The Contemporary Western is a Western that takes place in a modern setting but still retains the narratives, characters, and themes that are found in classic Westerns. Most of these narratives will take place within the American southwest to further showcase the relationship they share with their classic counterparts, but this is not always necessary. This type of Western is truly special because it shows audiences and readers the immortality of the genre and how Westerns are still relevant to the modern world. Criminals and lawmen continue to fight their eternal struggle for what they each believe to be justice. Both have adapted for a world that has changed (they traded their horses for automobiles and saloons for casinos), but their core values and character remain.
Under Western Stars
When severe drought and the greedy exploits of a local water company threaten the prosperity of ranchers in the Dust Bowl, Roy Rogers comes to their rescue.
Springtime in the Sierras
A gang, headed by Jean Loring, is slaughtering game out of season. When Roy suspects some illegal activity is going on, he finds a way to become a guest at the ranch. After investigating and finding the freezer where the meat is kept, he gets caught and locked in the freezer by one of Jean's men, Matt Wilkes. Can Roy fight his way out and save the day?
Bad Day at Black Rock
A one-handed stranger comes to a tiny town possessing a terrible past they want to keep secret, by violent means if necessary.
Man in the Shadow
A brutal murder of a Mexican farm worker is covered up by those who fear its perpetrator: a powerful land baron.
The Misfits
Following her divorce, a lonely young woman befriends a couple of down-on-their-luck cowboys. Both men desire her, but she longs for only one, who represents for her the freedom she's never had. Teaming up with a weather-beaten rodeo rider, the foursome goes into the mountains on a quest for rare and elusive wild horses. There they come to realize that, for all their differences, they share fundamentally similar needs and desires.
Lonely are the Brave
After landing himself in jail trying to break out his friend, Jack Burns finds himself alone and on the run from the law. Leading the manhunt is Sheriff Morey Johnson, who must bring Burns to justice despite his own sympathy for the fugitive.
Hud
Hud Bannon has always preferred drinking, fighting and womanizing to the very traditional ways of his father. Hud is a man who cares more for himself than he does his young nephew, his dad, or even their understanding housekeeper. When disease threatens the cattle on the Bannon Ranch, the conflict between Hud and his old-line father reaches an all-time high.
The Rounders
Ben Jones and Howdy Lewis are bronc riders. This pair of cowboys who will do any job, except for the one at hand. That job: Saddle a clever, ornery, blaze-faced roan named Old Fooler and make him as gentle as a milk-pen calf. They don't think it can be done, so they start thinking. Maybe they can make a dollar or two by wagering that no one at the rodeo can stay atop him either.
Junior Bonner
A young, drifting rodeo star decides to raise money for his father's ranch by challenging a formidable bull.
Pocket Money
Cowboy Jim Kane's bank loan is due. So is his next alimony payment. And the Appaloosas he brought in from Mexico have been slapped into quarantine. What Jim needs is some pocket money.
Bronco Billy
Bronco Billy McCoy is the proud owner of a down-on-its-luck traveling Wild West show. Along the way he picks up a snooty, rich young woman who was left in the desert by her fiancé without any money. He likes her spirit and hires her as his assistant.
Lone Wolf McQuade
A renegade Texas Ranger tries to give his new sidekick the slip and becomes involved in a violent battle against a gun runner in this action film featuring martial arts battles.
Extrem Prejudice
El Paso based Texas Ranger Jack Benteen is intent on trying to control the drug trade, and the means breaking up the drug cartel run by his old friend Cash Bailey across the border in Mexico. His girl Sarita has tired of life with him, and returned to her former lover--Cash. Cash's cohorts have killed a local sheriff, and an unofficial, top-secret cadre of American combat veterans (apparently working for the CIA) has arrived to muddy the waters. Are they after Cash, too, or just his cash? A shootout at Cash's Mexican fortress seems inevitable, but who will be there, and on which side?
City Slickers
When a New York man realizes he is having a mid-life crisis, he and his friends decide to go on a cattle drive to find some adventure.
Pure Country
A country music superstar ditches his beard, ponytail-- and temporarily, his career-- to reclaim his down-home country roots and to find the kind of love he'd only sung about.
Red Rock West
When a promised job fails to materialize, an honest, unemployed Texan finds himself mistaken for a contract killer.
8 Seconds
The heroic life story of rodeo legend Lane Frost, the bull-riding champion who fights to achieve his childhood dreams--both in and out of the rodeo ring.
City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold
Urban cowboy Mitch Robbins is at it again. After Curly's death, he discovers a treasure map in the band of Curly's hat. Mitch and his pal Phil and mooching brother Glen set out to find the treasure.
Broken Arrow
Two military pilots engage in a no-holds-barred battle against time and each other in a race to recover two stolen nuclear warheads. When a B-2 Stealth Bomber crashes in the Utah desert during a top-secret test run, the military quickly moves in to retrieve its two "broken arrows." But the situation spins out of control after one of the pilots reveals the crash to part of an incredible nuclear extortion plot.
Lone Star
A keen observer of America's social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neo-western mystery. When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds, son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence.
The Hi-Lo Country
Two friends returning from World War II team up with an old rancher to raise cattle the cowboy way, in conflict with a corporate cattle rancher who employs half the town of Hi-Lo, New Mexico. When one of his friends has an affair with the wife of the corporate rancher's foreman, the conflict increases.
