Prolific author Dorothy M. Johnson is one of the most celebrated writers of the Western genre. She is awarded one of the highest honors in the genre by the Western Writers of America: the Spur Award. She wins the award for her short story Lost Sister which was featured in her collection The Hanging Tree. Her stories and books have been adapted to film on multiple occasions.
Dame Jane Campion becomes the first woman to receive a second Acadamy Award nomination for Best Director. The award is her first win in the category. The film is the Revisionist Western The Power of the Dog. It is adapted from the novel of the same name by Thomas Savage.
Reframing the West: Behind the Scenes of Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog | Netflix published by Still Watching Netflix on January 25, 2022
The Harvey Girls
Susan meets a cheery group of young women traveling out to open a 'Harvey House' restaurant at a remote whistle stop to provide good cooking and wholesome company for railway travelers.
Annie Get Your Gun
Frank Butler, handsome star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, bags clay pigeons and ladies' hearts. He's the best marksman in the world--until a backwoods hoyden challenges him. Her name? Annie Oakley.
The Furies
In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T.C. Jeffords butts heads with his daughter, Vance, a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of husband, and finally, ownership of the land itself.
Rancho Notorious
A western, set in the 1870s, which dramatizes the ballad The legend of Chuck-A-Luck. The search of a Wyoming cowboy for his fiancée's murderer leads him to a ranch-hideaway for bandits which is operated by an ex-saloon entertainer.
Woman They Almost Lynched
In the waning years of the Civil War, the secluded Ozark community of Border City prides itself on its neutrality. But the town quickly becomes a convenient refuge for such violent renegades as Charles Quantrill, Jesse and Frank James, and Cole Younger. Into this lawless town comes the innocent Sally Maris, whose brother runs the local saloon. When her brother dies in a gunfight over Quantrill's wife, Kate, Sally takes over the Lead Dollar Saloon and braces herself for a showdown.
Johnny Guitar
Saloon owner Vienna battles the local townspeople headed by Emma, the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy female rancher out to frame her for a string of robberies. Johnny Logan is a guitar-strumming drifter with a dark past who was once in love with Vienna and has been offered a job in her saloon. Nicholas Ray's epic western is considered one of the most original westerns of all time. The women are far tougher than the men and some saw a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy era Red Scare.
Forty Guns
High-riding rancher Jessica Drummond commands a forty-strong posse of cowboys, ruling Cochise County, Arizona, without challenge. When U.S. marshal Griff Bonnell and his brothers arrive in town with a warrant for one of her hired guns, Jessica begins to fall for the lawman even as he chips away at her authority.
Cat Ballou
A spoof of westerns that features a schoolmaster that, with the help of a drunken gunman, turns into an outlaw.
The Ballad of Josie
A young woman stirs things up in a western town by raising sheep instead of cattle and organizing the local women to demonstrate for women's suffrage.
Mi Querido Tom Mix
Joaquina has never married, but she makes up for it by going to the movies, where she lets her imagination run away with her. When her young nephew comes for a visit, she introduces him to her fantasy world, in which the actors easily become the characters they play, and vice versa. But, she takes her fantasies too far when she decides to do something about the marauding bandits that plague her small town. She writes to legendary western hero Tom Mix -- the King of the Cowboys -- imploring him to ride to the rescue on Tony the Wonder Horse to save her village.
The Ballad of Little Jo
After bearing an illegitimate child, a society girl Josephine Monaghan leaves home in disgrace. On the road west, she discovers that a woman alone is sexual prey for any man, so she disguises herself as a boy. As Little Jo, she confronts all the dangers the Wild West has to offer from deadly winters to murderous outlaws. But her most treacherous enemy is her own heart when she risks everything by falling in love with the one man who discovers her secret.
The Quick and the Dead
This reinvention of the American Western is a wild, sexy shoot-out studded with action, suspense and offbeat humor.
Meek's Cutoff
A wagon train of three families has hired mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants face the scourges of hunger, thirst, and their own lack of faith in each other's instincts for survival. When they encounter a Native American, they must choose between following their guide or an 'enemy.'
The Homesman
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs to join her.
The Keeping Room
In this radically reimagined American Western set towards the end of the Civil War, Southerner Augusta encounters two renegade, drunken soldiers who are on a mission of pillage and violence. After escaping an attempted assault, Augusta races back to the isolated farmhouse that she shares with her sister Louise and their female slave Mad. The pair of soldiers track Augusta down intent on exacting revenge, the trio of women are forced to take up arms to fend off their assailants.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
The first Iranian Vampire Western ever made. A joyful mash up of genre, archetype, and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films and the Iranian New Wave.
