Here are 59 books that By the Gun fans have personally recommended if you like
By the Gun.
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As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
I often ask what the nature of laws and authority is. In the "Old West," when there was no overarching central authority, the survival of the fittest was the law. I’m curious how the clash of the old world with the new becomes a never-ending cycle and where it may lead.
I loved how none of the characters were all good or all bad, they were just survivors. This book is not meant to be liked or disliked. It’s meant to be experienced and "danced with."
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
I’ve always firmly believed that, being an all-encompassing genre, speculative fiction represents nearly everything I love about writing and storytelling. I’m therefore very proud to have established myself in that world over the past several years and hope to positively impact others in the way I’ve been positively impacted by the sorts of works I’ve mentioned here.
For me, the Dark Tower series is an easy first pick as it so thoroughly encompasses everything I love about speculative fiction: big ideas, compelling, at times mysterious but ultimately fully realized characters, and a healthy, rich, and potent dose of world-building.
Over the years, I’ve reluctantly come to accept that this book and series are not necessarily for everyone, but they are absolutely for me, and I always find myself feeling a sort of kinship with other readers who love them as much as I do.
The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.
'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.' The iconic opening line of Stephen King's groundbreaking series, The Dark Tower, introduces one of his most enigmatic and powerful heroes: Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.
Roland is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey toward the mysterious Dark Tower, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.
On his quest, Roland begins a friendship with a kid from New York named Jake, encounters an alluring woman and faces…
I became fascinated by westerns when my parents took me on vacation to Deadwood, South Dakota and I came home with a brace of toy six-shooters and a book called The Gunfighters by Lea F McCarty, which featured bios of various notorious westerners, from Billy The Kid to Calamity Jane. I eventually left Clayton Moore and The Cisco Kid behind for Sergio Leone. I had a strong interest in ghost stories, and it was Robert E. Howard that gave me the bug for the weird western genre. I wrote two straight-up western novels, Buff Tea and Coyote’s Trail, but I didn’t find an audience until I started injecting my stories with ghoulies.
Best known for creating Conan The Barbarian, Howard fathered the weird western genre with his seminal 1932 short story "The Horror From The Mound," collected here along with "The Thunder-Rider" and "Old Garfield’s Heart." Reading these early genre mashup stories of conquistador vampires, reincarnation, and Native American magic in high school was like tasting peanut butter and chocolate for the first time. They made new notions bloom like a field in my mind. You could take the gritty frontier of Lonesome Dove and introduce an element of the magical fantastic, and if you respected both genres, come up with something entirely new. I especially appreciated the culture clash of the frontier.
It’s something I explore a lot in my own work; that disparate peoples meet, mix, and come away changed by the encounter. This is an idea that Howard, who adored research and folklore, represents pretty well in "Old Garfield’s…
Robert E. Howard is celebrated as the founding father of sword-and-sorcery, the creator of Conan of Cimmeria and Kull of Atlantis. The Black Stranger and Other American Tales demonstrates that in some of his most powerful heroic fantasy and horror stories, he also explored a New World older and more haunted than that which we've seen in textbooks or museum exhibits. In Howard's Gothic America, dominion goes hand in hand with damnation and the present never ceases to writhe in the grip of the past. "The Black Stranger" spearheads the collection. Located at the extreme edge of Hyborian geography and…
I became fascinated by westerns when my parents took me on vacation to Deadwood, South Dakota and I came home with a brace of toy six-shooters and a book called The Gunfighters by Lea F McCarty, which featured bios of various notorious westerners, from Billy The Kid to Calamity Jane. I eventually left Clayton Moore and The Cisco Kid behind for Sergio Leone. I had a strong interest in ghost stories, and it was Robert E. Howard that gave me the bug for the weird western genre. I wrote two straight-up western novels, Buff Tea and Coyote’s Trail, but I didn’t find an audience until I started injecting my stories with ghoulies.
If Howard is the father of the weird western, Joe Lansdale is the godfather. The trope of the wronged Native American shaman afflicting a frontier town with an undead plague has surely been used time and time again in the genre, but this is the original and best iteration. Joe’s Texas dialogue pops like a bullwhip cracking on a skeletal mule’s vertebrae and you can smell the iron and gunsmoke in his prose. He establishes his reputation with this book and in my opinion, cements it with the Jonah Hex weird western comics Two-Gun Mojo and Riders of The Worm and Such.
