Good Reads

Westerns

Traditional Westerns | Native Americans

Traditional Westerns

Bell, Robert. Platte River crossing.

Rush McCowan's job is to guard the stagecoach from bandits and Indians. He doesn't reckon on driving right into a raging blood feud that can set fire to the whole territory.

Blake, Michael. The holy road : a novel.

John Dunbar has spent the last eleven years living in peace with his wife, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood, and his three children, but when a group of white raiders tries to push their Comanche tribe onto a reservation, violence ensues.

Brouwer, Sigmund. Silver moon.
__________. Evening star.
__________. Thunder voice.
Brooks, Bill. Law for hire : protecting Hickok.

In this first blazing installment in an all-new western adventure series, novice Pinkerton private detective Teddy Blue must protect legendary pistoleer Wild Bill Hickok.

_________. Dakota lawman : last stand at Sweet Sorrow.

Jake Horn was a healer -- until he was falsely accused of murder and had to run. Now the hands he once used to cure the ailing have a new purpose: wrapped around the handles of twin six-guns.

Durham, David Anthony. Gabriel's story.

Gabriel Lynch, an African-American teenager who has moved with his mother from New York to live on his stepfather's Kansas homestead, brings serious trouble down upon himself and his family when he leaves the farm to join a group of cowboys who turn out to be a gang of criminals.

Grey, Zane. Riders of the purple sage.

Jane Witherstreen was the richest woman in Cottonwoods, a peaceful Mormon village on the Utah frontier. But now her fortune is in danger, for the churchmen wanted her to to marry grim, arrogant Elder. Then they would control Amber Spring, the precious water that gave verdure to the wild purple wasteland. But then Lassiter rode into town.

Guthrie, A. B. Arfive.

Novel in which the problems and hardships of life in the West are seen through two of its inhabitants, a schoolteacher and a rancher.

Judd, Cameron. Revenge on Shadow Trail.

As Joseph and Liam Carrigan set out for Montana to find their uncle, they run across a damsel in distress and can't help but rescue her.

________. Shootout in Dodge City (Carrigan Brothers, bk. 1).

Joseph and Liam Carrigan reunite after fighting on opposite sides during the Civil War to head west in search for a better life.

Kirkpatrick, Jane. ALL TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE.

Young southern Wisconsin wife Mazy Bacon is perfectly content with her life until her husband decides they must head west, and the journey connects her to eleven other women in a way they never would have dreamed; based on an actual 1852 Oregon Trail incident.

L'Amour, Louis. Comstock Lode.

A family travels from their native Cornwall, England to seek its fortune in the California goldfields.

________. Sackett's land.

Barnabas Sackett leaves his native England for the unkown dangers of the New World.

________. Crossfire trail.

Rafe swore to a dying man that he would save his ranch for his wife and daughter, but found the promise more difficult than he had thought.

Many, many more.....

Lancer, Jake. Big Iron.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, a gang of human vultures, let by the shadowy murderous Harvey Kidd, has started a bloody guerrilla war with the Union Pacific Railroad.

Lasky, Kathryn. Bone wars.

In the mid-1870s, young teenage scout Thad Longsworth, blood brother to the Sioux visionary Black Elk, finds his destiny linked with that of three rival teams of paleontologists searching for dinosaur bones, as the Great Plains Indians prepare to go to war against the white man.

Ledbetter, Suzann. A lady never trifles with thieves.

In 1870s Denver, a young detective/self-proclaimed "scientist" named Josephine Beckworth Sawyer blows up her tool shed with homemade nitroglycerine.

McCoy, Max. Into the West.

Tells the story of the expansion of the American West as seen through the eyes of two families, one white and one Lakota over the course of many generations.

McMurtry, Larry. LONESOME DOVE.

Two former Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, leave their Texas ranch to lead a cattle drive to Montana, encountering outlaws, Native Americans, and ex-loves along the way.

________. Sin killer.

Beautiful, determined Tasmin Berrybender, daughter of a wealthy, aristocratic Englishman who has brought his family to America in 1830 on an adventure of exploration in the just-opening West, meets and falls in love with frontiersman Jim Snow, an Indian-fighter and part-time preacher known as "the Sin Killer."

Myers, Walter Dean. Righteous revenge of Artemis Bonner.

Fifteen-year-old Artemis journeys from New York City to Tombstone, Arizona, in 1882, to avenge the murder of his uncle.

Paulsen, Gary. Murphy's gold.

When Wangsu's wife comes to Murphy to report the Chinese laundryman missing, Murphy finds himself deeper and deeper in the middle of a case involving kidnapping, fraud, and murder.

