook experience.”

Becky, Rediscovered Books

In the early twentieth century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.

Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.

This was a terrible... Read more »

Mattie Ross, a fourteen-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death by a no-good outlaw. Mattie convinces one-eyed "Rooster" Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. In True Grit, we have a true American classic, as young Mattie -- as vital as she is innocent --... Read more »

Whiskey When We're Dry

“A haunting and remarkable debut, John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry stays true to the western genre while subverting many common themes of the American West, producing a wholly original narrative that will linger in your mind for days. I have never encountered a protagonist quite like Jess; she embodies the incredible strength and resolve required to survive in the West, but also the vulnerability necessary to retain humanity in the face of so much violence and brutality. Larison’s prose goes down as smooth as a glass of whiskey, and I didn’t want to stop reading until I’d finished every last drop.”

Tori Odea, Politics and Prose Bookstore

Willa Cather's best known novel is an epic--almost mythic--story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom... Read more »

All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone is the rollicking adventure story of Lincoln Smith, a young Texan living at the beginning of the twentieth century, who thinks of himself as the last true cowboy. He longs for the days of the Old West, when men like his father, a famous Texas Ranger, lived by the chivalric code. Lincoln finds himself hopelessly out of...

The basis for the classic film starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson, Giant is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber's sweeping generational tale of power, love, cattle barons, and oil tycoons, set in Texas during the first half of the twentieth century.

When larger-than-life cattle rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict arrives at...

Cormac McCarthy is a quiet, unassuming presence in American fiction today, but like the slow, measured voices of many of his characters, he speaks with an authority and conviction that demands an audience. All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy's sixth novel, is a cowboy odyssey for modern times. Set in the late 1940s, it features the travels and toils... Read more »

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 naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend.... Read more »

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 a million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the Seventh Cavalry headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Veterans’... Read more »

The old Apache renegade Soldado Viejo is hiding out in Mexico, and the Arizona Department Adjutant has selected two men to hunt him down. One -- Dave Flynn -- knows war, the land, and the nature of his prey. The other is a kid lieutenant named Bowers. But there's a different kind of war happening in Soyopa. And if Flynn and his young associate...

This program includes supplemental material read by the author.

The thrilling, long-awaited return of the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Revenant

In 1866, with the country barely recovered from the Civil War, new war breaks out on the western frontier—a clash of cultures between a young, ambitious nation and the Native tribes who have...

The new novel in Craig Johnson's beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series. Attempting to recover from his harrowing experiences in Mexico, in Land of Wolves Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire is neck deep in the investigation of what could or could not be the suicidal hanging of a shepherd. With unsettling connections to a Basque family... Read more »

In the latest installment of Craig Johnson's New York Times bestselling Longmire series, Wyoming's beloved lawman takes on his coldest case yet When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire's jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum-until Danny... Read more »

Craig Johnson's mystery stories have earned him an esteemed position in the pantheon of contemporary crime novelists. In this fourth installment, Longmire is called to investigate a dead Vietnamese girl found along the Wyoming highway. "Full of crackling dialogue, this absorbing tale demonstrates that Longmire is still the sheriff in... Read more »

Time and again, Ivan Doig has proven himself to be a treasure of American letters. Critical darlings and New York Times bestsellers, his novels target the heart of the human experience- and never miss the mark. The Bartender's Tale stars Tom Harry and his son Rusty, who live alone and run a bar in a small Montana town in the early 1960s. Their... Read more »

In the 12th novel in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, Walt, Henry, and Vic discover much more than they bargained for when they are called in to investigate a hit-and-run accident near Devils Tower involving a young motorcyclist In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends... Read more »

Two Native-American boys have vanished into thin air, leaving a pool of blood behind them. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police has no choice but to suspect the very worst, since the blood that stains the parched New Mexican ground once flowed through the veins of one of the missing, a young ZuNi. But his investigation into a... Read more »

Blackboard bestselling author Beverly Jenkins delivers another lush historical novel featuring brothers that were first introduced in her award-winning novel Always and Forever. This is the story that readers have been waiting for.

He was a wanted man. But no one wanted him more than she did.

Desperate to escape an arranged marriage, Olivia...

A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its... Read more »

The success of Craig Johnson' s Walt Longmire series that began with The Cold Dish continues to grow after A&E' s hit show Longmire introduced new fans to the Wyoming sheriff. As the Crow Flies marked the series' highest debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, in his ninth Western mystery, Longmire stares down his most dangerous... Read more »

“Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.”
—New York Times Book Review

With more than forty novels to his credit and still going strong, the legendary Elmore Leonard has well earned the title, “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek). And U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Pronto, Riding the Rap, Fire in...

