Good westerns ?

Connavar of Rigante said:

Two by Ron Hansen, is it about Jesse James? Is he the main characters? or is it about the ones who killed him?

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Two books by Ron Hansen -- I worded that wrong. Desperadoes is about the Daltons and The Assassination etc. is about Jesse James and Robert Ford.

Good to know.



Anyone know more western stories with supernatural elements.

Supernatural? Tim Lebbon has written two good western supernatural novellas -- Pieces of Hate and Dead Man's Hand. Joe Lansdale wrote an excellent zombie western called Dead in the West.

Thanks man.

Hopefully it wont be too hard finding them.

You might also look on here, Con:

IS 590: A Few Thoughts on Westerns

Not supernatural but a very good western is:

"St. Agnes' Stand" Thomas Eidson

I don't normally read westerns but I was leant this by a seasoned and well read western fanatic who said this was a great book.

I have finaly read my first western and liked it.

It was Boones's Lick by Larry McMurthy. I really liked the way crisp way he writes and he is very good creating interesting characters and has alot of great dialogue. Im gonna read his famous Lonsome Dove series after i have sampled more westerns.


After going through the books my library can get for me from other libraries i found these westerns i thought would be interesting to read.

Shane - Jack Schaefer
Sackett's land - Louis L'Amour
The ox-bow incident - Walter Van Tilburn Clark
Riders of the purple sage - Zane Grey

Personally, I loved Cormack McCarty's series, of which I have only read the first 2 of 3 books: All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing

Well-developed characters, raw emotions, grim realities and the creeping modern world.

I will read it later on.


Right now i wanna read Western classics and stories set when the west was young.

Im more interested right now in seeing which of the old school western writers are my taste.

The modern writers as McCarthy,McMurthy etc are easy to find and try.


To my surprise i have seen several famous books about the indians point of view.


Also i have to find more action oriented westerns. Clint is a hero in the genre when its the movies so i have see which writers are good in that kind of western books. Surprisingly its easier finding more story oriented western young or old books.

Glad to see you found Zane Grey. Look here for more info.

Thanks thats a site to bookmark.


I wonder if you guys know anything about Max Brand, i hear he is one of the old greats in the genre. If you know anything do you know his best works? So i can try them.

I'm currently making my way through a collection of short stories by Louis L'Amour called Grub Line Rider - namely because L'Amour was a big influence on David Gemmell. It's been a bit varied so far - was tempted to put it down, having sampled it.

However, Desert Death Song was pretty good, and I couldn't help but see a connection between that and Ravenheart from Gemmell's Rigante series.

Anyway, this was the book I borrowed from Amazon last month and will now see it through, before borrowing something for August.

I'm not normally a fan of westerns, but my wife and i watched an Audey Murphy film called "No Name On The Bullet". It was brilliant. Very well written with a good twist at the end. A great surprise and totally recommended.

My personal favourite western is Red Sun with Charles Bronson. I watched it with my Dad back around 1985 and it made an impression. Again, a good ending. I haven't watched it since though, so i can't comment on how it aged.

Sorry guys, just realised that this thread is for books.

They aren't literary westerns by any means, but I always enjoyed Max Brand's (a pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust) westerns. Think bodice rippers for men, set in the west.

that old guy said:

All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy won all kinds of critical acclaim but I thought it about the most tedious thing I'd ever tried to read. I did not finish it, though a friend characterized it as "two guys get on their horses, ride to Mexico, nothing happens, then they go home." No clue if that's a fair assessment or not, since I never personally finished it. Though with a review like that I'm unlikely to pick it up again any time soon.

.

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Your friend gives are review which inaccurately summarises the story and which is a bit like describing Notre Dame as a big building by a river. ATPH has an odd style which tales a while, but it is a strange and numinous story which I would heartily recommend. Many similarities to Blood Meridien.

I've now finished the Louis L'Amour collection I borrowed, Grub Line Rider.

At first it simply felt like a nostalgic return to old Western films I remembered as a boy. The first few stories were decent enough, but a little too dependent upon stereotypes we know too well. Having sampled it, I was tempted to put it down and move on.

However, I decided to plod on, just so that I could say I'd completed a Western book - and I'm glad I did. The diversity of the stories really struck out - every man character was good to some degree, but some were admittedly terrible people just trying to do right. There was a real sense of detail that made the setting always seem authentic, yet it was never repeated - every story was very different in every way.

War Party absolutely shone out - unusually, it was written as first person, and had a wonderful sense of voice. Also, it was from the perspective of a 13-year old boy, but it was his Mam who was the absolute star of the story - doggedly determined to continue on the wagon trail west, even after the death of her husband, and despite the growing animosity of her fellow travellers. It was a real shame it was only a short story and not a novel.

Overall, I was really surprised by the variety and complexity of the stories. L'Amour was known as a prolific writer so I was expecting low-standards and repeated formulas. Maybe that would begin to show if I read more. But Grub Line Rider itself was much more interesting and challenging than I had expected.

I'd only picked up the book because David Gemmell had cited L'Amour as an influence, and I could really see that in the moral complexity of some of the characters. The selection I read on L'Amour showed he could be a fine writer. I'd be happy to revisit more of his stories one day.

I see Zane Grey mentioned, his son Romer Zane Grey also wrote some stories using his fathers characters.

Snowdog said:

Pulps are books or magazines that are cheap and usually churned out in great quantities. For instance, I think the Edge series went to 50 or 60 books.

I think it originally referred to the quality of the paper, but I'm not suggesting the Edge or similar series are on inferior paper, more that they are short, written quickly and that there are a lot of them.

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Talking of the Edge books.
Terry Harknett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

littlemissattitude said:

The only Louis L'Amour I've ever read wasn't even really a western and was instead science it's fiction (or maybe fantasy, depending on how you define the two) called The Haunted Mesa that features a portal between the modern world and a world ruled by the Anasazi. I read it a long time ago, but I recall liking it well enough. I might even have to revisit that, come to think of it.

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It's the only Louis L'Amour book I have read, got on my Kindle. The hero takes a while to 'cross over', but I like it.

As a kid, I read some of the Edge books by George Gilman, was surprised to find out a few years ago that he was a Brit.

Another British writer of westerns was JT Edson, controversial because he rewrote reason behind the Civil War, making it more about independant states unifying for mutual protection and trade and seceding from the Union because of 'interference from Washington in independant states internal affairs' rather than slavery, which he preached was used by left wing Liberals to recruit 'ignorant northerners' to become 'modern day crusaders' against the cruel oppressing southern states. This was only background detail in what was, I think, standard western adventures.

His mainstream heroes were ex-Captain Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, later joined by Doc Leroy and Waco, although were others. My favourite character, by far, was the Comanche half-breed Loncey Dalton Ysabel, aka, the Ysabel Kid, mostly because he was the least 'moral' of his all-gooder stable of heroes.

Sadly, his death probably means we will never see the Old Age Pensioners Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid's Last Stand in Africa...

I have read a couple of 'Sudden' books by Oliver Strange (another Englishman!), a Six Gun Samurai book, forgotten author's name and a couple others.

Mostly I was reading science fiction, fantasy or horror (mostly Perry Rhodan and Doctor Who novelisations, Michael Moorcock and James Herbert and Guy N Smith!).