Literary Fiction Western

"She who loves and runs away, lives to love another day" was Jacy Tiernan's credo. Only this fair-haired beauty had never loved again after Ian Yarbro. Ten years ago, she had fled her beloved Australian homestead with a shattered soul. Ian, the rugged sheep rancher who'd awakened her young heart to the most exquisite pleasures, had sired the child of another woman. Unable to forgive him, Jacy ran off to New York to live with her wealthy divorced mother, leaving behind all dreams of happiness. Now Jacy had returned to Corroboree Springs to care for her ailing father.

William Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid", killed his first man when he was 12. By the time he was 21 he had, by his own reckoning, slain 19 more. In the intervening years, he had become "Billy the Kid", bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje traces Billy's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country.

The truth of it is that Daniel Boone, captured by the Shawnee, now the adopted son of a chief he respects and husband to a Shawnee wife, does not want to come back to his settler life. But when he learns the Shawnee and the English plan to attack the fort he founded, where his white wife and children remain, he escapes in order to warn them. No arms open to greet him, however: Rebecca has taken all of their children save one - Jemima - back east. The other settlers view him with suspicion, and some of them want him hanged as a traitor.

Three days before Christmas, Matt Jensen is traveling the Denver and Pacific railway when an avalanche slams down onto the train, trapping it in desolate Trout Creek Pass. But it wasn’t an act of nature that caused the accident; it was a gang of outlaws attempting to rescue their leader, who is being taken to Red Cliff to be hanged. As Smoke Jensen and Duff MacCallister frantically try to make their way to the scene, Matt struggles to save the survivors, among them a young woman with a dark past, a merchant seaman turned rancher, and a senator with his very ill young daughter.

Young Texas Ranger Russ Sittell is undercover searching for the head of a gang of rustlers - working with his ranger mentor and idol, Vaughn Steele. Staying undercover is difficult. Both rangers have difficulty staying focused while falling in love - can they uncover the criminals and keep love in its rightful place? Zane Grey tells the story in The Rustlers of Pecos County.

Widowed and alone on the frontier, Elspeth Stewart will do whatever it takes to protect herself and her unborn child from the dangers of the wilderness and of men. Though her youthful beauty doesn't show it, she is broken and scarred from the way men have treated her. So when a stranger wanders onto Bethie's land, wounded and needing her aid, she takes no risks, tying him to the bed and hiding his weapons before ministering to his injuries.

The second son of Brazos Fortune, Samuel, is somewhat the lost sheep of the Fortune family. After he is run out of Texas, he ends up hiding out with his father and brother. Although he struggles to escape the consequences of his previous lifestyle, he refuses to talk about the past. Brazos has to deal with sending Samuel back to Texas to make amends or allowing him to have a new start in Dakota.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

The New York Times—bestselling author’s richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction. I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I...

Sam Rider is mouthy, bossy, uppity as shit, and I have no choice but to deal with her smart-mouth since she’s my daughter’s teacher. Sam waltzes into our small town on a temporary contract equipped with brochures and more change than a single dad can handle. I never trusted anybody to tell me what to do and I sure as hell won’t start with Sam, ten years younger, a city girl and only in Starlight Canyon for the short haul. I have to watch those sinful pink lips tell me what’s right for three solid months and she won’t stop until I change my mind.

Zane Grey’s books shoot fast and straight from the hip, hitting readers dead center with thrilling action. His name has become synonymous with western adventure. Because of his killing speed with a revolver, Buck Duane has lived the lone-wolf life of an outlaw. Every day is a struggle against desperate men anxious to prove themselves—and a bigger struggle to hold onto his basic human decency. So when the Texas Rangers offer to deputize him for a dangerous undercover mission, Buck grabs it as his final chance for redemption.

A gripping tale of espionage that influenced Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham and John le Carré, Under Western Eyes follows the story of Kyrilo Sidorovitch Razumov, an apolitical student who becomes a Czarist spy. Following a political assassination, he returns to his room to discover the culprit, Victor Haldin, who asks for help in making his escape.

The Prairie marks the final chapter in James Fenimore Cooper's great saga of American frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Though nearly 90 in 1804, Bumppo is still competent as a frontiersman and trapper, now on the Great Plains. Once more he is drawn into conflict with society in the form of an emigrant party led by the surly Ishmael Bush and his miscreant brother-in-law, Abiram White. And once again this great man of nature is called upon to exhibit his courage and resourcefulness to rescue the innocent.

Widowed and penniless in the Colorado Rockies, Boston-born Laura Cheney turns to Deke Sheridan, a dangerously handsome renegade raised among the Cheyenne, when her newborn son is kidnapped.

Frank Morgan survived his first trip to Alaska. Barely. Now, in Western Canada, Morgan and a band of survivors encounter an arch enemy with a fortune in ill-gotten gains - money he'll use to supply murderous Metis rebels with stolen U.S. Army Gatling guns to use for a bloodbath - and the Last Gunfighter is now in their way. But before the rebels can kill him, a daring U.S. secret agent joins his side. In a harsh and untamed land, Frank Morgan will soon face the ultimate battle for survival - before an all-out civil war explodes.

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west.

Cattleman Bran Turner is left shorthanded during busy calving season when a bull tramples his hired hand. Rural Wyoming isn't exactly a hotbed of qualified candidates, and the only applicant for the position is the pampered town beauty, Harper Masterson. The curvy cowgirl gets under Bran's skin at every turn, but with no other options, he reluctantly hires her.

Hunky cowboy Ace Riley wasn't planning on settling down, but his family had other plans for him. The only way to save his hide, and his playboy lifestyle, is to discreetly marry his best friend, Jasmine King. Fiesty city-girl Jasmine is just helping out her friend - that is, until their first kiss stirs up a whole mess of trouble, and suddenly discretion is thrown to the wind. One hot cowboy, one riled up woman...and they'll be married for a year, like it or not!

Crooked Sheriff Harry Gauge rules the town of Trinidad, New Mexico, with an iron fist. His latest scheme is to force rancher George Cullen into selling his spread and to take Cullen's beautiful daughter Willa for his bride - whether she's willing or not.

In 1909, struggling to farm his remote homestead and raise three sons, widower Oliver Milliron desperately needs help. A housekeeper’s ad in a Milwaukee newspaper, “Can’t cook but doesn’t bite,” leads him to hire her sight unseen. When perky Rose Llewellyn arrives, she brings along her brainy brother, Morris. Though Rose whistles through her work at the Milliron house, and Morris becomes teacher at the one-room school, these two newcomers conceal a past that is colorful and infamous.