The Way of the Gun
Convinced they'll score big money fast by kidnapping a young surrogate mother carrying the child of a wealthy Southwestern couple, two small-caliber crooks soon run into major problems.
Kill Bill: Volume 2
The Bride continues on her deadly pursuit of her former partners in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, who, in a furious assault, attempted to murder her and her unborn child on her wedding day. As the Bride faces off against allies-turned-nemeses Budd and Elle, she flashes back to the day of her deadly wedding. We learn how she was recruited and trained and about her relationship with Squad leader Bill.
Brokeback Mountain
Set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, two young men meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, whose complications, joys, and tragedies provide a testament to the power of love.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Needing to keep his honor-bound commitment, Texas ranch foreman Pete returns the body of illegal Mexican immigrant ranch-hand Melquiades Estrada to his preferred resting place in the Mexican wilderness. Estrada had been accidentally shot by Mike, a newly-arrived U.S. border patrolman. Pete forces Mike to participate in his cross-country ritual of duty - a voyage filled with revenge and redemption that will change both men forever - and bring some semblance of meaning to the senseless death of Pete's good friend.
No Country for Old Men
Llewelyn Moss is a Vietnam vet who could use a break. One morning while hunting antelope, he spies several trucks surrounded by dead bodies. He decides to examine the site. He finds a case filled with $2 million and a truck loaded with heroin. Moss takes the money with him, tells his wife he's going away for a while, and hits the road until he can determine his next move.
Crazy Heart
The powerful story of a country music star's rocky road to redemption. Bad Blake is a boozy, broken-down singer who reaches for salvation with the help of Jean, a journalist who discovers the real man behind the music. But will Bad's hard-livin' ways and crazy heart cost him his last chance at a comeback?
Red Hill
On Constable Shane Cooper's first day with the Red Hill Police Department, a convicted murderer escapes from prison and seeks revenge on the men who put him there.
Mystery Road
Detective Joe Swan returns to his small hometown to investigate the murder of a teenaged Aboriginal girl. He finds himself alone and in growing danger as the town's secrets unravel.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
A solitary female vampire stalks the streets of Bad City, a place overrun with crime, drugs and despair. Meanwhile, hardworking Arash cares for his heroin-addicted father while attempting to comply with a local drug dealer and struggling to make ends meet. When the vampire and Arash meet, a bizarre relationship begins.
Desierto
What begins as a hopeful journey to seek a better life becomes a harrowing and primal fight for survival when a deranged, rifle-toting vigilante chases a group of unarmed men and women through the treacherous US-Mexican border. In the harsh, unforgiving desert terrain, the odds are stacked firmly against them as they continuously discover there's nowhere to hide from the unrelenting, merciless killer.
Goldstone
Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry, and what seems like a simple investigation unearths a web of crime, corruption human trafficking, and the exploitation of aboriginal lands.
Hell or High Water
A divorced West Texas dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate money-making scheme in order to save their family's farm from foreclosure.
Five Fingers for Marseilles
1980s South Africa: The community of Railway, attached to remote Marseilles, face brutal oppression and only the young 'Five Fingers' are willing to fight, until hot-headed Tau commits a terrible act and flees. Twenty years later, 'outlaw' Tau renounces violence and returns to Marseilles. It soon becomes clear that the town is in the grip of a new threat. Standing against old allies and new enemies, he'll put his life at risk for Marseilles. It's their duty to protect it. Even from each other.
Let the Corpses Tan
After stealing a truckload of gold bars, a gang of thieves absconds to the ruins of a remote village perched on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. Home to a reclusive yet hypersexual artist and her motley crew of family and admirers, it seems like a perfect hideout. But when two cops roll up on motorcycles to investigate, the hamlet erupts into a hallucinatory battlefield as both sides engage in an all-day, all-night firefight rife with double-crosses and dripping with blood.
The Rider
After suffering a near fatal head injury, a young cowboy undertakes a search for new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.
Western
An intense, slow-burning thriller, this film follows a group of German construction workers installing a hydroelectric plant in remote rural Bulgaria. The foreign land awakens the men's sense of adventure, but tensions mount when, Meinhard, the strong, silent, and newcomer to the group, starts mixing with the local villagers. The two sides speak different languages and share a troubled history. Can they learn to trust each other, or is the stage being set for a showdown?
Wind River
An FBI agent teams with a town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.
Little Woods
Ollie is barely getting by in an economically depressed fracking boomtown in North Dakota. She has left her days of illegally running prescription pills over the Canadian border behind, eyeing a potential new job that would finally break her out of the small town. But when her mother dies, she is reunited with her estranged sister Deb, who faces a mounting crisis: the combined effect of an unplanned pregnancy and a deadbeat ex.
Bacurau
A few years from now, Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertô, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one.
Bull
After trashing her neighbor's house in a reckless teen rage, Kris is forced to help her neighbor, Abe Turner an ex-bull rider scraping by on the Texas rodeo circuit. While traveling with Abe, Kris discovers a passion for bull riding. Together, Kris and Abe forge an unexpected connection, helping each other see new possibilities and hope for the future before it's too late.
El Camino
In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future.
