Here are 58 books that The Western Star fans have personally recommended if you like
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I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
This book by John Grisham asks how moral people live in an unjust society. They either come to terms with the wickedness of a broken world or end their lives.
The opening page of the Grisham novel reveals a man who can’t cope with his sins, those of his ancestors, and society. I submit the reader wants a more courageous protagonist capable of coping with the chaos. The entire purpose of crime fiction is to re-establish the order shattered by evil.
In the long-awaited successor to the novel that launched his phenomenal career, John Grisham brings us the powerful sequel to A Time to Kill. As filled with page-turning twists as it is with legal mastery, Sycamore Row proves beyond doubt that John Grisham is in a league of his own.
Jake Brigance has never met Seth Hubbard, or even heard of him, until the old man's suicide note names him attorney for his estate. The will is dynamite. Seth has left ninety per cent of his vast, secret fortune to his housemaid.
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
My next pick, by C.J. Book, presents Joe Pickett with the dilemma of facing his failings. He didn’t do enough to save his daughter. Further confounding his guilt is the fact the girl was more of an adopted child. Did self-preservation and the preservation of his family compel him to sell her out, or did he do all he could?
Pickett comes to terms with assisting a fugitive to promote a greater good.
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett heads for the forests of Twelve Sleep County to investigate a massive explosion that may have killed a colorful environmental activist and uncovers evidence of a deadly conspiracy that challenges his courage, survival skills, and ethics. By the author of Open Season. 30,000 first printing.
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
James Lee Burke’s book presents the common trope of the cowboy detective out of time and place. The reader would assume the series-leading Texan would enjoy beautiful Montana; however, the setting is awash in corruption and evil.
The hero navigates this moral morass, revealing the harsh consequences of selfishness for humanity.
America's finest crime writer sends hero Billy Bob Holland deep into Montana - paradise to some, to others a savage wilderness...
'Still the greatest, bar none' LITERARY REVIEW
'Powerful stuff and confirms Burke's place in the forefront of contemporary American crime fiction' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'BITTERROOT is beautifully written and still stands head and shoulders above most other crime fiction' OBSERVER
When Billy Bob Holland visits his old friend Doc Voss, he finds himself caught up in a horrific tragedy. Doc's daughter has been brutally attacked by bikers, and the ringleader, Lamar Ellison, walks free when the DNA samples 'get lost'.…
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
This book, by Joe R. Lansdale, tells a coming-of-age story. A world where evil prevails, testing the hero’s Christian faith. His morals are inconsistent with the norms of society.
It presents more of a moral forest far more than the real Big Thicket described in greater detail in my novel.
In The Thicket, award-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale lets loose like never before, in a rip-roaring adventure set at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom, the perfect introduction to an acclaimed writer whose work has been called "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain" (New York Times Book Review)
Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic…
My favorite mode of transport is being on the back of a good horse. I have enjoyed horse treks in Ecuador on the Inca Trail, in the backcountry of British Columbia, the High Sierras, and on the Wild West coast of Ireland, as well as numerous stays at guest’s ranches in the U.S. My equestrian articles have appeared in Equus, Horse Illustrated, and California Riding Magazine, to name a few. A back injury forced me to give up my mare and the riding world I loved. Writing The Cowgirl Jumped over the Moon was my way of letting go and moving forward in life.
I bought this book because I am a Longmire fan. The tight-lipped, tough Wyoming sheriff with a big heart and true grit is my kind of guy. I expected a juicy murder mystery, but not the heart-catching ride on a black beauty double.
Although Longmire's wild bareback ride on an unbridled mare stretches credulity, it is great fun to be there. If you like the haunting landscape of the West, the relentless pursuit of the truth, the mysticism of the Native Americans, and a good mystery, you will tick off all those boxes here.
The fifth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire
Wade Barsad locked his wife Mary's horses in their barn and then burned it down. In return she shot him in the head six times - or so the story goes. Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn't believe Mary's confession, and he's determined to dig deeper.
Posing as an insurance claims investigator, Walt goes undercover and soon discovers that the population of an entire town might have wanted Wade dead, including a beautiful Guatemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor but not so much…
When I retired from the service, I wanted to be done with big decisions and just focus on family. I’d had enough war-zone drama. I’m drawn to stories where the veteran finds he/she just can’t do that. My protagonist in my debut, Stable deals with this. He’s overcome so much…the loss of his son, the loss of an aircrew, and years of depression. Now that he’s “back,” he just wants to lead a normal life. I wanted to show you can pull the veteran from the battlefield, but it’s hard to quell his or her desire to continue to serve—and the inherent conflict of service before self or family remains.
The Cold Dish follows Absaroka County Sheriff, Walt Longmire, as he investigates the murder of a young man near a Native American reservation.
As Longmire delves deeper into the case, he realizes that someone may be seeking revenge against a group of high school boys who had been involved in a rape two years prior.
What differentiates this novel from others is how Johnson has skillfully crafted Longmire as a character shaped by his experiences in the military. Longmire's service as a Marine in Vietnam has left a lasting impact on him, influencing how he approaches his work as a sheriff and how he interacts with those around him.
His sharp instincts and unrelenting dedication to justice make him a formidable protagonist, while his vulnerabilities and moments of introspection give him depth and complexity. You won’t be able to stop reading this series. And if you listen on audio, prepare…
Introducing Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author, the first in the Longmire mystery series
Craig Johnson's new novel, LAND OF WOLVES, is forthcoming from Viking
Fans of Ace Atkins, Nevada Barr and Robert B. Parker will love this outstanding first novel, in which New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson introduces Sheriff Walt Longmire of Wyoming's Absaroka County. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, and full of memorable characters. After twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire's…
There's something about broken people trying to do good that has always resonated with me. In basic training, a drill sergeant with debilitating PTSD told us what combat would be like through a storm of choking sobs and a haze of tears. He needed us to know. Even if it broke him. Working as an investigator in Denver and Washington, I watched people with complicated pasts and uncertain futures fight tooth and nail (sometimes literally) to put human traffickers behind bars. Literature has always been a bridle for that wildness I saw in the world. A tool for taking the ghashing, stomping, unruliness of the human experience and making it rideable, relatable, survivable.