______. Mr. Tucket.

A gritty coming-of-age novel about a young teen captured by Indians while crossing the western frontier.

Portis, Charles. TRUE GRIT.

The story of a 14-year old girl who sets out to avenge her father's murder with the help of a crusty old cowboy.

Randisi, Robert. The widowmaker : invitation to a hanging.

John Locke has been a law man, bounty hunter, and gun for hire. When he travels to New Mexico to witness the hanging of a vicious killer, he comes to suspect something is wrong.

Schaefer, Jack. SHANE.

Shane rides into a Wyoming valley in 1889 and becomes involved in a feud between big cattle dealers and homesteaders.

Native Americans

Armstrong, Nancy M. Navajo long walk.

Kee, a young Indian, and his family are forced by the U.S. Cavalry to live on a reservation. Will they ever be the same again? Based on the historic Navajo long walk of 1864.

Blake, Michael. Dances with Wolves.

Rewarded for his heroism in the Civil War, Lt. John Dunbar wants to see the American frontier before it is gone. He is assigned to an abandoned fort, with a Sioux tribe as his only neighbor. They overcome the language barrier and mutual fear and distrust to become friends. His knowledge of their ultimate fate forces him to make a crucial decision.

Borland, Hal. When the legends die.

Torn between two worlds, a young Indian boy returns to his ancestral ways, alone in the wilderness.

Burks, Brian. Walks Alone.

After a surprise attack leaves many of her people dead, fifteen-year-old Walks Alone, an Apache girl wounded in the massacre, struggles to survive and rejoin the refugee band.

Carlson, Nolan. Lame Eagle and Wind Chaser.

A story about a disabled Native American boy who with courage, determination, and a prophecy from Running Elk, his vision quest, became a legend in his own time and for generations to come. Travel back with Lame Eagle and his amazing pony, Wind Chaser, and experience the challenge and final victory of a boy who wouldn't be defeated. (Mr. Carlson is a Wamego, Kansas author)

Coldsmith, Don. Spanish Bit Saga (series) and other books.

(Dr. Coldsmith is a Kansas author.)

Evans, Max. Faraway blue.

Based on the real-life exploits of Moses Williams and his Cavalry Regiment's campaign against an Apache Chief who is perhaps the finest fighter ever encountered by white men.

George, Jean Craighead. JULIE OF THE WOLVES.

Julie, a Native-American girl, befriends a wolf pack after becoming lost in the Alaskan wilderness.

Hausman, Gerald. Coyote beads.

A collection of Navajo legends featuring the trickster character, Coyote.

Hudson, Jan. SWEETGRASS

A 15- year old Blackfoot girl comes of age as a smallpox epidemic decimates her people.

_____. DAWN RIDER.

Kit Fox secretly learns how to ride a horse; a skill that will allow her to save her people.

Kingsolver, Barbara. Bean trees.

The story of a girl who leaves Kentucky and finds a special relation ship with a three-year-old Navaho girl named Turtle.

Kirkpatrick, Katherine. Trouble's daughter : the story of Susanna Hutchinson.

When her family is massacred by Lenape Indians in 1643, nine-year-old Susanna, daughter of Anne Hutchinson, is captured and raised as a Lenape.

Matcheck, Diane. The sacrifice.

When her father's death leaves her orphaned and an outcast among her Apsaalooka ( Crow ) people, a fifteen-year-old sets out to avenge his death and prove that she, not her dead twin brother, is destined to be the Great One.

McCoy, Max. Into the West.

Tells the story of the expansion of the American West as seen through the eyes of two families, one white and one Lakota over the course of many generations.

O'Brien, Dan. The contract surgeon.

Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, a young contract surgeon pressed into service during the Great Sioux War of 1876, is surprised to recognize Sioux leader Chief Crazy Horse from an earlier encounter and builds upon that meeting to develop a friendship that comes to mean more to him than even the Hippocratic oath.

O'Dell, Scott. ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS

A young girl is left alone on an island off the coast of California.

______. STREAMS TO THE RIVER, RIVER TO THE SEA.

Sacagawea's tale of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Ross, Dana Fuller. Dakota!

Crack calvary troops, veterans of the long Civil War keep order on the Northwest plains as rugged settlers push deeper into unexplored lands.

Spinka, Penina Keen. Mother's blessing.

When Four Cries, renamed Child, begins a journey to find her spirit, it becomes clear that she is indeed destined for greatness.

Urban, Betsy. Waiting for Deliverance.

In 1783, orphaned fourteen-year-old Livy and her cousin Ephraim are taken in by a woodsman and his family, including a young Seneca man who changes Livy's attitudes toward the Indians she was raised to hate and fear.