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Lonesome Dove, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus 'Gus' McCrae, lead a cattle drive from the small town of Lonesome Dove to the...

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 family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant...

Immerse yourself in nine heartwarming mail order bride stories in the Sun River Brides series which are full of hope, romance, mystery and adventure.

Come along for the ride to meet feisty Boston city girls who know what they want, and rugged Montana men who just need to be loved. It's 1900, and things are changing fast in sleepy Sun River. As...

Everyone was dead. Indian raiders massacred the entire wagon train. Only seven-year-old Hardy Collins and three-year-old Betty Sue Powell, managed to survive. With a knife, a faithful stallion, and the survival lessons his father taught him, Hardy must face the challenges of the open prairie as they head west in search of help. Using ingenuity...

"Narrator Jeanette Illidge delivers a resonating performance of this YA fantasy...this immersive story is hard to pause." - AudioFile Magazine

Westworld meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this stunning fantasy adventure from debut author Charlotte Nicole Davis.

Aster, the protector
Violet, the favorite
Tansy, the medic
Mallow, the fighter
Clementine, the...

As far as the eye can see is a vast, empty horizon. Evie Teale has finally accepted that her husband won’t be coming home. To make ends meet she runs a temporary stage station. But though she is diligent and careful, Evie must prepare for the day when the passengers no longer come and she must protect her children in an untamed country where’s... Read more »

Part of Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, English Creek revolves around Jick McCaskill, a 14-year-old growing up in 1930s Montana. This incandescent coming-of-age tale dramatizes the climatic events of one summer that inevitably mark Jick's awakening from childhood to adulthood. Read more »

Missouri, 1849: Samantha dreams of moving back to New York to be a professional musician—not an easy thing if you're a girl, and harder still if you're Chinese. But a tragic accident dashes any hopes of fulfilling her dream, and instead, leaves her fearing for her life.

With the help of a runaway slave named Annamae, Samantha flees town for... Read more »

Delta of Dead River sets out to rescue her family from a ruthless dictator rising to power in the Wastes and discovers a secret that will reshape her world in this postapocalyptic Western mashup for fans of Mad Max and Gunslinger Girl.

Delta of Dead River has always been told to hide her back, where a map is branded on her skin to a rumored... Read more »

As a child in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, Ruthie Fear sees an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Its presence haunts her throughout her youth. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men.... Read more »

The Vengeance of Mothers

“One Thousand White Women was one of my favorite books and Jim Fergus does not disappoint with The Vengeance of Mothers. Meggie Kelly and her twin sister, Susie, are survivors of the 'Brides for Indians' program and of their Cheyenne village's massacre by the Army. When a new group of women are mistakenly sent west even though the government has abandoned the program, the twins help them adapt to the Cheyenne lifestyle while planning their revenge upon the soldiers that killed their family, including their newborn babies. Full of resilience, hope, sadness, and suspense, I was at the edge of my seat turning pages, worried about the outcome of these remarkable women. I loved it!”

Maxwell Gregory, Lake Forest Book Store

Welcome to Walt Longmire's worst nightmare. In Craig Johnson's latest mystery, Depth of Winter, an international hit man and the head of one of the most vicious drug cartels in Mexico has kidnapped Walt's beloved daughter, Cady, to auction her off to his worst enemies, of which there are many. The American government is of limited help and the... Read more »

A New York Times bestseller!
They burned her home.
They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of... Read more »

James Patterson presents a bold new heroine -- a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Annie Oakley: Serendipity Jones, the fastest sharpshooter in tomorrow's West.

Seventeen-year-old Serendipity "Pity" Jones inherited two things from her mother: a pair of six shooters and perfect aim. She's been offered a life of fame and fortune in Cessation, a... Read more »

For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, the Coen Brothers, and Lost

Imagine a place populated by criminals—people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime or...

The poignant odyssey of a tenacious young girl who braves the dangers of the Texas frontier to avenge her mother's death.

Early one morning in the remote hill country of Texas, a panther savagely attacks a family of homesteaders, mauling a young girl named Samantha and killing her mother, whose final act is to save her daughter's life. Samantha... Read more »

Sheriff Walt Longmire had already rounded up a sizable posse of devoted readers when the A&E television series Longmire sent the Wyoming lawman's popularity skyrocketing. Now, in Any Other Name, Walt is sinking into high-plains winter discontent when his former boss, Lucian Conally, asks him to take on a mercy case in an adjacent county.... Read more »

Peter Heller, the celebrated author of the breakout best seller The Dog Stars, returns with an achingly beautiful, wildly suspenseful second novel about an artist trying to outrun his past.

Jim Stegner has seen his share of violence and loss. Years ago he shot a man in a bar. His marriage disintegrated. He grieved the one thing he loved. In the...