Let Him Go
Following the loss of their son, retired sheriff George Blackledge and his wife Margaret leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson. When they discover that he is in the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas, George and Margaret must fight for the survival of their family.
No Man's Land
A modern Western-inspired by the real-life 'no man's land' areas along the Texas-Mexico border. While out on a father-son border patrol, Jackson accidentally kills a Mexican immigrant boy. When Jackson's father tries taking the blame, Jackson flees south on horseback, becoming a gringo 'illegal alien' in Mexico. Chased by Texas Rangers and Mexican Federales, Jackson journeys across Mexico to seek forgiveness from the dead boy's father only to fall in love with the land he was taught to hate.
Nomadland
Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. Along the way, she meets other nomads who become mentors in the vast landscape of the American West.
Cry Macho
In 1978, a one-time rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man's young son home and away from his alcoholic mom. Crossing rural Mexico on their way back to Texas, the unlikely pair faces an unexpectedly challenging journey, during which the world-weary horseman may find his own sense of redemption through teaching the boy what it means to be a good man.
Montana Story
Set against a mythic American backdrop, two estranged siblings return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved to confront a deep and bitter family legacy in this Western with a heart-rending emotional core.
Nope
Two siblings who run a California horse ranch discover something wonderful and sinister in the skies above, and the owner of an adjacent theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon.
Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete First Season
Walker, Texas Ranger, is a modern-day hero with a hard-hitting belief in justice and the American way.
Justified: The Complete First Season
Due to his old-school style, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is reassigned from Miami to his childhood home in the poor, rural coal-mining towns in Eastern Kentucky. Lawman Givens is a tough, soft-spoken gentleman who never gives an inch.
Longmire: The Complete First Season
To close murder cases under open skies, he's your man. Out of bestselling author Craig Johnson's mystery novels strides Walt Longmire, the charismatic and unflappable sheriff of Absaroka County and the world-weary yet dedicated lead character of this spellbinding hit series.
Mystery Road: Series 1
When two boys disappear from a remote cattle station, local police sergeant Emma James calls in Indigenous detective Jay Swan to help find out what happened. As Emma and Jay butt heads over their conflicting methods, the unexpected arrival of Jay's troubled daughter only inflames the tension. But when their investigation uncovers other crimes haunting the backwater town, the detectives must look to the past to get justice in the present.
Yellowstone: Season One
It revolves around the Dutton family, led by John Dutton who controls the largest ranch in the U.S. that is under constant attack by those it borders: land developers, an Indian reservation and America's first National Park. This is a world where land grabbers make developers billions, and politicians are bought and sold by the world's largest oil and lumber corporations. It is the best and worst of America seen through the eyes of a family that represents both.
Joe Pickett: Season One
Based on the best-selling book series from CJ Box, Joe Pickett is the new game warden of a town as beautiful and charming as it is corrupt and dangerous. When a poacher turns up brutally murdered, Joe decides to investigate it to keep his wife and young daughters safe. This sets off a chain of events that uncovers lies and deceit from within the community, putting Joe and his family in mortal danger. The three-disc DVD set includes every episode from season one plus exclusive deleted scenes!
Walker: Season One
This reimagining of the long-running series Walker, Texas Ranger, stars Jared Padalecki as Cordell Walker, a widower and father with his own moral code. Upon returning home to Austin, Texas after being undercover for nearly a year, he discovers there's harder work to be done at home as he attempts to reconnect with his creative and thoughtful son, August and his headstrong, somewhat rebellious teenaged daughter, Stella. At work, Walker's former colleague, Larry James, is now his Ranger Captain and both men need time to adjust to their new dynamic. Walker finds unexpected common ground with his new partner, Micki Ramirez (one of the first women in Texas Rangers₂ history). The intense first season closely follows Walker as he takes on new challenges while growing increasingly suspicious about the circumstances surrounding his wife's death.
Dark Winds: Season One
The year is 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Tribal Police is besieged by a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. The closer he digs to the truth, the more he exposes the wounds of his past. He is joined on this journey by his new deputy, Jim Chee. Chee, too, has old scores to settle from his youth on the reservation. Together, the two men battle the forces of evil, each other, and their demons on the path to salvation.
All the Pretty Horses by
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
The Bartender's Tale by
From a great American storyteller, a one-of-a-kind father and his precocious son, rocked by a time of change. Tom Harry has a streak of frost in his black pompadour and a venerable bar called The Medicine Lodge, the chief watering hole and last refuge of the town of Gros Ventre, in northern Montana. Tom also has a son named Rusty, an "accident between the sheets" whose mother deserted them both years ago.The pair make an odd kind of family, with the bar their true home, but they manage just fine. Until the summer of 1960, that is, when Rusty turns twelve. Change arrives with gale force, in the person of Proxy, a taxi dancer Tom knew back when, and her beatnik daughter, Francine. Is Francine, as Proxy claims, the unsuspected legacy of her and Tom's past? Without a doubt she is an unsettling gust of the future, upending every certainty in Rusty's life and generating a mist of passion and pretense that seems to obscure everyone's vision but his own. As Rusty struggles to decipher the oddities of adult behavior and the mysteries build toward a reckoning, Ivan Doig wonderfully captures how the world becomes bigger and the past becomes more complex in the last moments of childhood.
