25 Western Books Everyone Needs to Read

Stacey Lee's YA novel Under a Painted Sky showcases the danger and the beauty of life on the Oregon Trail for a Chinese-American girl and a runaway slave. After a tragic accident forces them to go on the run together, Samantha and Annamae disguise themselves as boys and head west in search of safety. Part coming-of-age novel, part Western, this story of the bond forged between two young women is captivating from start to finish.

Beverly Jenkins is the undisputed queen of the Western. All of her romance novels make exquisite use of the American West, but Destiny's Embrace deserves a special mention for its unforgettable characters. Set in 19th-century California, housemaid Mariah finds herself torn between her ranch-owner boss and the lover she's never been able to forget.

Proving that Westerns don't always have to be self-serious, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man is an epic satire about a 111-year-old man telling the story of his long and adventurous life. From being raised as part of a Native American tribe to a tussle with Wyatt Earp, there's nothing Jack Webb hasn't done — and he's happy to relay his story with an irreverent tone that's been drawing readers in since 1964.

The Gunslinger isn't a Western in the traditional sense, but Stephen King's fantasy hybrid is too good to leave off this list. Roland, a lone hero, tracks the Man in Black across a barren landscape in this ode to the tropes that make cowboy stories so timeless, no matter what world they're set in.

There's nothing glamorous about the life of the famous gunslinger at the center of Richard Matheson's Journal of the Gun Years. When a young cowboy gets his hands on the journal of his hero, he realizes the true story of the man's life is lonely, deadly, and dangerous.

James Beckwourth is a man of myth in Leigh Brackett's classic Follow the Free Wind. A Black man born to a rich nobleman and a slave, James goes west and never returns. From joining the Crow people to becoming a gold miner, James's legend precedes him in this story based on the fascinating life of a real man.

In Doc, Mary Doria Russell turns her attention to a single year in the life of Dr. John Henry Holliday, better known as Doc Holliday. This character-driven novel focuses on Holliday before his name became infamous, when he was still a gambler traveling the West in search of his next game.

There are plenty of cowboys on revenge quests in literary history, but there's no tale quite as dark and brutal as Michael Punke's The Revenant. When trapper Hugh Glass finds himself abandoned after being mauled by a grizzly bear, the only thing that keeps him alive on the frozen frontier is the desire to seek revenge against the men who left him behind.

Drawing inspiration from her own childhood spent living in Nebraska, Willa Cather's My Ántonia delves into prairie life through the eyes of a resilient young woman named Ántonia. Told from the perspective of her neighbor, the book follows her from the plains to the city and back again as her story coincides with the changing landscape of America itself.

Elmore Leonard's crisp, compulsively readable writing style is the perfect fit for a story of a lawman on a quest for justice. In Valdez Is Coming, a part-time sheriff returns to the town he was run out of with vengeance on his mind.

Westerns continue to flourish thanks to the inventiveness of authors like Téa Obreht. Inland depicts the West as a beautiful and terrifying backdrop for the unfolding story of a woman waiting for her husband and sons to return. Her life unexpectedly intersects with that of a haunted outlaw in this thought-provoking page-turner.

Written in 1902, Owen Wister's The Virginian is literature's first great Western. There's nothing stodgy about this classic, though; over a century later, Wister's story of a cowboy caught between a woman and a quest for justice is still breathtaking.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford isn't just an underrated Brad Pitt movie, it's also an underrated book by Ron Hansen. The tale of James and the man who murdered him is one of love and jealousy, an Othello for the old West, if you will. The combination of stunning prose and two legendary figures makes this book a pure pleasure to read.

The 1850s frontier has never been funnier than it is in Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers. Henchmen Eli and Charlie Sisters have been sent to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm, but when one of them has a crisis of conscience, their story takes a hilarious and unexpected detour.

Oakley Hall's Warlock is quite possibly even more relevant today than when it was written at the height of the McCarthy era. The town of Warlock is in search of a hero to bring peace to their enclave, but the man who answers the call isn't convinced of his own heroism or that the crumbling society of Warlock can be saved.

Annie Proulx's short-story collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories includes the heartbreaking "Brokeback Mountain," but that's just one of a series of stirring portraits set against the backdrop of the unforgiving Wyoming landscape. From shocking violence to impossible loves, Proulx paints a vivid picture of the West and all of the desolation and pain it holds.

Louis L'Amour penned plenty of Westerns worthy of inclusion on this list, but if I have to pick just one, it has to be Sackett's Land. This quintessentially American tale begins not in the dusty wilderness of the West but in England with a young nobleman looking forward to an adventure. Barnabas Sackett's plans go awry when he's tossed into the hold of a pirate ship, kicking off an epic that spans the breadth of America and England as Barnabas seeks the truth about his family's past.

Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker serves up two cowboys so real, you can practically smell the dust on their boots. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch show up in a small town ready to make quick work of a rancher who's holding the place hostage with his machinations, but there's nothing easy about this job. Soon, both men are pushed to their limits by a man whose dangerous ambition is boundless.

A 400-mile journey bonds an aging captain and a young woman raised by the Kiowa tribe after they murdered her parents and sister in Paulette Jiles's remarkable News of the World. As the unlikely duo cross unsettled territory and endure every hardship that nature can throw at them, they slowly begin to trust one another in this story of what makes a family.

There's nothing easy about reading Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident, but the book is worth the effort. The story focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the danger of giving in to mob violence.

The West is a place of yearning for freedom, and Boone Caudill is a man desperate to be free of the chains of civilization. The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr. follows Boone's evolution from a working trapper to a lawless mountain man beholden to no one.

Mattie Ross is just 14 years old when she hires the legendary US Marshal Rooster Cogburn to help her avenge her father's death in Charles Portis's True Grit. Portis's classic has been adapted into two iconic movies, but there's nothing quite like seeing Mattie come to life on the page.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie has been captivating children for generations now. Inspired by her real-life experiences, the books follow her family across the plains as they face hardships and forge a new life together in America's West.

Set on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is all about deconstructing the Wild West myth. While white residents saw the West as a land of promise, the truth was much darker for the indigenous people who already resided there. McCarthy faces that reality head on as a 14-year-old known only as the Kid is confronted with the thriving market for scalps that leads to the murder of countless Native Americans.

Quite possibly the greatest Western ever written, Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove has it all: cattle drivers, outlaws, settlers trying to get by, and the untarnished wilderness of America's West serving as a character itself. This small-town story has the heart of an epic and enough drama to make anyone a Western convert.