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Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
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Booklists and Suggested Reading
Western Stars
Page Modified: April 5, 2008
- The Return of Little Big Man
Author: Berger, Thomas
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0316098442
PWBooklistLJ
In the long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic Little Big Man, the foremost chronicler of the American West, Jack Crabb, continues his fabulous adventures. - The Holy Road
Author: Blake, Michael
Publisher: Villard $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679448667Kirkus
The sequel to the bestselling Dances With Wolves is the tragically heroic story of the Comanches' war to save their sacred lands. Lt. John Dunbar and his wife, Stands With a Fist, find their peaceful lives interrupted when the railroad--the white man's Holy Road--leads to violent confrontations with the Army. - The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy
the Kid
Author: Brooks, Bill
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312875088Booklist - Big Lonely
Author: Brown, Sam
Publisher: Walker List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0802712347Booklist - Moon of Bitter Cold
Author: Chiaventone, Frederick J.
Publisher: Forge $ 26.95 ISBN: 0765300931Kirkus
In 1866, the war in the West, with its bloody collision of cultures, is increasing in tension and danger. As the U.S. Army builds ever more forts on the Great Plains, Red Cloud, a Lakota Sioux war leader, assembles more than 3,000 warriors to drive out the white man.
- The Raven Mocker
Author: Coldsmith, Don
Publisher: U of Oklahoma $ 22.95 ISBN: 0806133163Booklist
Snakewater, the oldest Cherokee in her village, flees when she is accused of being the Raven Mocker, a feared creature of legend who steals the life-years of those who die young to ensure his own immortality. Her path takes her across the Mississippi to a surprising confrontation at the Elk-dog People's annual Sun Dance. - Tallgrass
Author: Coldsmith, Don
Publisher: Bantam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553106325Library Journal - Crofton's Fire
Author: Coplin, Keith
Publisher: Putnam $ 21.95 ISBN: 0399151125KirkusBooklist
A highly original first novel, in which a green second lieutenant barely escapes Little Bighorn - only to find that his life's adventures have just begun.
Updated 11.25.03 - Gabriel's Story
Author: Durham, David Anthony
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385498144PWBooklistKirkus
In this literary debut, Durham recounts the adventures and trials of a black pioneer family in the late 1870s. At the center of the story is Gabriel, a young man who moves reluctantly from the urban North with his mother and younger brother to join his stepfather, a homesteader in Kansas. When he runs away to become a cowboy, his search for excitement brings trouble and danger. - Redeye: A Western
Author: Edgerton, Clyde
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 17.95 ISBN: 1565120604PW - Port Hazard: Page Murdock
Author: Estleman, Loren D.
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765301903Booklist
The latest tale of Page Murdock takes readers into a hell more decadent, corrupt and dangerous than even he has ever seen--San Francisco's Barbary Coast.
Updated 11.25.03 - The Master Executioner
Author: Estleman, Loren D.
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312869703KirkusPW
Ordinary people do not understand hangman Oscar Stone or his motives. For more than a quarter of a century he has been a man peerless in his craft, the master executioner. One day a single piece of knowledge brings Oscar to a moment of devastating truth, and for the first time, he knows himself. - The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932
Author: Fergus, Jim
Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 1401300545 Date: 2005PWBooklist
From the award-winning author of One Thousand White Women comes a novel in the tradition of Little Big Man, tracing one man's search for adventures and the wild Apache girl who invites him into her world.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4.22.05 - The Gates of the Alamo
Author: Harrigan, Stephen
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0679447172PWKirkusLJ
This full-scale novel about the siege and fall of the Alamo weaves in a love story between an American naturalist and a widow innkeeper who, along with her 16-year-old son, get swept up in the harrowing events of the heroic battle. - Holmes on the Range
Author: Hockensmith, Steve
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312347804 Date: 2006LJPW
Somewhere due west of Deadwood, a pair of unlikely cowboy sleuths investigate murder just like their hero, Sherlock Holmes, who they come to know by scouring "Harper's Weekly" for the detective stories.
Suggested Reading: Elementary Stars | Cross Genres
Updated 11.7.05 - Snow Mountain Passage
Author: Houston, James Stewart
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375411038KirkusPW
From the author of Farewell to Manzanar comes a powerful retelling of the Donner story through the eyes of one member of the party and his eight-year-old daughter. Snow Mountain Passage is an extraordinary tale of pride and redemption, of the sheer endurance and bravery required in the creation of a new country, and of the thrilling early days of California. - American By Blood
Author: Huebner, Andrew
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684857707Booklist
Three U.S. Army scouts leading an infantry column arrive a day late to the battle of Little Bighorn to find the bloody ruins of Custer's troops. Their mission to clear the land of the Indian tribes then becomes one of vengeance, forever changing their sense of manhood, honor, and country. - Deadville
Author: Jones, Robert F.
