Cowboys: 30 books of Western fiction
Saddle up for adventure with 'Cowboys: 30 Books of Western Fiction'—a must-read list of the best cowboy novels. Explore gritty tales of the Wild West, frontier justice, and rugged heroes in these top Western fiction picks.
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The Fruit of Stone
by Mark Spragg
Chronicles the story of two lifelong friends who love the same woman, and the journey that will take them through the West and into the heart of their relationship.
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An Unfinished Life
by Mark Spragg
Mark Spragg's highly acclaimed novel of a complex prodigal homecoming comes to the big screen in December. The Miramax release stars Jennifer Lopez. Robert Redford, Camyn Manheim, Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis, and Josh Lucas.
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Close Range
by Annie Proulx
A collection of short stories, which includes the short story, Brokeback Mountain.
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Bad Dirt
by Annie Proulx
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx returns with another stellar collection of short stories bound to be even more successful than her bestselling, critically acclaimed Close Range. Annie Proulx’s new collection is peopled by characters who struggle with circumstances beyond their control. Born to ranching, drawn to it, or desperate to get out, they inhabit worlds that are isolated and often dangerous. Trouble comes at them from unexpected angles, and they drive themselves through it, hardheaded and resourceful. No one writes better than Proulx about the American west and about lives that may no longer be viable. This is a stunning collection by one of the most vivid and exhilarating writers of our time.
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Fencing the Sky
by James Galvin
A rancher in the West lassos a pushy land developer, breaking his neck. The rancher flees into the wilds, helped by fellow ranchers and is pursued by federal agents. A look at an endangered world under siege from yuppies.
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Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Tells of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana and shows how one man's dream to create an empire affects others.
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Horseman, Pass By
by Larry McMurtry
Told from a 17-year-old's point of view, Hud emerges as ruthless, cold and mean.
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Leaving Cheyenne
by Larry McMurtry
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry comes the second novel about love and loss on the great plains of Texas. From 1920’s ranching to range cowboys and WWII grief, McMurtry is the undisputed father of the Western literary epic. Leaving Cheyenne traces the loves of three West Texas characters as they follow that sundown trail: Gideon Fry, the serious rancher; Johnny McCloud, the free-spirited cowhand; and Molly Taylor, the sensitive woman they both love and who bears them each a son. Told in alternating perspectives over sixty years, Leaving Cheyenne follows their dreams, secrets, and grief against a changing American landscape. Tragic circumstances mark the trail, but fans of McMurtry’s distinctive style will cherish his unforgettable characters and pathos of the American West.
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The Log of a Cowboy
by Andy Adams
A classic fictional chronicle of life on the open trail, THE LOG OF A COWBOY has long been considered the best and most reliable account of real cowboy life ever written. In the years following the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Andy Adams left his home in the San Antonio Valley and took to the range. Here he charts his first journey as a bona fide cowboy, from south Texas to Montana along the western trail. Guided by his plainspoken, sure-saddled voice and the living, breathing feel of firsthand experience on every page, we relive dusty cattle drives, perilous river crossings, honor-based gunfights, and narrow escapes from buffalo stampedes, not to mention tall tales passed around the campfire and such unforgettable characters as Bull Durham and Bill Blades. THE LOG OF A COWBOY, newly introduced by Thomas McGuane, offers a true depiction of a cowboy's life and work as well as a classic adventure story of the great American frontier.
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The Blind Corral
by Ralph Beer
When Jackson Heckethorn returns home from the army, he hopes his family will sell the ranch they have sweated, cursed and fought over for three generations. But the mystery of the land and its people is too strong, binding him into the harsh routine of its life.
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The Power of the Dog
by Thomas Savage
"A pitch-perfect evocation of time and place" (Boston Globe) for readers of East of Eden and "Brokeback Mountain." This new edition, with an afterword by Annie Proulx, marks the return of one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in the literature of the American West. Set in 1920s Montana, this compelling domestic drama tells the story of two brothers -- and of the woman and young boy, mother and son, whose arrival on the brothers' ranch shatters an already tenuous peace. From the novel's startling first paragraph to its very last word, Thomas Savage's voice -- and the intense passion and cruelty of his characters -- holds readers in thrall. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and Paul Dano.