Jane Got a Gun
Young and pretty with a soul of pure steel, Jane Hammond is a good girl married to one of the worst baddies in town. When her husband Bill turns against his own gang, the vicious Bishop Boys, and returns home barely alive with eight bullets in his back, Jane knows it's time to ditch the dress for a pair of pants and strap on her own gun.
Sicario
After an idealistic FBI agent is recruited by a government task-force official to pursue a drug lord, she begins a perilous mission that forces her to question everything she believes and pits her against a shadowy consultant with a dangerous agenda.
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina, a young widow, is attacked and robbed of all her livestock by a gang of seven bandits. She then defends herself, setting out on a journey to find justice, empowerment, retribution and redemption. But the road is long, especially when she begins to be haunted by the ghost of her victim.
Woman Walks Ahead
Catherine Weldon, a portrait painter from 1890s Brooklyn, travels to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull and becomes embroiled in the Lakota peoples' struggle over the rights to their land.
Damsel
It's the Wild West, circa 1870. Samuel Alabaster, an affluent pioneer, ventures across the American frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope. As his group traverses the west, the once-simple journey grows treacherous, blurring the lines between hero, villain, and damsel.
The NIghtingale
Set during the colonization of Australia in 1825, the film follows 21-year-old convict Clare. Having served her time, she is eager to be free of her abusive master, Lieutenant Hawkins. Clare becomes the victim of a harrowing crime by the lieutenant and his cronies. When authorities fail to deliver justice, she decides to pursue Hawkins and enlists the help of a young Aboriginal tracker. As they go, they must learn to find empathy for one another while weighing the true cost of revenge.
The Wind: Demons of the Prairie
An unseen evil haunts the homestead in this chilling, folkloric tale of madness, paranoia, and otherworldly terror. Lizzy is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the nineteenth century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, an overwhelming dread that her husband dismisses as superstition.
The Stolen Valley
Lupe, a Mexican-Navajo mechanic, seeks her estranged father's help to save her dying mother. Joined by a runaway cowgirl, their journey uncovers family secrets, exploitation, and the fight to reclaim ancestral land. As she discovers her Navajo heritage, Lupe faces a tough choice to rescue her family.
The Dead Don't Hurt
Vivienne Le Coudy is a fiercely independent woman who embarks on a relationship with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen. After meeting Olsen in San Francisco, she agrees to travel with him to his home near the quiet town of Elk Flats, Nevada, where they start a life together. The outbreak of the civil war separates them when Olsen makes a fateful decision to fight for the Union.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Tales of courage, conviction and romance on the American frontier, as a female doctor arrives in Colorado Springs and adjusts to life in the West.
True Women
Based on the historical novel by Janice Woods Windle about a woman in Texas who takes care of her family and fends off Indian attacks while her husband's away.
Annie and the Wolves by
Ruth McClintock is obsessed with the past. For nearly a decade, she has been studying Annie Oakley, convinced that the legendary sharpshooter experienced a scarring event in childhood that led her to fight for the right of every American woman to own and operate a gun. This fruitless search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiance. But Ruth may finally have the evidence she is looking for. She has managed to hunt down a journal purporting to be a 'true account' of Oakley's midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the 'Wolves,' or those who have wronged her.
Chalk's Woman by
Set against the violent backdrop of the Civil War, Chalk's Woman follows the journey of a homeless orphan, Ann, westward on the Santa Fe Trail. What begins as the story of her struggle for survival and independence is ultimately a tale of her journey through love to discover the meaning of family.
The Chili Queen by
Life may have been hard on Addie French, but when she meets friendless Emma Roby on a train, all her protective instincts emerge. Emma's brother is seeing her off to Nalgitas to marry a man she has never met. And Emma seems like a lost soul to Addie-someone who needs Addie's savvy and wary eye. It isn't often that Addie is drawn to anyone as a friend, but Emma seems different somehow. When Emma's prospective fails to show up at the train depot, Addie breaks all her principles to shelter the girl at her brothel, The Chili Queen. But once Emma enters Addie's life, the secrets that unfold and schemes that are hatched cause both women to question everything they thought they knew. With Sandra Dallas's trademark humor, charm, and pathos, The Chili Queen will satisfy anyone who has ever longed for happiness.
Coyote Cowgirl by
After Jeanne Les Flambeaux's parents take a vacation leaving her in charge of the family's ancient, prized possessions - a talking crystal skull and a priceless ruby sceptre - she wakes up the next morning to find that her lover, Johnny has stolen the sceptre. A wild and whacky chase ensues.