The Blinds by
For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace--but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her--and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway. It's simmering with violence and deception, aching heartbreak and dark betrayals.
Bone Fire by
Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays, as the sheriff, Crane Carlson, is reminded when he finds a teenager murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who's going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather. Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife, and his only child, and his long-absent sister has lately returned home from Chicago after watching her soul mate die. His granddaughter, Griff, has dropped out of college to look after him, though Einar would rather she continue with her studies and her boyfriend, Paul. Completing this extended family are Barnum McEban and his ward, Kenneth, a ten-year-old whose mother (Paul's sister) is off marketing enlightenment. What these characters have to contend with on a daily basis is bracing enough, but as their lives become even more strained, hardship foments exceptional compassion and generosity, and along with harsh truths come moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg, and Bone Fire finds him at the very height of his powers.
The Border Trilogy by
From the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winner and one of America's greatest writers: available together in one volume, the three novels of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning and bestselling Border Trilogy constitute a genuine American epic. "An American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century." --San Francisco Chronicle Beginning with All the Pretty Horses and continuing through The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, McCarthy chronicles the lives of two young men coming of age in the Southwest and Mexico, poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow and humor, The Border Trilogy is a masterful elegy for the American frontier. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Brokeback Mountain by
Brokeback Mountain is the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys who share a small cabin while working as herders and camp tenders during a summer spent on a range far above the tree line. They fall into a relationship that at first seems solely sexual-but then reveals itself to be something more. Both men marry and have families, but over the course of many years and frequent separations they find their relation- ship becomes the most important thing in both their lives, and they do anything they can to maintain it. Proulx's description of their bond is beautiful and haunting-and often brutal in its portrayal of the hardships, and ultimately the violence, they face. Perfect for both moviegoers and Proulx's already well-established legions of readers, this volume is a handsome and timely edition of one of the most talked-about stories of recent years.
Cold Country by
Montana, 1968: The small town of Paradise Valley is ripped open when popular rancher and notorious bachelor Tom Butcher is found murdered one morning, beaten to death by a baseball bat. Suspicion among the tight-knit community immediately falls on the outsider, Carl Logan, who recently moved in with his family and his troubled son Roger. What Carl doesn't realize is that there are plenty of people in Paradise Valley who have reason to kill Tom Butcher. Complications arise when the investigating officers discover that Tom Butcher had a secret--a secret he kept even from Junior Kirby, a lifelong rancher and Butcher's best friend. As accusations fly and secrets are revealed one after another, the people of Paradise Valley learn how deeply Tom Butcher was embedded in their lives, and that they may not have known him at all. With familiar mastery, Russell Rowland, the author of In Open Spaces and Fifty-Six Counties, returns to rural Montana to explore a small town torn apart by secrets and suspicions, and how the tenuous bonds of friendship struggle to hold against the differences that would sever us.
The Cold Dish by
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 hopes of finishing out his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody has been one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle. With lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, and a cast of characters both tragic and humorous enough to fill in the vast emptiness of the high plains, Walt Longmire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all.
Continental Divide by
Go West, Young Man. Isn't that the advice every east coast boy has considered at least once in his life? At nineteen, almost twenty, Ron Bancroft thinks those words sound pretty good. Newly out as transgender, Ron finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that--even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender--he can live as a man. A realman. In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence. And he falls for an intriguing young woman, who seems as interested in him as he is in her. Thus begins Ron's true adventure, a search not for the right place in America, but the right place within himself to find truth, happiness, and a sense of belonging.
Cry Macho by
Mike's best years are behind him. There was a time when he was the best rider in the circuit, but a divorce and years of hard living have worn his body down. After an accident, his career comes to an abrupt end, but his boss gives him one last job: he must cross the border into Mexico, kidnap his boss's son, Rafo, from his boss's ex-wife, to be used as leverage in their ongoing divorce. Mike arrives to find the boy has already run away, and his plan is immediately exposed to the local police. When he finds Rafo living on the streets of Mexico city, supporting himself though petty crime and winnings from the occasional cockfight, Mike convinces the boy to come back to Texas. Still running from the law, the two set out on a journey northward that forges an unlikely friendship and forces both to reckon with the choices they've made in pursuit of being "macho." Originally published in 1976, N. Richard Nash's novel of friendship and the search for identity is now being adapted for the big screen.
The Flicker of Old Dreams by
Mary Crampton has spent all of her thirty years in Petroleum, a small Western town once supported by a powerful grain company. Living at home, she works as the embalmer in her father's mortuary: an unlikely job that has long marked her as an outsider. Yet, to Mary there is a satisfying art to positioning and styling each body to capture the essence of a subject's life. Though some townsfolk pretend that the community is thriving, the truth is that Petroleum is crumbling away--a process that began twenty years ago when an accident in the grain elevator killed a beloved high school athlete. The mill closed for good, the train no longer stopped in town, and Robert Golden, the victim's younger brother, was widely blamed for the tragedy and shipped off to live elsewhere. Now, out of the blue, Robert has returned to care for his terminally ill mother. After Mary--reserved, introspective, and deeply lonely--strikes up an unlikely friendship with him, shocking the locals, she finally begins to consider what might happen if she dared to leave Petroleum. Set in the American West, The Flicker of Old Dreams explores themes of resilience, redemption, and loyalty in prose as lyrical as it is powerful.
