COWBOY FICTION
 


 
TOO MUCH TUMBLEWEED IN THEIR BLOOD TO SETTLE DOWN

contemporary fiction with classic Western themes, settings, or characters

Ridgerunner

by Gil Adamson

After nearly twenty years, the notorious thief, known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. Moving through the Rocky Mountains and across the border to Montana, the solitary drifter, impoverished in means and aged beyond his years, is also a widower and a father. And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son's future.
Another Kind of Eden

by James Lee Burke

The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs.
The Whistling Season

by Ivan Doig

The saga of how a widow from Minneapolis and her brother--soon to become the new teacher in a tiny Montana community in 1909--change lives in unexpected ways has all the charm of old-school storytelling.
Red on the River

by Christine Feehan

Vienna Mortenson isn't your typical gambler. She prefers to stay under the radar, using her poker winnings to support her family and her community, including the local search and rescue team, which she heads up. Out in the backcountry there's no time for hesitation when lives are on the line.
The Last Ranger

by Peter Heller

Officer Ren Hopper is an enforcement ranger with the National Park Service, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling- Breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving clueless tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp through the park with cameras, and the residents of hardscrabble Cooke City who want to carve out a meaningful living.
Where the Dead Sit Talking
 
by Brandon Hobson
 
With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a 15-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface - that is, until he meets 17-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. 
Distrust

by Lisa Jackson

Single mother Danielle Summers is convinced her ranch is slowly being sabotaged. Newcomer Chase McEnroe insists she should trust him. But Dani's suspicion that Chase is in league with her enemy is complicated by a secret from his past. Can she put aside her concerns about his potential deception to find out who is behind these awful acts?
The Longmire Defense

by Craig Johnson

Sheriff Walt Longmire and Dog are called on a routine search and rescue to Wyoming's BigĀ­horn Mountains, where Walt finds himself on a rock outcropping remembering when his father told him about the first time he saw a man die. 
Train Dreams

by Denis Johnson

Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century-an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.
Nail's rossing

by Kris Lackey

In a remote corner of the Chickasaw Nation, tribal Lighthorse policeman Bill Maytubby and county deputy Hannah Bond discover the buzzard-ravaged body of Majesty Tate, a young drifter with a blank past. They comb Oklahoma's rock prairie, river bottoms, and hard-bitten small towns for traces of her last days.
The Weight of an Infinite Sky

by Carrie La Seur

The only son of a cattle rancher, Anthony Fry chafed against the expectation that he would take over the business that had belonged to his family for generations. While his ancestors planted deep roots in the unforgiving Montana soil, Anthony wanted nothing more than to leave Billings for the excitement, sophistication, and culture of city life. After college he fled to New York, hoping to turn his lifelong love of the theater into a career.
Heaven, My Home

by Attica Locke

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on the hunt for a missing child -- but it's the boy's family of white supremacists who are his real target.
Old King

by Maxim Loskutoff

In the summer of 1976, Duane Oshun finds himself stranded in a remote Montana town beset by a series of strange and menacing events. He takes a job as a logger and builds a cabin on an isolated road near a reclusive neighbor--a hermit named Ted Kaczynski.
No Country for Old Men

by Cormac McCarthy

One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law--in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell--can contain.
Leaving Cheyenne

by Larry McMurtry

As the world enters a new century, three teenagers forge a future for themselves on the wild Texas grasslands: Gideon Fry, torn between going his way and following his father's footsteps; Johnny McCloud, whose restless spirit finds its solace traversing an open range; and Molly Taylor, the woman they both love. 
The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

by Bill Pronzini
 
Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that's just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it.  Aside from the occasional drunken brawl or minor disturbance out on the reservation, he hasn't had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years.  That is, until mid-October, 1914, when the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. 
Go as a River

by Shelley Read
 
Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family's peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado--the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.  Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives.
A Prayer for Travelers

by Ruchika Tomar

Cale, a bookish loner of mysterious parentage, was abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandfather in a loving, if co-dependent, household. One pivotal summer, her life is upended by the discovery of a devastating secret that will change her life forever. 
Don't Skip Out on Me

by Willy Vlautin

Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can't shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he's known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer.
August

by Callan Wink

August is an average twelve-year-old. He likes dogs and fishing and doesn't mind early-morning chores on his family's Michigan dairy farm. But following his parents' messy divorce, his mother decides that she and August need to start over in a new town. 



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