DON'T SQUAT WITH YOUR SPURS ON
 
 
WEIRD WESTERNS
 

 
genre mash-up:  westerns plus: horror, fantasy, science fiction, and more!
 

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

by Megan Bannen

A lonely marshal tasked with patrolling the magical wilds of Tanria, Hart writes Mercy, an exasperating undertaker, an anonymous letter baring his soul, which leads to a blossoming romance, but can it survive the ill-fated discovery that their pen pals are their worst nightmare.
 
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Karen Memory
by Elizabeth Bear

Life in Madame Damnable's isn't bad for a working girl in a frontier town, or it wasn't until Karen got on the wrong side of Peter Bantle - pimp, politician, and possibly murderer. 
 
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Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

Nettie Lonesome dreams of a greater life than toiling as a slave in the sandy desert. But when a stranger attacks her, Nettie wins more than the fight.  Now she's got friends, a good horse, and a better gun.
 
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 Psalm for the Wild-built

by Becky Chambers
 
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.They're going to need to ask it a lot

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Dragon Teeth

by Michael Crichton
 
The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America's western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.
 
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Gunslinger Girl

by Lyndsay Ely

In a post-Second Civil War lawless West, sharpshooter Serendipity "Pity" Jones stars in, and lives at, the Theater Vespertine, but there is a dark cost to her freedom that Pity may not be willing to pay.
Upright Women Wanted

by Sarah Gailey
 
Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with.
 
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The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

While serving as the Left Hand of the Devil, Isobel has her power tested as she tries to figure out the cause of a growing and mysterious danger throughout the Territory. (sequel to Silver on the Road)
My Calamity Jane

by Cynthia Hand

Welcome to 1876 America, a place bursting with gunslingers, outlaws, and garou -- better known as werewolves. And where there are garou, there're hunters: the one and only Calamity Jane, to be precise.
 
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An Easy Death

by Charlaine Harris
 
In a fractured United States, a new world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards. Lizbeth Rose has a wildly fearsome reputation but these wizards are desperate.

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The Hunger

by Alma Katsu
 
An inventive reimagining of a grisly chapter in American history.  Westward migration, murder, sensation: the story of the Donner Party has all this, which makes it, in its way, a quintessentially American story. 
Heresy

by Melissa Lenhardt

Margaret Parker and Hattie LaCour never intended to turn outlaw.
After being run off their ranch by a greedy cattleman, their family is left destitute. As women alone they have few choices: marriage, lying on their backs for money, or holding a gun. For Margaret and Hattie the choice is easy.
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. 30,000 first printing.
A Snake Falls to Earth

by Darcie Little Badger

Fifteen-year-olds Nina and Oli come from different words -- she is a Lipan Apache living in Texas and he is a cottonmouth from the Reflecting World -- but their lives intersect when Oli journeys to Earth to find a cure for his ailing friend and they end up helping each other save their families
The Silver Shooter
 
by Erin Lindsey
 
It's the spring of 1887, and Rose Gallagher is finally coming into her own as a detective, working alongside her partner, Thomas, as an agent of the special paranormal branch of the Pinkerton Agency. Things are going almost too well, so Rose is hardly surprised when Theodore Roosevelt descends on them like a storm cloud, hiring them for a mysterious job out West. 
 
Ruthie Fear

by Maxim Loskutoff
 
Omens and dreams punctuate the novel, including a particularly vivid dream involving moss and dead skin. An early reference to "her short life" hints at something terrible to come for Ruthie -- but the arc of this novel is anything but predictable.
Unbury Carol

by Josh Malerman
 
Carol Evers has died many times . . . but her many deaths are not final: they are comas, a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days. Her husband, who married Carol for her fortune, plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and quickly burying her . . . alive. 
 
Outlawed

by Anna North
 
After a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, Ava's survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.
 
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Trail of Lightning

by Rebecca Roanhorse

When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. 
 
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Annie and the Wolves

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Ruth McClintock is obsessed with the past. For nearly a decade, she has been studying Annie Oakley, convinced that the legendary sharpshooter experienced a scarring event in adolescence that led her to fight for the right of every American woman to own and operate a gun. This fruitless search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiancé.
 
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