Frontier by
FRONTIER is a heartfelt queer romance in a high noon standoff with our planet's uncertian future. Frontier is The Mandalorian meets Mad Max, with the emotional heart of the Wayfarers series. But at its core, Frontier is a love story, about two women who find each other, lose each other and then find each other again. "Curtis oozes charm and humour in this pacey debut, which will be devoured by fans of Fallout and Firefly" Tamsyn Muir A dazzling debut for fans of Becky Chambers and Mary Robinette Kowal. In the distant future most of the human race has fled a ravaged Earth to find new life on other planets. For those who stayed a lawless society remains. Technology has been renounced, and saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, travelers and gunslingers, abound. What passes for justice is presided over by the High Sheriff, and carried out by his cruel and ruthless Deputy. Then a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. This Stranger is a crewmember on the first ship in centuries to attempt a return to Earth and save what's left. But her escape pod crashes hundreds of miles away from the rest of the wreckage. The Stranger finds herself adrift in a ravaged, unwelcoming landscape, full of people who hate and fear her space-born existence. Scared, alone, and armed, she embarks on a journey across the wasteland to return to her ship, her mission, and the woman she loves. Fusing the fire and brimstone of the American Old West with sprawling post-apocalyptic science fiction, FRONTIER is a heartfelt queer romance in a high noon standoff set against the backdrop of our planet's uncertain future.
Here Comes the Sun by
There had been talk of monsters around the small, quiet town of Fort Whipple for some time before the evening of the brutal massacre. First it was the livestock. Dead, shriveled bodies lined the fields, drained of their blood. But when human bodies begin falling from the sky, a dark protector of sorts is dispatched to minimize the casualties.
The Homesman by
Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Tommy Lee Jones, The Homesman is a devastating story of early pioneers in 1850s American West. It celebrates the ones we hear nothing of: the brave women whose hearts and minds were broken by a life of bitter hardship. A "homesman" must be found to escort a handful of them back East to a sanitarium. When none of the county's men steps up, the job falls to Mary Bee Cuddy--ex-teacher, spinster, indomitable and resourceful. Brave as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot succeed alone. The only companion she can find is the low-life claim jumper George Briggs. Thus begins a trek east, against the tide of colonization, against hardship, Indian attacks, ice storms, and loneliness--a timeless classic told in a series of tough, fast-paced adventures.
The Jump-Off Creek by
The Jump-Off Creek is the unforgettable story of homesteader Lydia Sanderson and her struggles to settle in the mountains of Oregon in the 1890s. The Jump-Off Creek gives readers an intimate look at the hardships of frontier life and a courageous woman determined to survive.
Lone Women by
Blue skies, empty land--and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an "absorbing, powerful" (BuzzFeed) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling. "Propulsive . . . LaValle combines chills with deep insights into our country's divides."--Los Angeles Times ONE OF BOOKPAGE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Vulture, Paste, Tordotcom, Book Riot, Polygon, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It's locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the "lone women" taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can tame it--except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory. Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you've never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past--or redeem it.
Lucky Red by
When Bridget arrives penniless in Dodge City, already disillusioned by feckless men and the uncompromising landscape, she has only her wits to keep her alive. Thanks to the allure of her bright red hair and country-girl beauty, she's recruited to work at the Buffalo Queen, the only brothel in town run by women. Bridget takes to brothel life, appreciating the good food, good pay, and good friendships she forms with her fellow "sporting women." But with the arrival of some infamous outlaws at the start of winter, tensions in Dodge City run high. When the Buffalo Queen's peace and security are threatened, Bridget must decide what she owes to the women she loves and what it looks like to claim her own destiny. A thoroughly modern reimagining of the Western genre, Lucky Red is a masterfully crafted, propulsive tale of adventure, loyalty, desire, and love.
An Ordinary Woman by
With her stunningly realistic and exhaustively researched novels, Cecelia Holland has earned unanimous acclaim as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. Her subjects range from the dawn of prehistory and the turbulent middle ages to the rough-and-tumble pioneer days of her own native California, chronicled in such sweeping epics as The Bear Flag, Pacific Street, and her most recent novel, Railroad Schemes. Now, in An Ordinary Woman, Holland gives us an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who played a crucial role in the settlement of the West--Nancy Kelsey, the courageous young pioneer who was the first American woman to set foot in California. Drawing upon Nancy's own accounts of her harrowing journey, as well as the writings of those who traveled with her, Cecelia Holland has crafted a stunning biography of this amazing woman that is filled with all of the action, passion, danger, and determination that have made her historical novels bestsellers around the world. Married at the age of fifteen to Ben Kelsey, a restless young Scotch-Irish pioneer who eked out a meager living on the Missouri frontier, Nancy Roberts Kelsey was a strong and capable woman who could milk a cow, skin a deer, make hew own clothes, plant a field, drive a team of oxen, and shoot a rifle. The child pioneers, bred to courage and risk, she had grown up in the wilderness only a few miles from the great Missouri River that was, in 1838, the border of the settled United States. But when the lure of a new life on the farthest edge of the frontier beckoned to Ben Kelsey, Nancy was determined to be at his side. Together they embarked on an arduous odyssey across thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness, crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the High Sierra to reach their promised land. Braving hunger, disaster, illness, betrayal, and death, Nancy Kelsey and her family would play a crucial role in American history, becoming the first wave of a great tide that would transform a nation.
