Westerns
I have a wide definition of a “western” as a work of fiction. James Fenimore Cooper’s last Leatherstocking novel, The Prairie (1827), is a Western in even a modern sense of the category. The Dime Western of the post-Civil War period, and the sensational “yellow” Westerns that overlapped the end of the wars with the American Indians of the West created and strengthened the stereotypes and conventions that later generations of writers had to deal with.
What is important and interesting, however, is that those later generations of writers are good, sometimes great. From Zane Grey (Ohio-born) to Louis L’Amour, A.B. Guthrie to Larry McMurtry, Dorothy Johnson to Paulette Giles, Elmer Kelton to Elmore Leonard, Thomas McGuane to Edward Abbey to N. Scott Momaday - so many writers have faced and continue to face the West and its history and its landscape.
I have a Westerns section in the store in the far frontier of the North Room, but I have other Westerns scattered in different areas, outposts in other literatures. I will work to gather them on this page, an ongoing building of community. Audiobooks of Western writers, including Zane Grey and A.B. Guthrie, Jr., are listed on my Audiobooks - Fiction, Poetry, Drama page.
A note on Louis L’Amour’s books: they are listed in alphabetical order by title with the exception of the 17-volume Sacketts titles, which are clustered at the end and numbered according the rough chronology L’Amour intended (it was flexible by his intention and unfinished at his death).
Listed here alphabetically by author.
Betty Zane and To the Last Man [Betty Zane #1 Ohio Frontier Trilogy]
Betty Zane and To the Last Man [Betty Zane #1 Ohio Frontier Trilogy]
From the legendary writer of the west comes two complete novels by Zane Grey in one low-priced edition!
"No man has employed the Western story formula with better results." —The New York Times
Betty Zane
Inspired by the life and adventures of his great-great-grandmother, this book launched Zane Grey’s career as a writer of the Western frontier. With resources dwindling during the siege of Fort McHenry, sixteen-year-old Betty Zane volunteers to raid a cache of gunpowder stored outside the fort's walls. Her bravery stunned the British and inspired her countrymen in the final battle of the American Revolution.
To the Last Man
Arizona's Tonto Basin has been fought over for decades. At its heart are two families, the Isbels and the Jorths. Gaston Isbel and Lee Jorth have vowed to destroy each other and their families and allies—to the last man, if need be. Neither realizes that Gaston’s son has fallen in love with Lee’s only daughter.