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On the Night Plain
by J. Robert Lennon
At the end of World War II, Grant Person abandons his family's ranch for a fishing boat on the Atlantic, only to be drawn back by his mother's death. When his brother Max returns with a young woman named Sophia, a contest of will begins between the brothers, reviving ghosts that Grant had hoped were banished from the homestead.
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Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?
by Baxter F. Black
The bestselling novel from America’s premier cowboy poet. Cowboys Lick and Cody are on a quest to qualify for the rodeo national finals—and their widely entertaining, often hilarious adventure includes a smattering of sex, violence, intrigue, and the occasional philosophical rumination. These modern-day cowpokes—two chivalrous knights of the rope and range with a hankering for bucking broncos and for the female of the two-legged species—find much more than they bargained for in Oklahoma City. Against the colorful, flamboyant backdrop of the hard-ridin’, hard-playin’ rodeo circuit, they encounter a city woman named Lilac, with whom Cody falls in love; a bull named Kamikaze; and two corrupt Texas billionaires who bet against Lick. In the vein of a latter-day Will Rogers, Baxter Black combines a colorful yarn with occasional bits of his unique cowboy philosophy and poetry. “It could make a dead man sit up and laugh”—The Washington Post Book World
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In Open Spaces
by Russell Rowland
Set in the vast and unforgiving prairie of eastern Montana from 1916 to 1946, In Open Spaces is the compelling story of the Arbuckle brothers: GeorgeA rising baseball star who mysteriously drowns in the river JackA World War I veteran who abandons his family only to return to reclaim the family ranch BobThe youngest brother, whose marriage to Helen creates a fault line between him and the rest of his family BlakeA shrewd, observant man burdened with growing suspicions of Jack's role in his brother's death With breathtaking descriptions of the Montana landscape, Russell Rowland masterfully weaves a fascinating tale of the psychological wars that can rip a family apart...and, ultimately, the redemption that can bring them back together.
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All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
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Last Buckaroo
by Mackey Hedges
A 20th Century cowboy and the scrapes he gets into. He is Tap McCoy who narrates his many fights and binges, his rodeos and various jobs, one of which is gunfighter for tourists.
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The Weight of Dreams
by Adele Hall Professor of English Jonis Agee
Twenty years after a teenage bout of vandalism ends in the brutal beating of a young Indian, a man returns to the sandhills of Nebraska to face his violent past.
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The Calling
by Dick Hyson
A modern cowboy turns sleuth to thwart a conspiracy to steal his employer's land. He is Frank Dalton, a half-Indian, and his investigation portrays everyday cowboy life, including rodeos.
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The Virginian
by Owen Wister
This classic tells the story of the Wyoming ranch foreman known only as the Virgianian, his courtship of school teacher Molly Starkwood, and his encounters with the murdering cattle rustler, Trampas.
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Salvation Gap and Other Western Classics
by Owen Wister
Owen Wister invented the Western novel with The Virginian, and that work and this collection of stories prove that, although many have gone after him, no one has ever topped him in skill and enduring appeal. Wister saw the story of the West as a collision of centuries, with the Stone Age, the Middle Ages, and the modern world coming together to form a new place and a new people. Wister said of this collection, "These stories are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri. They belong to the past . . . but you will find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take my view." ø Here are unforgettable characters: Specimen Jones, the taciturn and capable rider from an unknown past, who has no use for fools and even less for bullies; General Crook and his men, who do the Government?s dirty work on the frontier and get no thanks for it; and unregenerate Rebels and Union veterans in an uneasy frontier political alliance.
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Lin Mclean
by Owen Wister
From the bestselling author of The Virginian comes Lin McLean, Wister's first novel, about a young cowboy from the Wind River country in Wyoming who tires of the dust and hard life and heads east to Boston to seek his fortune. In this novel after the young hero's first adventure with his elder brother and the bishop, a plot begins with the entrance of the biscuit-shooter, and steadily proceeds through climax and catastrophe to resolution. This publication from Boomer Books is specially designed and typeset for comfortable reading.