The Fruit of Stone by
Mark Spragg's fiction debut is the story of the lifelong friendship between two men and their love for the woman who eludes them. Though Gretchen is married to his best friend, McEban has been in love with her since they were children growing up on adjacent ranches in Wyoming. When she leaves her husband for a new life, the two men follow her on an odyssey across the American West that forces truths and tests the ultimate, mystical extremes of love and loyalty. Muscular, vivid, wise, tender, funny, and true: Mark Spragg's much-anticipated first novel is entirely unforgettable.
The Hi Lo Country, 60th Anniversary Edition by
At its heart, The Hi Lo Country is the story of the friendship between two men, their mutual love of a woman, and their allegiance to the harsh, dry, achingly beautiful New Mexico high-desert grassland. The story is told by Pete, a young ranch hand, whose best friend is Big Boy Matson. Together they drink, gamble, fight, work, and rodeo. They both fall hard for a married woman--the attractive, bored, and dangerous Mona. When it was first published in 1961, the novel was both a celebration and an elegy. It captured something jagged and authentic in the West, and it caught the attention of Hollywood--notably Sam Peckinpah, who spent twenty years trying to make a movie of this multilayered and plainspoken novel. It would take another twenty years for Martin Scorsese and Stephen Frears to finally do it. Now in a special 60th anniversary edition, The Hi Lo Country continues to tell a quintessential story of the people and the land found in the American West.
Hot Iron and the Time It Never Rained by
With Hot Iron and The Time It Never Rained, this omnibus by legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton offers two complete novels of the American West at one low price Hot Iron In the early days of the Texas panhandle, starting a new life is hard, but keeping it is even harder. Espy Norwood is a troubleshooter already wrestling with a slew of problems when he lands a job on a ranch on the Texas plains--and more trouble finds him. Bitter landowners plot against him, determined cattle thieves sneak right under his nose, and his own son refuses to trust or even know him. Can he catch the thieves, save the ranch, and win his son's love? The Time It Never Rained To the ranchers and farmers of 1950s Texas, man's greatest enemy is one he can't control. With entire livelihoods pegged on the chance of a wet year or a dry year, drought has the ability to crush whole enterprises, to determine who stands and falls, and to rob workers and their families of food. To Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent, and cantankerous rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a foe he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable "help" of federal aid programs, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again--if it ever will.
The Hour of Lead by
Lonesome Animals was named as a Best Book of 2012 by both The Seattle Times and Slate, a literary debut sparking with beautiful language set against the rugged landscape of 1920s Washington state. Holbert returns with The Hour of Lead, an epic family novel and coming of age story that is once again imbibed with the mythology of the west. After losing both his twin and his father in a brutal, unexpected snowstorm, Matt Lawson must take over the family ranch. As his mother disappears into grief, Matt learns the hardest lesson the west has to teach: he is on his own. The necessity of work stabilizes young Matt against the pitfalls of first love with Wendy, the daughter of a local grocer, and their ragged end will sent Matt on a journey across the county, leaving Wendy to tend the ranch with local schoolteacher Linda Jefferson and her unwieldy son Lucky. It will take decades for Matt to learn his way back home, and that long journey will have great impact on all of those around him. Invoking the same beautiful landscape and language of his critically-acclaimed debut, The Hour of Lead is a wider, more expansive novel, less violent but just as affecting, another important contribution to the literature of the west.
In Open Spaces by
Set in the vast and unforgiving prairie of eastern Montana from 1916 to 1946, In Open Spaces is the compelling story of the Arbuckle brothers: GeorgeA rising baseball star who mysteriously drowns in the river JackA World War I veteran who abandons his family only to return to reclaim the family ranch BobThe youngest brother, whose marriage to Helen creates a fault line between him and the rest of his family BlakeA shrewd, observant man burdened with growing suspicions of Jack's role in his brother's death With breathtaking descriptions of the Montana landscape, Russell Rowland masterfully weaves a fascinating tale of the psychological wars that can rip a family apart...and, ultimately, the redemption that can bring them back together.
The Jaguar's Children by
Over four days, as water and food run low, Hector tells how he came to this desperate place. His story takes us from Oaxaca -- its rich culture, its rapid change -- to the dangers of the border. It exposes the tangled ties between Mexico and El Norte -- land of promise and opportunity, homewrecker and unreliable friend. And it reminds us of the power of storytelling and the power of hope, as Hector fights to ensure his message makes it out of the truck and into the world. Both an outstanding suspense novel and an arresting window into the relationship between two great cultures, The Jaguar's Children shows how deeply interconnected all of us, always, are.