Dead in the West is the story of Mud Creek, Texas, a town overshadowed by a terrible evil. An Indian medicine man, unjustly lynched by the people of Mud Creek, has put a curse on the town. As the sun sets, he will have his revenge. For when darkness falls, the dead will walk in Mud Creek and they will be hungry for human flesh. The only one that can save the town is Reverend Jebediah Mercer, a gun toting preacher man who came to Mud Creek to escape his past. He has lost his faith in the Lord and…
My imagination opened a portal into the past. And then I found myself spending years researching, reading, and traveling to historical sites across the western United States. Upon visiting historical places, I sometimes become overwhelmed by a visceral sense that is difficult to describe but has compelled me to write about people and places whose stories and spirits are lost and forgotten. An anecdote about a madam in a local museum stirred around in my consciousness for many years before I started writing Ophelia’s War as my MFA thesis.
The HBO series was great, but the book was even better.
Prior viewing of the series in no way detracted from my enjoyment of this book. Dexter’s writing is quirky and unique. Existential insights are slipped seamlessly into scenes of violence and vulgarity. The sacred and profane coexist in ways that shatter notions of duality.
As someone who has lived in the West most of my adult life and studied Western history in depth, I appreciated his nuanced exposure of humanity in the midst of darkness on the frontier. Also, this Western novel features unique female characters who defy stereotypes, which are rare in the Western genre.
DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and…
I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
There are many media depictions of Deadwood, including in a popular HBO series with a lot of swearing in it. This book is fascinating because it’s a report by an eyewitness. Want to know what an evening was like at Al Swearengen’s Gem Theater, portrayed in the show? The Gem was “a clangorous, tangling, insidious part of Deadwood’s nightly life,” Bennett tells us.
Deadwood in the late 1800's was a rowdy mining town where fortunes were made overnight (and guarded with a Winchester). Local characters like Cold Deck Johnny, Slippery Sam, and Swill Barrel Jimmy rubbed elbows with the infamous Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock. Preacher Smith, a "sky pilot without a compass" tried to keep everyone's souls in order while the author's father, Judge Bennett, upheld the law. The author grew up along with the town, and saw it change from a semi-permanent miner's camp to a real town when the railroad came. Full of real wild west exploits and notorious…
I have loved the history of the West since I was a child, as my family has lived here for over a century. I devoured historical fiction about pioneer girls in grammar school (including the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder), and as I got into college, I expanded my reading universe to include books about women’s roles in the West, and the meaning of this region in overall American history. This concept is what drew me to study the cultural influence of dude ranching, where women have always been able to shine -- and where I placed the protagonist of my first novel.
If you’re a fan of Deadwood or, going further back, the 1953 Doris Day movie, Calamity Jane, you will be fascinated by Jones’s book about the buckskin-wearing Martha Jane Canary, a.k.a. Calamity Jane. Details about her life are either sparse or exaggerated, so Jones tells us what the frontier legend has symbolized, both in her own time and in ours. Dressing like a man made her stand out and made her the object of both derision and decades of bad biographies. She still serves as a symbol of the way that women could defy expectations in the West, and Jones’s book gives us a Calamity Jane we can root for.
A fascinating new account of the life and legend of the Wild West's most notorious woman: Calamity Jane
"In this vivid and compelling biography, Karen Jones recovers the remarkable creativity of Martha Jane Canary, who helped to invent the mythic West by reinventing herself. As Calamity Jane, she told wild tales of adventure and blurred the lines between legend and history, male and female, and truth and possibility."-Alan Taylor, author of The Internal Enemy
Martha Jane Canary, popularly known as Calamity Jane, was the pistol-packing, rootin' tootin' "lady wildcat" of the American West. Brave and resourceful, she held her own…
I have taken part in the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge #atozchallenge since 2014. I volunteered on A to Z founder Arlee's group early on. I was elevated to co-host in 2017 and became the Team Captain in 2018. In 2019, I ran the "#AtoZChallenge Book Reviews, Tour, and Blog Hop!" My own book, Writing Book Reviews As An Author: Inspiration To Make It Easier, was created because of the challenge. I used my method of writing book reviews, broken down alphabetically, to create a month of blog posts. Then compiled those posts into a book. Authors depend on book reviews, but struggle to write them for others.
