Popular Western Books for Adults
Hundreds of books are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Western books for adults.
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Ceremony
"This story, set on an Indian reservation just after World War II, concerns the return home of a war-weary Navaho young man. Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions--despair."--From source other than the Library of Congress
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The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune--in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest.
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Half An Inch of Water: Stories
A new collection of stories set in the West from "one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers" (NPR) Percival Everett's long-awaited new collection of stories, his first since 2004's Damned If I Do , finds him traversing the West with characteristic restlessness. A deaf Native American girl wanders off into the desert and is found untouched in a den of rattlesnakes. A young boy copes with the death of his sister by angling for an unnaturally large trout in the creek where she drowned. An old woman rides her horse into a mountain snowstorm and sees a long-dead beloved dog. For the plainspoken men and women of these stories--fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians--small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar. A harmless comment about how to ride a horse changes the course of a relationship, a snakebite gives rise to hallucinations, and the hunt for a missing man reveals his uncanny resemblance to an actor. Half an Inch of Water tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected. (syndetics)
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The Intruders
"Blackstone, Wyoming, belongs to "King" Charles Hagen. The rancher bought land, built businesses, and employed most of the townsfolk. Unfortunately Sheriff Buck Trammel is not on His Majesty's payroll. The lawdog won't be tamed or trained to accept the king's position as master of the territory, but neither will he threaten his empire. Adam Hagen, the king's oldest son, is vying to take control of his father's violent empire in Blackstone. Sidling up with the notorious criminal Lucien Clay, Adam is adding professional hired guns who perform his dirty deeds without question. But moving against his father means crossing paths with his former friend Buck--the man who once saved Adam's life. A civil war is coming to Blackstone. And when the gunsmoke clears, Buck Trammel is determined to be the last man standing "-- Provided by publisher.
Format: Large Print
Availability: All copies in use
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The Cobbler of Spanish Fort and Other Frontier Stories
"Setting up shop in rip-roaring Spanish Fort, Texas, in the early 1870s, Big Eddie Hager outfitted many cowboys in boots as they headed up the Chisholm Trail. Hagers fame and his company grew with the years, turning Hager Boots & Company, Incorporated, into a global legend. But when a Dallas newspaper reporter arrives in whats left of Spanish Fort, an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the man behind the Hager legend-the real cobbler of Spanish Fort. The Cobbler of Spanish Fort, published for the first time, kicks off this collection of short fiction by Johnny D. Boggs, the most awarded writer in the history of Western Writers of America with nine Spur Awards and 14 Spur finalist honors. A Piano at Dead Mans Crossing-a 2002 Spur winner-tells the story of an Arizona frontier family from the viewpoint of an upright grand piano. A Comanche warrior imprisoned at Floridas Fort Marion attempts to paint his way to freedom in Comanche Camp at Dawn; Buffalo Bill Cody and his wife fight it out to save their marriage in The Cody War; and Wild Bill Hickok umpires a baseball game in Kansas City in Umpire Colt-all Spur Award finalists. Dont expect gunfights on dusty streets. Boggs fills these 21 Western, Civil War and Southern tales, old and new, with quirky cowboys, revenge, humor, heroes, baseball, teens coming of age, and even a kid playing cowboys and Indians with his mothers hair curlers"-- Provided by publisher.
Format: Large Print
Availability: Available
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Paradise Sky
Taken in by a man named Loving after his father is murdered, young Willie learns to shoot, ride, read, and garden. When Loving dies, Willie re-christens himself Nat Love in tribute and heads west. In South Dakota Territory, Nat becomes a Buffalo Soldier, is befriended by Wild Bill Hickok, earns the nickname Deadwood Dick and the love of a beautiful woman.
Format: Large Print
Availability: All copies in use
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The Last Ranch: A Novel of the New American West
"When Matthew Kerney returns to his ranch in the beautiful San Andres Mountains after serving in Sicily during World War II, he must not only fight to recover physically and emotionally from a devastating war injury, but he must also battle attempts by the U.S. Army to seize control of his land for expanded weapons testing. Forced off public grazing lands, banned from gathering his cattle on high mountain pastures, and confronted by military police guarding a high security army post on the northern reaches of the range, Matt finds himself at the center of a heavy-handed government land-grab. The reasons behind this surge of secrecy and control become clear when Matt witnesses the boiling, blinding explosion of the first atom bomb at Trinity Site. As he struggles with an aging, stove-up father no longer able to carry a heavy load at the ranch, an ex-convict intent on killing him, and a failing relationship with a woman he dearly loves, Matt must draw upon all his mental and physical resources to keep his world--and the people in it--from collapsing."-- Provided by publisher.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Daughter of the Morning Star
When Lolo Long's niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya "Longshot" Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl's plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.
Format: Audiobook CD
Availability: Available
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Tortilla Flat
In the shabby district called Tortilla Flat above Monterey, California lives a gang whose exploits compare to those of King Arthur's knights.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Streets of Laredo
The final book of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy is an exhilarating tale of legend and heroism. Captain Woodrow Call, Augustus McCrae's old partner, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena--once Gus McCrae's sweetheart. Their long chase leads them across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier. (6/7/2023 4:49:11 AM)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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