Book picks similar to
The Shopkeeper by James D. Best


western
historical-fiction
fiction
westerns

Whiskey When We're Dry


John Larison - 2018
    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.

A Town Called Fury


William W. Johnstone - 2006
    He just wants to head back east, where he has a real shot at a better life. But halfway across Oklahoma the wagon train is attacked by bloodthirsty Comanche, and Jedediah Fury -- the leader of the settlers and Jason's father -- is counted among the dead. Before he knows it, Jason's leading the wagons into Arizona Territory, where the squabbling settlers decide to stop for good and start a town they'll name Fury in honor of Jedediah. It is going to be a hardscrabble life, what with the ruthless Apaches always on the attack and the harsh country they've chosen. Jason knows he can't just leave these defenseless pioneers to be slaughtered - among them a certain young lady he's taken a real shine to...

Guns of the Waste Land: Departure: Volumes 1-2


Leverett Butts - 2016
     Now featuring Volume Two, Diversion Guns of the Waste Land is an epic retelling of Arthurian Legend in an American Western setting. In late 1800s just outside the Texas town of Bretton, four men wander the American desert. Percy Murratt seeks Sheriff Ardiss Drake to learn the fate of his late father. Meanwhile, Ardiss’ deputies, Gary Wayne Orkney and Boris Bennick, are in the pursuit of the outlaw Lancaster O'Loch flees, who has seduced and stolen Ardiss’ wife, Guernica. Featuring a host of familiar characters reminiscent of Gawain, the Green Knight, Lancelot, Merlin and, of course, King Arthur, Guns of the Waste Land is a timeless adventure of chivalry, revenge and honour. Now, in Book Two: Diversion , follow Percy and co. on their epic quest as they traverse the frontier of the American Waste Land, in pursuit of their own Holy Grail… Guns of the Waste Land “impressed the hell out of me with its inventiveness and wonderfully colorful dialogue, […] you may have a genuine classic on your hands.” –T.E.D. Klein, author of Dark Gods & The Ceremonies “Leverett Butts is a real talent. His Guns of the Waste Land is an original way to use a genre. I like a guy who has a mad literary streak and walks the wobbly tightrope: so far he's gotten across. This is the first installment in a longer narrative, and I can't wait to read the next if it's as good as the first or even close.”—Richard Monaco, author of the Parsival series “Guns of the Waste Land brings us back to a genre that has mostly been out of fashion for a time, but I believe this work has the power to bring us back to why we loved westerns. The western story is the story of America. In the western, the lines between good and evil are often vague, just as they are in real humanity. The western shows us the difficulty to survive and how it changes people for better or worse. Butts has explored these ideas and many more in a book that is unique and as well written as anything you'll read this year.” –Scott Thompson, author of Young Men Shall See & Eight Days Leverett Butts teaches composition and literature at the Gainesville campus of the University of North Georgia. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Eclectic and The Georgia State University Review. He is the recipient of several fiction prizes offered by the University of West Georgia and TAG Publishing. His first collection of short fiction, Emily's Stitches: The Confessions of Thomas Calloway and Other Stories, has been nominated for the 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Short Fiction. He lives in Temple, Georgia, with his wife, son, their Jack Russell terrier, and a couple of antisocial cats. Venture Press is a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK’s leading independent digital publisher. We are committed to the discovery and rediscovery of immensely talented authors in the SFF genre, and continue to push boundaries in search of great literature. Join us as we venture across universes and unknown landscapes – past, present and future. Sign up to our newsletter: http://bit.ly/1LUVI4n Follow us on Twitter @venture_press Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1NnFow7

Make Me No Grave


Hayley Stone - 2018
    Marshal Apostle Richardson enforces the law, he doesn't decide it. When a posse tries to lynch Almena ahead of her trial, Apostle refuses their form of expedited justice--and receives a bullet for his trouble. Almena spares him through the use of dangerous flesh magic but escapes soon after saving him.Weeks later, Apostle fears the outlaw queen has returned to her old ways when she's spotted terrorizing Kansas with a new gang in tow. When cornered, however, Almena makes a convincing case for her innocence and proposes a plan to take the real bandits down.Working with a known killer opens Apostle up to all sorts of trouble, not the least being his own growing attraction toward the roguish woman. Turning Almena away from vengeance may be out of the question, but if he doesn't try, she'll wind up right where the law wants her: at the end of a rope.And if Apostle isn't careful, he'll end up joining her.

Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles


Edward A. Grainger - 2011
    Marshals working in 1880s Wyoming Territory. Cash Laramie, raised by Native Americans, is known as the outlaw marshal for his unorthodox way of dealing with criminals and his cavalier approach to life. Gideon Miles is one of the first African American marshals in the service and has skills with guns, knives, and tracking that are unrivaled. This collection broaches issues like racism, child abuse, and morality.

The Midnight Sea


Kat Ross - 2016
    A girl of the isolated Four-Legs Clan, all she knows about the King's elite Water Dogs is that they leash wicked creatures called daevas to protect the empire from the Undead. But when scouts arrive to recruit young people with the gift, she leaps at the chance to join their ranks. To hunt the monsters that killed her sister.Scarred by grief, she's willing to pay any price, even if it requires linking with a daeva named Darius. Human in body, he's possessed of a terrifying power, one that Nazafareen controls. But the golden cuffs that join them have an unwanted side effect. Each experiences the other's emotions, and human and daeva start to grow dangerously close.As they pursue a deadly foe across the arid waste of the Great Salt Plain to the glittering capital of Persepolae, unearthing the secrets of Darius's past along the way, Nazafareen is forced to question his slavery—and her own loyalty to the empire. But with an ancient evil stirring in the north, and a young conqueror sweeping in from the west, the fate of an entire civilization may be at stake…

Abandon


Blake Crouch - 2009
    Recently, a similar party had also attempted to explore the town and was never heard from again. Now the area is believed to be haunted. This crew is about to discover, twenty miles from civilization with a blizzard bearing down, that they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.Revised edition: This edition of Abandon includes editorial revisions.

Our Little Secrets


Merry Farmer - 2012
    So when the beautiful and wily Charlotte steps off the train looking for a new life he jumps at the business opportunity she presents. Engaged forty-five minutes after meeting, married the next day, Michael thinks he’s found everything a respectable man should have. Except that Michael is as far from respectable as they come. They agreed not to ask questions about each other’s pasts, but when the past seeps into their present Michael suspects his passionate new wife is not who she says she is. Too bad he’s already fallen in love with her.Charlotte Baldwin has a secret. She fled Philadelphia to escape the sins of her past but someone is following her. What better way to hide than by marrying Michael West, Cold Springs, Montana’s enigmatic shopkeeper? A new name, a new life, and a passionate husband is exactly what she needs to leave her sins behind. But when it comes to keeping secrets Charlotte may have met her match in Michael. When a connection neither of them expects catches up with them, the shocking revelation means Charlotte may have run right into the arms of her enemy.No sin stays a secret forever…

West of Here


Jonathan Evison - 2011
    A failed accountant by the name of Ethan Thornburgh has just arrived in Port Bonita to reclaim the woman he loves and start a family. Ethan’s obsession with a brighter future impels the damming of the mighty Elwha to harness its power and put Port Bonita on the map.More than a century later, his great-great grandson, a middle manager at a failing fish- packing plant, is destined to oversee the undoing of that vision, as the great Thornburgh dam is marked for demolition, having blocked the very lifeline that could have sustained the town. West of Here is a grand and playful odyssey, a multilayered saga of destiny and greed, adventure and passion, that chronicles the life of one small town, turning America’s history into myth, and myth into a nation’s shared experience.

In the Distance


Hernan Diaz - 2017
    He travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the west. Driven back over and over again on his journey through vast expanses, Håkan meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Díaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre (travel narratives, the bildungsroman, nature writing, the Western), offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.At first, it was a contest, but in time the beasts understood that, with an embrace and the slightest push, they had to lie down on their side and stay until Håkan got up. He did this each time he thought he spied someone on the circular horizon. Had Håkan and his animals ever been spotted, the distant travelers would have taken the vanishing silhouettes for a mirage. But there were no such travelers—the moving shadows he saw almost every day in the distance were illusions. With the double intention of getting away from the trail and the cold, he had traveled south for days.Hernán Díaz is the author of Borges, Between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury 2012), managing editor of RHM, and associate director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. He lives in New York.