Twisted Tales has an entertaining, witty introduction. The stories fly by, making it easy to read even during short time periods. Great for readers who are short on time. It's a good horror book in that the “monsters” and horrific situations are realistic. I recommend it to readers who enjoy horrors and thrillers.
Twisted Tales 2 is the second collection of short horror stories from Deborah A Stansil. Ranging from parties that go wrong, killers, dealing with the Devil and everything in between, this collection shows the darker side of human nature in all its black glory. Journey through the twisted minds of the central characters as they make their choices, and watch their lives spiral out of control. Hate them, empathise with them, and stay on your guard. There’s a dark streak in all of us just waiting to come out.
I’m a children’s book author, illustrator, translator, and book reviewer. I’m the author of Tofu Takes Time, illustrated by Julie Jarema, and Long Goes To Dragon School, illustrated by Mae Besom. I was born and raised in Hefei, China, and moved to the US in my 20s. Being fascinated by the differences and similarities between cultures, I love to share stories that empower children to understand the world and our connections. Children’s picture books have the potential to pass on the joy from generation to generation. As an art lover, I also find it very entertaining and soothing to simply enjoy the artwork of picture books.
The girl protagonist loves to make things from her various wild ideas. Her brain is an “idea machine.” Then one day… the girl can’t come up with a single idea for what to make. She tries everything: brainstorming, gathering new supplies, even jumping to shake an idea loose. But nothing works. The author ingeniously captures the ups and downs of the creative process. This book offers a terrific character education lesson in patience and perseverance. It will inspire young makers and visionary creators and encourage them to believe that an idea is sure to come if they just give it the opportunity.
The long-awaited sequel to the runaway bestseller The Most Magnificent Thing that readers have been clamoring for!
The girl in this story, with her dog at her side, loves to make things. Her brain, she says, is an “idea machine,” so full of ideas that she can hardly keep up. But then one day … it isn’t. All of a sudden, the girl can’t come up with a single idea for what to make. She tries everything: brainstorming, gathering new supplies, even jumping up and down on one foot to shake an idea loose. But, nothing. The girl realizes, with…
True confession: I’m not a baker, but I love it when other people bake. It’s riveting to watch how they transform the humblest of ingredients into desserts that are beautiful and delicious. I get super excited to see this creative process unfold, which is why I adore The Great British Baking Show and other competitive reality baking programs. They inspired me to write Marvelous Jackson because my main character desperately wants to snag a coveted audition spot on The Marvelous Midwest Kids Baking Championship. He relishes the frenetic energy and noise of a kitchen packed with ambitious and talented people—just like I do!
Thirteen-year-old Hudson stars on Broadway, but baking is his true passion. He’s ecstatic when he receives an invitation to participate in the Great American Baking competition—until he finds out what his assignment will be. He must make a cupcake with flavors that reflect his family’s ethnic background, and he knows nothing about Indian spices. (Cue the theatrics!)
Hudson’s multi-talented grandmother comes to the rescue, introducing him to the delights of cardamom, saffron, mango, and pistachio extract while his actor friends cheer him on. I love that one of the co-authors of Fearless: In the Mix is a Broadway star herself. (Did someone say Hamilton?) Her experiences certainly lend dramatic flair to this novel, perfect for older middle-grade readers.
Better Nate than Ever meets Love Sugar Magic in this “delectable” (Kirkus Reviews) third novel in the Fearless middle grade series from Hamilton and Broadway star Mandy Gonzalez about a young thespian who feels caught between his love of baking and theatre.
Twelve-year-old Hudson Patel has two great loves: Broadway and baking! In addition to giving his all to his role in the hit show Our Time, Hudson takes pride in keeping his castmates and fellow Fearless Squad members well-fed with all the delicious treats he creates.
When the call comes in for a big baking show—with the winner receiving…