This one is a standout of the Longmire series. A bus full of serial killers mashes its potatoes into the side of a mountain during a whiteout and it’s up to Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire to get rounded them up. There’s an epicness about this story that leaves you feeling like you’re riding a literary wave into the pilings and Craig Johnson paints the whole debacle with a Hillerman-esque mysticism and his own singular brand of stoic humor.
The seventh book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.
Raynaud Shade, an adopted Crow Indian and one of the country's most dangerous sociopaths, has just confessed to murdering a boy twenty years ago and burying him deep within the Bighorn Mountains. Absaroka County Sherriff Walt Longmire must escort Shade through a snowstorm to the site, but the mission turns personal when Walt learns whom the dead boy's family is.
Guided only by Indian mysticism and a battered paperback of Dante's Inferno, Walt braves the icy hell of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, cheating death…
I believe many writers suspect they are Strangers in a Strange Land. How ironic that I, a confirmed atheist, should use a biblical quote to describe the mindset of authors. Some discover where they belong through their writing. My book recommendations have a strong sense of place, whether it be the Old West, wartime Berlin, or modern-day Scotland. I was born into a 300-year-old N. Ireland Protestant Plantation family, yet many people saw us as interlopers: we weren’t quite Irish, and we weren’t quite British, yet we held dual passports. It was not until I left Ireland that I realized my Irish Heritage exerted a stronger pull than my British.
In contrast to Lonesome Dove,I’ve included this book by Craig Johnston, partly because of my anthropology training. Johnston relates the modern life of a Wyoming sheriff interacting with the culture of the Sioux and Cheyenne.
I particularly admire the way Johnston handles the spiritual aspect of the native people. His depiction of Wyoming's emptiness or mountainous areas kept me turning pages all night long. His protagonist knows only too well that law and order is not a black-and-white matter and is prepared to dispense justice as he seems fit.
I have watched the TV series of the books but found it underwhelming. The printed word can often outdo the constraints of a TV producer.
Walt Longmire unravels a mystery that connects two murders across forty years
When the body of a young Vietnamese woman is found alongside the interstate in Absaroka County, Wyoming, Sherriff Walt Longmire is determined to discover the identity of the victim and is forced to confront the horrible similarities of this murder to that of his first homicide investigation as a marine in Vietnam.
To complicate matters, Virgil White Buffalo, a homeless Crow Indian, is found living in a nearby culvert and in possession of the young woman?s purse. There are only two problems with what appears to be an…
My novels range from coming-of-age to suspense. I was an award-winning crime and investigative reporter for the Columbus Dispatchfor 11 years. That background helps me with the investigative aspects of my books. I enjoy exploring the moral dilemmas often presented in real life. My characters all have morals, but I like putting them in compromising situations. It’s easy to sit back and judge others, but how far would you go to keep your own son out of jail? Would the love of your son get in the way of your morals? It’s never black or white. Most of life is spent dancing in and out of the vast gray area in the middle.
Walt Longmire is the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming. Longmire is a decorated Marine and played offensive line at the University of Southern California. He’s big, and he can brawl. He can be the cerebral Sherlock Holmes or Rambo, depending on the situation. In most of his books, Longmire teams up with Henry Standing Bear, but inDepth of Winter, Longmire is largely on his own as he sneaks into Mexico in search of his only child, Cady, who has been kidnapped by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel. Longmire is a bulldozer in his quest to rescue his daughter.
"It's the scenery-and the big guy standing in front of the scenery-that keeps us coming back to Craig Johnson's lean and leathery mysteries." -The New York Times Book Review
Walt journeys into the northern Mexican desert alone to save his daughter Cady, who has been kidnapped by the cartel
Welcome to Walt Longmire's worst nightmare. Winter is creeping closer, but for Sheriff Longmire this one is looking to be harsh in a way to which he is wholly unaccustomed. He has found himself in the remotest parts of the northern Mexican desert, a lawless place where no horse or car…
As a college instructor and a student of Western American Literature for many, many years I have read a great number of western novels for my classes and for my literary studies. In addition to my doctoral dissertation on the topic, I have written and published numerous articles and reviews on western writers, and I have given many public presentations as well. I have a long-standing interest in what makes good works good. As a fiction writer, I have published more than thirty traditional western novels with major publishers, and have won several national awards for my western novels and short stories.
This is a classic story about a young man confronted by land conflicts and family loyalty. It also depicts non-White characters in a positive, realistic way. This book has an interesting storyline, good prose style, and original use of figurative language. The novel won the Western Heritage Award in 1963, and it is regarded by many as one of the best westerns written. It is not as widely known as many novels, but it is appreciated by anyone who reads it. Roripaugh is also a major poet in the literary history of Wyoming, and he published some very good short stories as well.
One of the most acclaimed Western novels of the past fifty years, Robert A. Roripaugh's masterful story of range war and its victims on both sides of the fence transports readers back to 1889 Wyoming with a rare power, richness, and truth. It is a gripping tale of ranchers and homesteaders; of honored tradition holding brutally firm against the onslaught of changing times; and of a family torn to pieces by opposing visions of what is right. Brimming with intense action and characters who will live on in memory, Honor Thy Father is an evocative depiction of a place and…