Keep the Change by
This brilliant story of one man's struggle to change his life, from the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts, is "full of wry wit and graceful depictions of family relations, first love and the stark beauty of the Montana prairie" (Wall Street Journal). Joe Starling, a man teetering on the edge of spectacular failures--as an artist, rancher, lover, and human being--is also a man of noble ambitions. His struggle to right himself is mesmerizing, hilarious, and profoundly moving. "No American novelist provides greater pleasure--sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page--than this Montana icon." --Chicago Sun-Times
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by
"One of the most compelling novels I've read in a long time."--Eowyn Ivey, author of theTo the Bright Edge of the World and the Pulitzer finalistThe Snow Child A contemporary Western debut about two brothers locked in a deadly feud, a woman on horseback trailing her husband's killer, and the inescapable ties of home and family When Silas Van Loy flees home on horseback to avoid capture for his brother's murder, he is soon followed by both the police and his brother's wife, Lena, who is intent on exacting revenge. She reluctantly lets her trusted stable assistant join her in a journey across the wilds of Northern California in the hopes of catching Silas for one final showdown. Stansel follows the chase and shares the story of the brothers' rise from hardscrabble childhood to their reign as theregion's preeminent horse trainers, tracking the tense sibling rivalry that ultimately leads to the elder's death. A fully realized tale that challenges notions of the modern West,The Last Cowboys of San Geronimowill satisfy fans of Kent Haruf, Larry McMurtry, Molly Gloss, and Smith Henderson, and establish Stansel as a new voice in this grand tradition.
The Monkey Wrench Gang by
A motley crew of saboteurs wreaks havoc on the corporations destroying America's Western wilderness in this "wildly funny, infinitely wise" classic (The Houston Chronicle). When George Washington Hayduke III returns home from war in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he finds the unspoiled West he once knew has been transformed. The pristine lands and waterways are being strip mined, dammed up, and paved over by greedy government hacks and their corrupt corporate coconspirators. And the manic, beer-guzzling, rabidly antisocial ex-Green Beret isn't just getting mad. Hayduke plans to get even. Together with a radical feminist from the Bronx; a wealthy, billboard-torching libertarian MD; and a disgraced Mormon polygamist, Hayduke's ready to stick it to the Man in the most creative ways imaginable. By the time they're done, there won't be a bridge left standing, a dam unblown, or a bulldozer unmolested from Arizona to Utah. Edward Abbey's most popular novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang is an outrageous romp with ultra-serious undertones that is as relevant today as it was in the early days of the environmental movement. The author who Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) once dubbed "The Thoreau of the American West" has written a true comedic classic with brains, heart, and soul that more than justifies the call from the Los Angeles Times Book Review that we should all "praise the earth for Edward Abbey!" "Mixes comedy and chaos with enough chase sequences to leave you hungering for more."--The San Francisco Chronicle
Monument Road by
"Part modern western, part mystery, this first novel will appeal to fans of Louise Erdrich and Kent Haruf. Quimby's prose reads so true, it breaks the heart." --BOOKLIST, starred review Leonard Self has spent a year unwinding his ranch, paying down debts, and fending off the darkening. Just one thing left: taking his wife's ashes to her favorite overlook, where he plans to step off the cliff with her into a stark and beautiful landscape. But Leonard finds he has company on a route that intertwines old wounds and new insights that make him question whether his life is over after all. CHARLIE QUIMBY's writing life has always crossed divides. A playwright turned critic. A protest songwriter who worked for a defense contractor. A blogger about taxpaying and homelessness. He wrote award-winning words for others in Harvard Business Review, Financial World magazine and the NFL Hall of Fame. Naturally, he splits time between Minneapolis and his native western Colorado.âe
No Country for Old Men by
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law--in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell--can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers--in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives--McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning's headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Painted Horses by
In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild. In this ambitious, incandescent debut, Malcolm Brooks animates that time and untamed landscape, in a tale of the modern and the ancient, of love and fate, and of heritage threatened by progress. Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist on her way to Montana, with a huge task before her--a canyon "as deep as the devil's own appetites." Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood. From the moment she arrives, nothing is familiar--the vastness of the canyon itself mocks the contained, artifact-rich digs in post-Blitz London where she cut her teeth. And then there's John H, a former mustanger and veteran of the U.S. Army's last mounted cavalry campaign, living a fugitive life in the canyon. John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. Painted Horses sends a dauntless young woman on a heroic quest, sings a love song to the horseman's vanishing way of life, and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and the future, often make strange bedfellows. It establishes Malcolm Brooks as an extraordinary new talent.
Pity the Beast by
"Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity." --J M Coetzee Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American absurdity as Cormac McCarthy, Joy Williams, and Charles Portis, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas stretching back to prehistory, sideways into legend, and off into a lonesome future. Millennia ago, Ginny's family ranch was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it'll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it's a hotbed of lust and resentment, and about to turn ugly, because Ginny's just cheated on her husband Dan with the man who lives next door. Out on these prairies, word travels fast: everyone seems to know everyone's business. They know what Ginny did, and they know Ginny isn't sorry. She might not be proud of what she's done, but she doesn't regret it either. To be honest, she enjoyed the hell out of it, and as far as Ginny is concerned, that should be the end of the story. Problem is, no one else seems able to let it go. The community can't bear to let a woman like Ginny off the hook. Not with an attitude like hers. With detours through time, space, and myth, not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules, Pity the Beast heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and the very nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew--if we want to avoid becoming beasts ourselves.