Publisher: Dunne List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 031285642Booklist
The seventh novel by the acclaimed author of Buffalo Runners. 1833: Two young brothers strike out on a perilous journey into the untamed West, where Indians still reign as masters of the land. In search of riches, they instead find brutal hardship and heart-pounding adventure. - The Way of the Coyote
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312873182Publishers WeeklyBooklist
The Civil War has ended and Union soldiers and federal officials have taken control of Texas as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. This is the third novel in Elmer Kelton's brilliant series about the Texas Rangers, and in Rusty Shelton, he has created one of the most memorable characters in modern western fiction. - Badger Boy
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312873190PW
In the year following the Civil War, Rusty Shannon returns to the Red River, hoping to take up the life of a farmer. His youth as a captive of the Comanches returns to haunt him when, in pursuit of Indian raiders, he takes as prisoner Badger Boy, a white child taken from his murdered parents by a Comanche warrior.
- Buckskin Line
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312865228Booklist
From a six-time Spur Award winner comes the story of a Texas Ranger who carries heavy burdens. The father and brother of the woman he loves have been lynched, and he is fated to meet the Comanche warrior whose band killed his family. - Liar's Moon: A Long Story
Author: Kimball, Philip
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0805061487PW
Spanning the years immediately before the Civil War through those immediately following Wounded Knee, Liar's Moon presents a subversive retelling of the story of the American West. - The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Author: Leonard, Elmore
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385323867Kirkus
Etching a harsh, haunting landscape with razor-sharp prose, Elmore Leonard shows in these 19 brilliant stories why he has become the American poet laureate of the desperate and the bold. - Gun Fight
Author: Matheson, Richard
Publisher: Evans List Price: $ 16.95 ISBN: 0871317265Booklist - Comanche Moon
McMurtry, Larry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 28.50 ISBN: 0684807548 Date: 1997LJ
At last - in this huge and magnificent addition to one of the epic masterpieces of our time - Larry McMurtry takes readers from the end of Dead Man's Walk to the beginning of Lonesome Dove, filling in the most fascinating years of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call's lives, when the Rangers fought and won the Comanche wars. - The Wandering Hill: A
Novel
Author: McMurtry, Larry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0743233034Booklist
The sensational Pulitzer Prize-winning author delivers the second thrilling book in the Berrybender Narratives--The Wandering Hill is Larry McMurtry at his best. He spins an epic American adventure of the Old West that succeeds the bestselling Sin Killer and stands beside Lonesome Dove in breadth, passion, and authenticity.
Updated 3.31.03 - Bucking the Tiger
Author: Olds, Bruce
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374117276KirkusLibrary Journal
Evoking Doc Holliday's checkered careers as a frontier dentist, itinerant saloon gambler, professional faro dealer, and occasional shootist (including his involvement in the fabled gunfight at the OK Corral), Bucking the Tiger displaces the popular image of the Latin-spouting serial killer with the reality of a self-afflicted human being.
Updated 8/24/01 - Gunman's Rhapsody
Author: Parker, Robert B.
Publisher: Putnam $ 22.95 ISBN: 0399147624Kirkus
This muscular yet sensitive take on the story of Wyatt Earp, the legendary late-19th-century lawman, is filled with all the danger and uncertainty of the Old West and set against the backdrop of his real-life romance with showgirl Josie Marcus. A novel of the Old West, imagined as only Robert B. Parker can. - Appaloosa
Author: Parker, Robert B.
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399152776 Date: 2005KirkusPWLJ
When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and a deputy for dead. In Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary who raises the stakes by playing with emotions.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.28.05 - Single Tree
Author: Svee, Gary D.
Publisher: Walker List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0802741428Booklist - Incident at Twenty Mile
Author: Trevanian
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312192339Kirkus
The author of such bestsellers as The Eiger Sanction and Shibumi returns with a brilliant foray into a new genre. Set at the turn of the last century, Incident at Twenty Mile tells a compellingly dark and dirty story of the Old West, but packed with all the chills, thrills, and improbable coincidences readers love. - The Last Crossing
Author: Vanderhaeghe, Guy
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 087113912xKirkus
A #1 bestseller in Canada, The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of breathtaking quests, adventurous detours and hard-won redemption which takes us on a journey from Oxford to the dusty whiskey trading posts of the 19th century American and Canadian west. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 11.12.03 - Westward: A Fictional History of
the American West
Author: Walker, Dale L. (ed)
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765304511Kirkus
In Westward, the history of the Old American West unfolds in 28 original stories written especially for this unique collection commemorating the 50th anniversary of Western Writers of America, Inc.
Updated 4.7.03 - Overbooked: Western Links
Downriver
Author: Wheeler, Richard S.
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312878451 PW
At the trapper's rendezvous in Wyoming in 1838, Barnaby Skye,
seaman-deserter from the Royal Navy, is offered an opportunity
to become a post trader in his Crow Indian wife's homeland.
He begins the journey to St. Louis to present himself as a candidate
for the job and undergoes a lesson in survival on a Missouri
River steamboat.
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