Chasing the Star Garden


Melanie Karsak - 2013
    An infamous poet living in self-imposed exile. An ancient treasure about to fall into the wrong hands.Melanie Karsak's Chasing the Star Garden takes readers on a thrilling adventure from the gritty opium dens of gaslamp London to the gem-coloured waters of the ancient world. Lily Stargazer, a loveable but reckless airship racer with a famous lover and shattered past, reluctantly plunges into a centuries-old mystery in a romantic adventure best described as Dan Brown meets Mary Shelley.It all begins on one of the worst days of Lily’s life. She just lost the London leg of the 1823 Airship Grand Prix. To top it off, a harlequin fleeing from constables shoved a kaleidoscope down her pants, told her to fly to Venice, then threw himself from her airship tower. What’s a girl to do? For Lily, the answer is easy: drink absinthe and smoke opium. Lily’s lover, Lord Byron, encourages her to make the trip to Venice. Lily soon finds herself at the heart of an ancient mystery which has her running from her past and chasing true love and the stars along the way.

Jubilee Trail


Gwen Bristow - 1950
    Garnet Cameron, a fashionable young lady of New York, is leading a neat, proper life, full of elegant parties and polite young men, yet the prospect of actually marrying any of them appalls her. Yearning for adventure, she instead marries Oliver Hale, a wild trader who is about to cross the mountains and deserts to an unheard-of land called California. During Garnet and Oliver's honeymoon in New Orleans, she meets a dance-hall performer on the lam who calls herself Florinda Grove and is also traveling to California. Along the Jubilee Trail, Garnet and Florinda meet kinds of men never known to them before, and together they make their painstaking way over the harsh trail to Los Angeles, learning how to live without compromise and discover both true friendship and true love.

The Gunfighter


Robert J. Conley - 2001
     One day brings the meanest gunfighter in the West – nicknamed the Widowmaker – into town, and though he says he wants to live a quiet life, the whole town’s on the edge of their seat. Who has he come to kill this time? At everyone’s insistence, Barjack does his job to suss out what the Widowmaker really wants – but wouldn’t you the guy’s actually real friendly once you share a drink or two with him… Trouble’s brewing in Asininity, and it looks like it ain’t coming from the Widowmaker. It’s looking like Barjack may need to work together with the fearsome gunfighter to bring peace back to town – if such a thing is possible. Praise for Robert J. Conley “Conley portrays the rough and tumble frontier from the Indian point of view… Veteran novelist Conley works on three levels: murder mystery, frontier political potboiler, and the search for personal identity.” — Booklist “Conley [is] in the ranks of such writers as… Louise Erdrich… and W.P. Kinsella as literary interpreters of the Indian experience.” — Sunday Journal-Star (Lincoln, NE) “Conley [is] among the most productive and inventive of modem Western novelists” — Dale L. Walker, Rocky Mountain News “Conley speaks with a clear Cherokee Indian voice to show how his tribe’s cultural characteristics have survived centuries of abrupt change to give readers an understanding of the fullness and humanity of the Cherokees as a people.” — The Cherokee Advocate Robert J. Conley (1940-2014) was an acclaimed Cherokee author with over fifty books to his name, winning the Spur Award for Best Western Novel twice, as well as another Spur Award for a short story. He was also awarded the 2014 Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

The Last Librarian


Brandt Legg - 2015
     In the year 2098, there is no more war, no more hunger and no more pollution. The world is secure and Earth’s 2.9 billion people are healthy and happy. There is also only one remaining library that still houses physical books. In addition to the dusty volumes, the library holds many secrets. But the government has decided to shut it down and burn the contents. Unless an unlikely trio can save the books, humanity will lose more than just what is printed on those antique pages. With a single government ruling the entire planet, one currency, one language and no religion, the population is unified and enjoying the prosperity that comes with more than seven decades of peace. Free healthcare for all and guaranteed employment make the future a dream. But this future may only be safe if they can hide the past. The books must be saved . . . the impossible task is up to an angry author, a brazen revolutionary and the last librarian. When everything is perfect, the only thing left to fear is the truth.

Yellowstone Heart Song


Peggy L. Henderson - 2012
    She encounters a patient who tells her he can send her two hundred years into the past to spend three months in the rugged Yellowstone wilderness at the dawn of the mountain man era. The only requirement: she cannot tell anyone that she’s from the future.How did a white woman suddenly appear in the remote Rocky Mountain wilderness? Trapper Daniel Osborne’s first instinct is to protect this mysterious and unconventional woman from the harsh realities of his mountains. While he fights his growing attraction to her, he is left frustrated by her lies and secrecy.Daniel shows Aimee a side of Yellowstone she’s never experienced. She is torn between her feelings for him, and exposing a secret that will destroy everything he holds as truth. As her three months come to an end, she is faced with a dilemma: return to her own time, or stay with the man who opened her eyes to a whole new world. When the decision is made for her, both their lives will be changed forever.