Presidio by
"A fluent, mordant, authentic, propulsive narrative wonderfully lit from within by an intriguing main character...The Texas of the novel...has been written about before, and very well. Kennedy rises to the challenge and succeeds so well that Larry McMurtry and James Lee Burke have offered their praise." --Lee Child, The New York Times Book Review Set in the 1970s in the vast and arid landscape of the Texas panhandle, this darkly comic and stunningly mature literary debut tells the story of a car thief and his brother who set out to recover some stolen money and inadvertently kidnap a Mennonite girl who has her own reasons for being on the run. Troy Falconer returns home after years of working as a solitary car thief to help his younger brother, Harlan, search for his wife, who has run away with the little money he had. When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together these unlikely road companions attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Martha's vengeful father. The story is told partly through Troy's journal, in which he chronicles his encounters with con artists, down-and-outers, and roadside philosophers, people looking for fast money, human connection, or a home long since vanished. The journal details a breakdown that has left Troy unable to function in conventional society; he is reduced to haunting motels, stealing from men roughly his size, living with their possessions in order to have none of his own and all but disappearing into their identities. With a page-turning plot about a kidnapped child, gorgeously written scenes that probe the soul of the American West, and an austere landscape as real as any character, Presidio packs a powerful punch of anomie, dark humor, pathos, and suspense.
Rain Falls Like Mercy by
Set against the sweeping backdrop of World War II, Rain Falls Like Mercy is a gripping depiction of a family and a country touched by the grand violence of war, the senseless violence of crime, and the intimate violence of the heart. IN THE TRADITION OF TRUE CRIME narratives such as In Cold Blood, acclaimed author Jack Todd’s new novel grips the reader from the first pa≥ and as it spans continents and generations of one family, its taut and shocking undercurrent of violence builds to a stunning crescendo. Todd’s first novel, Sun Going Down, which introduced the Paint family, won praise from reviewers and major authors such as Michael Korda and Michael Blake. His second novel, Come Again No More, recounted the Paints’ saga of triumph and tragedy through the Great Depression, inspiring the Ottawa Citizen to label Todd “a first-rate novelist with a tender heart.” Rain Falls Like Mercy opens with the murder investigation of a young girl in Wyoming in mid- 1941. Tom Call, the young sheriff running the investigation, falls in love with Juanita, the wife of Eli Paint, whose son Leo and grandson Bobby Watson are on duty with the U.S. Navy. Almost overnight, the case is derailed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, disrupting the lives of all involved. Bobby mans an antiaircraft gun during the attack. Tom joins the U.S. Air Force and is deployed to England to fly bombers, still trying to pursue his murder investigation. His suspicion falls on Pardo Bury, the psychotic son of a wealthy rancher in Wyoming. As Pardo and Tom make their ways to their inevitable and shattering confrontation, Rain Falls Like Mercy displays Todd’s uncanny ability to zero in on his characters’ emotional lives while simultaneously painting a sweeping picture of the historical events that shape their destinies.
Rough Animals by
The 25 Best Thriller Books of the Summer--New York Post Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018 --Southern Living 46 Great Books to Read This Summer--Nylon Dazzling Debuts"--WYPR, "The Weekly Reader" 8 New Books You Should Read This June--vulture.com Summer Thrillers That Will Have You at the Edge of Your Chaise Lounge--Refinery29 What We Read, Watched, and Listened to in May--Outside "Furious and electric . . . a fever dream."--Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review!* Breaking Bad meets No Country for Old Men... Ever since their father's untimely death five years before, Wyatt Smith and his inseparably close twin sister, Lucy, have scraped by alone on their family's isolated ranch in Box Elder County, Utah. That is until one morning when, just after spotting one of their steers lying dead in the field, Wyatt is hit in the arm by a hail of gunfire that takes four more cattle with it. The shooter: a fever-eyed, fearsome girl-child with a TEC-9 in her left hand and a worn shotgun in her right. They hold the girl captive, but she breaks loose overnight and heads south into the desert. With the dawning realization that the loss of cattle will mean the certain loss of the ranch, Wyatt feels he has no choice but to go after her and somehow find restitution for what's been lost. Wyatt's decision sets him on an epic twelve-day odyssey through a nightmarish underworld he only half understands; a world that pitches him not only against the primordial ways of men and the beautiful yet brutally unforgiving landscape, but also against himself. As he winds his way down from the mountains of Box Elder to the mesas of Monument Valley and back, Wyatt is forced to look for the first time at who he is and what he's capable of, and how those hard truths set him irrevocably apart from the one person he's ever really known and loved. Steeped in a mythic, wildly alive language of its own, and gripping from the first gunshot to the last, Rough Animals is a tour de force from a powerful new voice.
The Rounders by
"It is a book to read if you are in need of a good laugh or if you are tired of reading cowboy novels where there are no cows and where the cowhands never stop waiting around the local saloon for a final showdown with the visiting Indians."--San Francisco Chronicle "One of the funniest cowpoke yarns to come off the presses in many a fall roundup."--Denver Post The bawdy and moving story of two contemporary bronco busters, The Rounders, originally published in 1960, was Max Evans's first novel and is still his best known work, thanks largely to the success of the 1965 movie version starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford. Acclaimed for its realistic depiction of modern cowboying and for its humor, it is also a very serious work, described by the author as a tragicomedy.
