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Historical Fiction of the American West
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If you'd like personalized book recommendations, check out our Tailored Titles services for both fiction and nonfiction books. |
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The Bones of Paradise
by Jonis Agee
When a white rancher and a young Native American woman are found murdered on a remote part of the rancher's land a decade after Wounded Knee, the scattered members of his family gather to investigate and expose damning secrets.
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The Cane Creek Regulators: a Frontier Story
by Johnny D. Boggs
When her beloved 18th-century South Carolina community is overrun by violence, 16-year-old Emily Stewart struggles with mixed feelings after her tavern-keeper father and his friends form an illegal vigilante group to protect settler families.
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Dragon Teeth
by Michael Crichton
A tale set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting follows the exploits of two ambitious paleontologists who sabotage each others' careers in a rivalry that came to be known as the Bone Wars.
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The Accidental Guardian
by Mary Connealy
Trace Riley has been self-appointed guardian of the trail ever since his own wagon was attacked. When he finds the ruins of a wagon train, he offers shelter to survivor Deborah Harkness and the children she saved. Trace and Deborah grow close working to bring justice to the trail, but what will happen when the attackers return to silence the only witness?
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The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt
Set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, this darkly comic novel follows the misadventures of the fabled Sisters brothers, two hired guns who, under the order of the mysterious Commodore, try to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, a man who gives them a run for their money.
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The Long High Noon
by Loren D. Estleman
A decades-long feud between Old West cowboys Randy Locke and Frank Farmer are separately approached by a man with the popular Buffalo Bill show who proposes they publicize a winner-take-all duel.
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Buffalo Trail
by Jeff Guinn
Fleeing from his nemesis, Killer Boots, Cash McLendon seeks refuge in Dodge City with a band of buffalo hunters who head south to the Texas panhandle into forbidden Indian Territory.
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Where the Lost Wander
by Amy Harmon
Set on Overland Trail in 1853, a young widow sets off with her family for a life out West – a journey fraught with hardship, fear, death and terrible sacrifice that leads her into the arms of a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds.
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The Chuckwagon Trail
by William W Johnstone
On the run for his life, Dewey “Mac” McKenzie talks his way onto a cattle drive heading west as a chuckwagon cook and puts his newfound culinary skills to good use on a dangerous trail rife with rustlers, hostile Indians, bad weather, deadly stampedes and the ultimate showdown with the man who framed him for murder.
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Other Men's Horses
by Elmer Kelton
Setting out to arrest a trader accused of killing a horse thief, young Texas Ranger Andy Pickard finds the case complicated by the trader's honor-bound nature, a situation that makes Andy wonder if he is fighting on the right side.
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Everything She Didn't Say
by Jane Kirkpatrick
A reimagining of the life of Carrie Strahorn covered in her 1911 memoir Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage describes her relationship with her strong-willed husband, struggles with faith and efforts to build a life in the untamed West.
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The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
by Tom Lin
Fighting his way across the West to rescue his wife and exact revenge on the men who destroyed him, while settling old scores along the way, Ming Tsu is aided by a blind clairvoyant and a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers.
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Hard Country
by Michael McGarrity
Struggling with the death of his wife in childbirth at the end of the 19th century, John Kerney gives up his Texas ranch to pursue the outlaws responsible for his brother's murder and participates in nearly half a century of turbulent history in New Mexico Territory.
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Outlawed
by Anna North
The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.
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Inland
by Téa Obreht
An unflinching frontierswoman riding out the Arizona Territory drought of 1893 finds her life intertwined with that of a former outlaw whose ability to see ghosts has inspired a momentous expedition.
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Give-a-damn Jones
by Bill Pronzini
A free-spirited itinerant typographer who hates both his nickname and the rumors attributed to his character arrives in a small Montana town rife with tensions related to a convict's efforts to prove his innocence, a cattleman's demand for respect, a snooping firebrand editor and a feud between a wily dentist and a violent blacksmith.
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A Dangerous Woman from Nowhere
by Kris Radish
When gold miners kidnap her husband, frontier woman Briar teams up with an emotionally damaged young man and a famous female horse trainer to track down the lawless killers.
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The Trading Post and Other Frontier Stories
by Hazel Rumney
.A collection of short story set on the American frontier includes "The Trading Post," by Michael Zimmer, in which an old trader stands his ground against the nephew of the company store owner.
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Doc
by Mary Doria Russell
After the burned body of mixed-blood boy Johnnie Sanders is discovered in 1878 Dodge City, Kansas, part-time policeman Wyatt Earp enlists the help of his professional-gambler friend Doc Holliday, in a novel that also features Doc's girlfriend, the Hungarian prostitute Kate Katarina Harony.
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The Removes
by Tatjana Soli
Traces the intertwining stories of Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer, his frontierswoman wife Libbie, and fifteen-year-old Anne Cummins, a captive of the Cheyenne after surviving a homestead attack.
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Wild Salvation
by Alfred Stifsim
Wild salvation is a western novel that explores diverse perspectives on race and the role of women in the Old West through an epic action-packed adventure. Readers will see a side of the West that has often been left out in fiction as Johnson tangles with bandits, hired gunmen, and racism.
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Valentine
by Elizabeth Wetmore
It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.
In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.
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The Escapement
by Lavie Tidhar
A lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son in a strange parallel reality, the Stranger rides into the Escapement where he must journey deep into the secret heart of an endlessly shifting, unpredictable and unimaginable world to find what he seeks.
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A Good Man
by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Wesley relocates to a Montana ranch to help negotiate peace between the Native Americans and U.S. and Canadian militaries, an effort that is complicated by his unexpected feelings for widow Ada Tarr.
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Half Broke Horses
by Jeannette Walls
The author offers a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed 500 miles on a pony as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children, including Rosemary Smith Walls, portrayed in the author's acclaimed The Glass Castle.
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How Much of These Hills is Gold
by C Pam Zhang
Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry and disparate goals.
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The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain
by Don Waters
Soldiers, seekers, priests, prisoners, and surfers pursue their fate amid bizarre, sometimes overwhelming circumstances. In “La Luz de Jesús,” a gutless Los Angeles screenwriter, a believer in nothing but the god of Hollywood, must reorient after he encounters a group of penitents in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The decorated soldier in “Española” faces more chaos back home than he did during his tour in Iraq. And “The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain” pairs a “trustee” prison inmate and a wild mustang horse, both wards of the state of Nevada, as they fumble toward a spiritual truth.
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Avon Lake Public Library 32649 Electric Blvd. Avon Lake, Ohio 44012 440-933-8128alpl.org |
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