Westerns bestsellers

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

Now an Academy 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 »

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

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

The Farewell Tour

“A fun, fictional bio of a country superstar, like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, making her last tour due to health issues. A moving portrait of a woman trying to break through a patriarchal industry and the pratfalls she endured.”

Gerard Villegas, Auntie's Bookstore

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 »

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

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 »

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 »

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 »

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... Read more »

Former outlaw Clay Colby is abuzz with his mail-order bride's expected arrival. He's fought long and hard to drag Devil's Crossing out of lawlessness...so when his homestead is set ablaze by a bitter rival, he's heartbroken. There's no woman in the world who'd stand by him now. But Tally Shannon is no ordinary woman. After escaping the... 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 »

Simon the Fiddler

“Simon Boudlin’s passion is to be the best fiddle player there is, beholden to no one and following his muse wherever it takes him. But when he meets the beautiful Doris Aherne, his plans change. Paulette Jiles once again captures the great promise and sweeping beauty of the Texas frontier in cinematic prose as poetic and lyrical as the tunes that pour forth from the fiddler himself. Simon joins that great pantheon of strivers for a better life, and readers will root for him every step of the way. Fans of News of the World can rejoice — with Simon the Fiddler, Jiles has done it again!”

Peter Sherman, Wellesley Books

If you enjoyed How Much of These Hills Is Gold, then you’ll love The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu.

“Bold, brash, and uniquely unforgettable; the vivid wild West of Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is a reading experience you won’t want to miss. Ming Tsu is on a quest for revenge, tearing his way across the wilderness of the old West–leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Filled with colorful characters, hints of the magical, beautiful writing, and entrancing violence; Lin reimagines what the mythology of the American West can mean. With echoes of Cormac McCarthy and C. Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold but with a voice all its own, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is one of the best debut novels of the year. ”

Caleb, Bookmarks

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 »

The classic Western, now newly repackaged as part of Bantam's Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures program—with never-before-seen material from Louis and his son, Beau L'Amour.

"I am Johannes Verne, and I am not afraid."

This was the boy's mantra as he plodded through the desert alone, left to die by his vengeful grandfather. Johannes Verne was soon to... Read more »

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. WHERE BLOOD RUNS COLD. John Holt is a traveling gunslinger. He’s been liberating dirty towns west of the Mississippi of murdering outlaw trash ever since the Civil War ended. No questions asked. Payment on demand. THE ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS TOWN IS IN A PINEWOOD BOX. Holt’s latest job is in Devil’s Gulch in Colorado... Read more »

A cinematic debut set in the American West about a scrappy orphan bent on making her own luck—and finding friendship, romance, and her true calling along the way

“Queer, feminist, subversive, and a good old-fashioned freight train of an adventure story.”—Sara Nović, author of True Biz
 
The heart wants what it wants. Saddle up, ride out, and claim... Read more »

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 »

In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy fulfills the promise of All the Pretty Horses and at the same time give us a work that is darker and more visionary, a novel with the unstoppable momentum of a classic western and the elegaic power of a lost American myth. In the late 1930s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been... Read more »

"An all-out women-driven, queer, transgender, multiracial takeover of the Old West . . . and that's exactly what Melissa Lenhardt delivers in her unapologetically badass western, Heresy." - New York Times

"Lenhardt has created a bold new story where women have taken their rightful place in the narrative of the Outlaw Western genre; where wit,... Read more »

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... Read more »

From one of the most highly acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century—"a truly remarkable book" (The New York Times), 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... Read more »

Down Range

“Down Range follows DEA agent Garrett Kohl back home to the Texas High Plains for a short mission to protect an Afghan boy. While home, he discovers his family is the target of a criminal organization that has infiltrated the entire town and it is up to Garrett to protect his family. Each character's personality is so unique and readers quickly get to know each one. This action-packed plot keeps readers on the edge of their seat the entire time, and they will be left wanting to follow Garrett on his next journey. ”

Katie, The Snail on the Wall

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

This program features multicast narration.

“I read everything Ivy Pochoda writes. Her capture of the complexities, diversities, and insanities of today’s life and culture is next to none. I loved Sing Her Down. The world will too.” —Michael Connelly, author of Desert Star

No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western... 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 »

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 »

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 »

Soon to be a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer.

The critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.Part epic of Texas, part classic... Read more »

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 »

In his novels, best-selling author Cormac McCarthy creates a western landscape filled with characters that are both myhic 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.... Read more »

Ridgeline

“The American West, 1866. The setting evokes a certain image. In Ridgeline, author Michael Punke simultaneously challenges and expands that image into a fantastic work of historical fiction. Far from your average 'Cowboys and Indians' tale, Ridgeline tells the stories of natives, soldiers and settlers of all genders, to give us a complete fictional account of the events surrounding what was once called the Fetterman Massacre. Give it a listen or a read, you won't be disappointed!”

Matt, Innisfree Bookshop

Featuring the song, "House of Earth" performed by Lucinda Williams.Finished in 1947 and lost to readers until now, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie's only fully realized novel, a powerful portrait of dust bowl America. It is the story of an ordinary couple's dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.Tike and... 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 »

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 »

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 »

For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, the Coen Brothers, and LostImagine 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... Read more »

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

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 »

Ten years ago, Craig Johnson wrote his first short story, the Hillerman Award-winning "Old Indian Trick." This was one of the earliest appearances of the sheriff who would go on to star in Johnson's bestselling, award-winning novels and the A&E hit series Longmire. Each Christmas Eve thereafter, fans rejoiced when Johnson sent out a new... Read more »

From Elmore Leonard, the author who has influenced more writers than any other, comes a thrilling story of law in the Old West, upheld by the barrel of a six-gun.Deputy Paul Scallen will earn his one hundred fifty dollars if he can get his prisoner Jim Kidd on the train to Yuma Prison. But the members of Kidd's gang have determined that Scallen... Read more »

A half-century after its original publication, Edward Abbey's classic 1962 novel, Fire on the Mountain, still retains its beauty, power, and relevance. This extraordinary tale by the legendary icon of the environmentalism movement and author of The Monkey Wrench Gang proudly celebrates rugged American individualism, as it tells the story of one... Read more »

In Jubal Sackett, the second generation of Louis L’Amour’s great American family pursues a destiny in the wilderness of a sprawling new land.

Jubal Sackett’s urge to explore drove him westward, and when a Natchez priest asks him to undertake a nearly impossible quest, Sackett ventures into the endless grassy plains the Indians call the Far... 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

The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major contibution to Native American literature." —Wallace... Read more »

Like the tentacles of an octopus, the railroad in California reached out across the state, grasping everything of value in the state.Based on the bloody Mussel Slough Tragedy—a conflict between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad—The Octopus is a stunning novel chronicling the twilight of the frontier West, a depiction of the... Read more »

In James Patterson's #1 New York Times bestselling thriller, a Texas Ranger fights for his life, his freedom, and the town he loves as he investigates his ex-wife's murder.
Across the ranchlands and cities of his home state, Rory Yates's discipline and law enforcement skills have carried him far: from local highway patrolman to the honorable rank... Read more »