Stripped Bare by
Stripped Bare by Shannon Baker is "A must read" (Alex Kava, New York Times bestselling author) mystery that stars a female Longmire in the atmospheric Nebraska Sandhills. Kate Fox is living the dream. She's married to Grand County Sheriff Ted Conner, the heir to her beloved Nebraska Sandhills cattle ranch, where they live with Kate's orphaned teenage niece, Carly. With the support of the well-connected Fox Clan, which includes Kate's eight boisterous and interfering siblings, Ted's reelection as Grand County Sheriff is virtually assured. That leaves Kate to the solitude and satisfaction of Frog Creek, her own slice of heaven. One night Kate answers a shattering phone call from Roxy at the Bar J. Carly's granddad Eldon, owner of the ranch, is dead and Ted has been shot and may never walk again. Kate vows to find the killer. She soon discovers Ted responded so quickly to the scene because he was already at the Bar J . . . in Roxy's bed. And to add to her woes, Carly has gone missing. Kate finds out that Eldon was considering selling his ranch to an obscenely rich environmentalist. Some in town hate the idea of an outsider buying up land, others are desperate to sell . . . and some might kill to get their way. As she becomes the victim of several "accidents," Kate knows she must find the killer before it's too late. . . .
Under Tower Peak by
After two tours as a sniper in Iraq, Tommy Smith has returned to his former life as a cowboy and wilderness guide in California's Sierra Nevada, hoping to reclaim the simplicity of his youth and heal the wounds the world can't see. When, high on a mountain pass, he and his partner find the wrecked plane of a billionaire adventurer who disappeared months earlier, a seemingly innocent act triggers a breathtaking cycle of violence that threatens Tommy's world. Soon he is enmeshed in the struggle between the billionaire's trophy wife and wannabe drug lord son and their allies. Every effort to set things right draws him deeper into a bad situation and closer to needing those deadly skills that he had hoped to leave behind forever. With lean, efficient prose and dialogue that crackles with repartee, Bart Paul has written a contemporary thriller of steadily mounting suspense and ruthless action. He captures both the beauty of the high mountain wilderness and the laconic rhythms of the outfitters' lives. In Tommy Smith he offers a protagonist whose cool competence, home-grown decency, and clarity of purpose in the face of danger suggest a brotherhood with heroes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy.
An Unfinished Life by
One of the truest and most original new voices in American letters, as Kent Haruf has written, Mark Spragg now tells the story of a complex, prodigal homecoming. Jean Gilkyson is floundering in a trailer house in Iowa with yet another brutal boyfriend when she realizes this kind of life has got to stop, especially for the sake of her daughter, Griff. But the only place they can run to is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean’s loved ones are dead and her father-in-law, the only person who could take them in, wishes that she was too. For a decade, Einar Gilkyson has blamed her for the accident that took his son’s life, and he has chosen to go on living himself largely because his oldest friend couldn’t otherwise survive. They’ve been bound together like brothers since the Korean War and now face old age on a faltering ranch, their intimacy even more acute after Mitch was horribly crippled while Einar helplessly watched. Of course, ten-year-old Griff knows none of this–only that her father is dead and her mother has bad taste in men. But once she encounters this grandfather she’d never heard about, and the black cowboy confined to the bunkhouse, with irrepressible courage and great spunk she attempts to turn grievous loss, wrath, and recrimination–to which she’s naturally the most vulnerable–toward reconciliation and love. Immediately compelling and constantly surprising, rich in character, landscape, and compassion,An Unfinished Lifeshows a novelist of extraordinary talents in the fullness of his powers. From the Hardcover edition.
Watershed by
A rediscovered classic of politics, murder, espionage, for the first time in paperback On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets. Introduced by Sherman Alexie, who has taken a film option on the novel, this important novel is published in paperback for the first time.
The Weight of an Infinite Sky by
The critically acclaimed author of The Home Place explores the heart and mystery of Big Sky Country in this evocative and atmospheric novel of family, home, love, and responsibility inspired by William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The only son of a cattle rancher, Anthony Fry chafed against the expectation that he would take over the business that had belonged to his family for generations. While his ancestors planted deep roots in the unforgiving Montana soil, Anthony wanted nothing more than to leave Billings for the excitement, sophistication, and culture of city life. After college he fled to New York, hoping to turn his lifelong love of the theater into a career. But New York wasn't the dream Anthony thought it would be. Now, with the unexpected death of his father, Anthony suddenly finds himself back in the place he swore he'd left behind. While the years have transformed the artistic dreamer, they've also changed Billings. His uncle Neal, always the black sheep of the Fry family, has become alarmingly close with Anthony's mother, and a predatory mining company covets the Fry land. Anthony has always wanted out of Montana, away from his father's suffocating expectations. Yet now that he may be freed from the burden of family legacy, he's forced to ask himself what he truly finds important . . . answers that will ultimately decide his fate. In this unforgettable novel, Carrie La Seur once again captures the breathtaking beauty of the West and its people as she explores the power of family and the meaning of legacy--the burdens we inherit and those we place upon ourselves.
Wild Indigo by
INTRODUCING JAMAICA WILD-AND THE BEGINNING OF A THRILLING NEW SERIES. The high desert of New Mexico becomes the backdrop for this debut novel of ancient rituals, restless spirits, a desperate female Fed, and a crime that could destroy an entire culture . . .
Winter in the Blood by
A contemporary classic from a major writer of the Native American renaissance -- "Brilliant, brutal and, in my opinion, Welch's best work." --Tommy Orange, The Washington Post During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