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Brave Cowboy
by Edward Abbey
The Brave Cowboy Jack Burnes is a loner at odds with modern civilization. A man out of time, he rides a feisty chestnut mare across the New West -- a once beautiful land smothered beneanth airstrips and superhighways. And he lives by a personal code of ethics that sets him on a collision course with the keepers of law and order. Now he has stepped over the line by breaking one too many of society's rulus. The hounds of justice are hot in his trail. But Burnes would rather die than spend even a single night behind bars. And they have to catch him first.
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The Work of Wolves
by Kent Meyers
When fourteen-year-old Carson Fielding bought his first horse from Magnus Yarborough, it became clear that the teenager was a better judge of horses than the rich landowner was of humans. Years later, Carson, now a skilled and respected horse trainer, grudgingly agrees to train Magnus's horses and teach his wife to ride. But as Carson becomes disaffected with the power-hungry Magnus, he also grows more and more attracted to the rancher's wife, and their relationship sets off a violent chainof events that unsettles their quiet reservation border town in South Dakota. Thrown into the drama are Earl Walks Alone, an Indian trying to study his way out of the reservation and into college, and Willi, a German exchange student confronting his family's troubled history. In this unforgettable story of horses, love, and life, Carson and the entire ensemble of characters learn, in very different ways, about the strong bonds that connect people to each other and to the land on which they live.
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Last Go Round
by Ken Kesey
It was around a sagebrush campfire in eastern Oregon that Kesey first heard the tale from his father - about the legendary "last go round" that took place at the original Pendleton Round Up in 1911. Hundreds of riders were competing for the first World Championship Broncbusting title, but it was one special trio of buckeroos that provided the drama: a popular black cowboy, George Fletcher; a Nez Perce Indian cowboy, Jackson Sundown; and a fresh-faced kid from Tennessee name of Johnathan E. Lee Spain. Who would walk away with the prize money and the silver-studded saddle? When the dust cleared, everyone knew they'd witnessed something extraordinary. Kesey has journeyed back into Oregon history to reclaim this long-remembered moment, beefed up the bare bones of fact, and whipped them into a full-blown rip-snorting Tale of the True West. Sixteen pages of rare Round Up photographs provide graphic testimony of the time. The tiny town of Pendleton is swollen to bursting that memorable weekend and bristling with colorful characters like Buffalo Bill Cody, wrestler Frank "The Cruel Crusher" Gotch, cowgirl Prairie Rose Henderson, and a formidable medicine man named Parson Montanic. From the teepees along the river to the teeming saloons on Main Street, Round Up fever blazes like a prairie fire. This story of love, sweat, and horseflesh is a unique Western, wild and wooly and full of fleas. Let 'er buck!
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Monte Walsh
by Jack Schaefer
Monte Walsh has never met a horse he couldn’t ride, and Chet Rollins has never met one he couldn’t rope. For a decade they are unbeatable and inseparable, working as trail hands throughout the West until finally settling with Cal Brennan’s Slash Y. Their rough cowboy ethics see them through every imaginable challenge: blizzards, rustlers, outlaws, and card games gone wrong. Partial to pretty women, gambling, and practical jokes, Monte is often on the receiving end of trouble, while Chet is always there to break him out of jail or serve as a decoy until Monte can get out of town in a hurry. As the West begins to change, however—the automobile replacing the horse, the herds breaking up—the two friends part ways. Chet marries and goes on to become a successful merchant, banker, and politician; but Monte, unable to imagine anything but the cowboy’s way of life, refuses to the end to leave the range.
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The Hanging Tree
by Dorothy M. Johnson
Collection of ten Western stories built around the title selection which is based on a true episode in Montana's gold-mining past in which three unlikely characters form an amazing bond.
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The Hi Lo Country
by Max Evans
Now a major motion picture from Gramercy Pictures starring Woody Harrelson, Billy Crudup, and Patricia Arquette. They were two cowboys out of the New Mexico dust. Cowpunchers and manpunchers, they hit hard, lived raw, and rode the beautiful Hi-Lo country as best friends and comrades. Until one night, when they fell in love with the same woman--a beautiful, irresistible, married woman.
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Cow Country
by Will James
The words cow country bring to mind round-up wagons, saddle horses, ridgers, branding irons, and the wide open range -- a place where there's not a fence as far as you can see, nothing but bluegrass ripplin' in the sun. Will James delivers all of tha