Outlawed by
The "terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling" (R.O. Kwon) adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.
Site Fidelity by
Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse.
Solomon Spring by
Kansas, 1878: A natural wonder, sacred for centuries, is about to be profaned--but not if Eden Murdoch can prevent it. She has returned to the mystical Solomon Spring to seek solace after the death of her Cheyenne husband. She longs to make a fresh start for the sake of her nine-year-old daughter but a quiet life does not come naturally to a headstrong woman like Eden. When the owner of the Solomon Spring Company decides to bottle its mystical waters, build a health spa, and bar Indians from making pilgrimages to the spring, Eden decides she must stop this travesty. Inspired by Thoreau's essays on civil disobedience, she enjoys some early success, but makes deadly enemies in the process. Her past races to catch up to her: Brad Randall, Eden's one-time lover, is determined to find her again. He brings the astounding news that the son Eden lost as an infant fourteen years before has been located and is living nearby. The joy of her reunion with Brad and with her son is clouded by the reappearance of Lawrence Murdoch, Eden's long-estranged first husband. The warring couple plunges into a vicious custody battle. When Murdoch is found shot to death in an alley, Brad is tried andsentenced to hang. To save him, Eden must discover the solution to the murder, and bring the real killer to justice at the edge of Solomon Spring.
True Grit by
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Charles Portis's True Grit is "an epic and a legend" (Washington Post), a story of danger and adventure in the Old West--the basis for two award-winning films, the first starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role, as Marshall Rooster Cogburn, and the widely praised remake by the Coen brothers, starring Jeff Bridges. "Quite simply, an American masterpiece." --Boston Globe "Charles Portis had a wonderful talent--original, quirky, exciting." --Larry McMurtry Charles Portis has long been acclaimed as one of America's most enduring and incomparable literary voices, and his novels have left an indelible mark on the American canon. True Grit, his most famous novel, was first published in 1968, and has garnered critical acclaim as well as enthusiastic praise from countless passionate fans for more than 50 years. True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just 14 when the coward Tom Chaney shoots her father in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash. Filled with an unwavering urge to avenge her father's blood, Mattie finds and, after some tenacious finagling, enlists one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available US Marshal, as her partner in pursuit, and they head off into Indian Territory after the killer. True Grit is essential reading. Not just a classic Western, but an undeniable classic of American literature as eccentric, cool, funny, and unflinching as Mattie Ross herself. For fans of either the John Wayne classic or the Coen brothers' movie, it's a chance to relive the story of Mattie and Rooster and experience their story as it was originally told. For fans of taut, funny storytelling, it will be a joy to experience in its original form. This edition includes an afterword by bestselling author Donna Tartt (The Secret History and The Goldfinch) and a reading group guide.
Upright Women Wanted by
Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.
Whiskey When We're Dry by
In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah--dead or alive. Wrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right. Told in Jess's wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself--and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.
Copperhead Volume 1: A New Sheriff in Town by
Welcome to Copperhead, a grimy mining town on the edge of a backwater planet. Single mom Clara Bronson is the new sheriff, and on her first day she'll have to contend with a resentful deputy, a shady mining tycoon, and a family of alien hillbillies. And did we mention the massacre? Questions swirl around not only the murder mystery, but around Sheriff Bronson herself. What brought her to a place like Copperhead? Is she running from something? Or towards something? Collecting Copperhead #1-5, the debut story arc in Image's gritty new sci-fi/western mashup!
Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen by
Phoolan Devi rebelled against the ancient caste rules of India, her country, resulting in her becoming a Robin Hood type bandit. Essentially sold at the age of 11 to become a wife for a much older man, she ran away when he raped her. From that point on, there were few choices for her but to join a roaming gang of bandits, her ambition leading her to become their rebel chief. Ultimately, she became a strong voice for change as a representative in the nascent Indian parliament. A story of courage and unbending determination in front of centuries of established inequities in the classic Indian caste system.
Wynonna Earp by
Finally revealed! The never-before-seen story of Wynonna's outlaw past, only hinted at on Syfy's Wynonna Earp TV series. Outlaws. Mavericks. Werewolves.
