Book picks similar to
Outlaw by Warren Kiefer


western
fiction
historical-fiction
westerns

The Blackfoot Trail


Charles G. West - 2009
    Now, Joe Fox is forging a new trail?of vengeance!

News of the World


Paulette Jiles - 2016
    An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

Texas Blood Feud


Dusty Richards - 2009
    Three generations who paid in blood and treasure. Children carried off by Comanche. A brother lost to war. Lives shattered. Chet Byrnes was trying to hold the ranch together through one more winter for one more cattle drive when he hanged three horse thieves this side of the Red River - and a blood feud erupted...A family wants revenge - no matter how just the hangings were. From attacks on the Byrnes clan to the killing of livestock, the feud leads to one vicious murder - and then another. But amidst the violence and pain, a man who has seen his youth slip by is about to get one last chance at life and love...If only Chet can end the war he started...If only he can survive this land and the killers who want him dead - at any price...

Ketcham's Land


Douglas Hirt - 2002
    After a card game with Benny Gellerman, a man good with a gun, but bad with cards, Ketcham decides it is time to head out again. He finds a place to bed down on a lonely New Mexico farm run by old Corely Mattlin and his widowed daughter-in-law, Margaret. Ketcham has his eye on pretty Margaret, but he'd better keep his eyes open wide for trouble. A local rancher named Jeb Ollfinger is trying to run the Mattlins off their land, and he is not above using violence, even murder, to get what he wants. Margaret is sure her husband's killer was one of Ollfinger's men, a gunman named Gellerman. If Ketcham knew what was good for him, he would head out again. But this time he has a job to do first.

The Women in Pants: Sidesaddle No More


Stan Himes - 2017
    Will they overcome with hearts and humor intact? Will they survive at all? Reader Reviews: "I know if you enjoy reading about strong confident and brave women you will love this book as much as I did!" "Recommend this books to all who enjoy Westerns, or even if you have never read one. I think you would perhaps see some of the personalities, philosophies and behavior in yourself and those you know and only read about! A very HUMAN book!" "WOW. Bought this book with the thoughts of perhaps a light read.... I'm telling you, the detail, the writing, the story were all superb." "This book is for everyone. I couldn't wait to see what happened but I didn't want it to end." "If this book doesn't get made into a big-budget movie with an ensemble of major actresses, Hollywood will have missed out on a blockbuster." "I loved this book from beginning to end. And the unique way the author told it. A most fun read. If I had lived in that time period I would have wanted to be one of those women in pants!"

West for the Black Hills


Peter Leavell - 2015
    Not many people in Mitchell, a small town in the Dakota Territory, would understand him living with the Sioux Indians who rescued him as a boy. Haunted by the murder of his parents as they traveled West in their covered wagon, he knows it wasn’t Indians who killed them, and his many unanswered questions about that night still torment him. His only desire is to live quietly on his homestead and raise Arabian horses. Until he meets Anna, a beautiful young woman with secrets of her own. Is it his eery and unusual wolf eyes that draw Anna to him? Falling in love was not part of his plan. Can Philip open his heart and tell her how he feels before it’s too late?With Anna a pawn in the corrupt schemes brewing in Mitchell, Philip is forced to become a reluctant gunslinger even as his inner battle gets in the way. Will Philip’s uncannily trained horses and unsurpassed sharpshooting skills help him free Anna and find out what really happened to his family out there in the wilderness?

Killing Suki Flood


Robert Leininger - 1991
    The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .

The Hardest Ride


Gordon L. Rottman - 2013
    A raw rift separates Mexicans and Anglos. A loner cowpoke and a mute Mexican girl fight man and nature to reunite. Out of work cowpoke Bud Eugen comes across Marta, a mute sixteen-year old Mexican girl whose family has been killed by Indians. Bud reluctantly takes her along, even though he’s never had to accommodate another person in his simple life. He’s unable to find anyone willing to take her. In spite of his prejudices, Bud grows to like the spunky girl (and her excellent cooking). Eventually, they both find work on a border ranch. Here, the relationship between the girl and the young cowboy hesitantly grows. But banditos raid the ranch, kidnapping the rancher’s daughters and Marta. Bud, with twelve other men, pursue the banditos into the most desolate reaches of Mexico. Ambushes and battles with banditos, Rurales, and traitors are constant, and the brutal weather is as much a threat as the man-made perils. Life and death choices are made at every turn as one side gains the advantage, then the other. The rancher’s daughters are rescued, and the exhausted party turns back. But Bud presses on alone, against insurmountable odds – determined to fulfill an unspoken promise to Marta.A USA TODAY and Amazon bestseller, this wonderfully crafted tale of 1800s Western life won the Western Fictioneers' Peacemaker Award for Best Western Novel 2014, was a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best First Western Novel 2014, and was a Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist for Best Traditional Western Novel for 2013.

The Shootist


Glendon Swarthout - 1975
    Most men would end their days in bed or take their own lives, but a gunfighter has a third option, one that Books decides to exercise. He may choose his own executioner.As word spreads that the famous assassin has incurable cancer, an assortment of human vultures gathers to feast on the corpse—among them a gambler, a rustler, a clergyman, an undertaker, an old love, a reporter, even an admiring teenager. What follows is the last courageous act in Books’s own legend.This classic, Spur Award–winning novel was chosen by the Western Writers of America as one of the best western novels ever written and was the inspiration for John Wayne’s last great starring role in the acclaimed 1976 film adaptation. The Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author’s son, Miles Swarthout, in which he discusses his father’s work and the making of the legendary film.

Sweet Carolina


Stephen Bly - 1998
    In this Heroines of the Golden West title, Carolina Cantrell goes to Montana Territory to settle her late brother's estate only to face internal conflict fueled by an explosion of emotions centered around a particularly handsome drifter that walks into her life.

Looking for Jane


Judith Redline Coopey - 2012
    Well, what if you don’t have no people? Or any you know of? What then? Are you doomed?” This is the nagging question of fifteen-year-old Nell’s life. Born with a cleft palate and left a foundling on the doorstep of a convent, she yearns to know her mother, whose name, she knows, was Jane.When the Mother Superior tries to pawn her off to a mean looking farmer and his beaten down wife, Nell opts for the only alternative she can see: she runs away. A chance encounter with a dime novel exhorting the exploits of Calamity Jane, heroine of the west, gives Nell the purpose of her life: to find Calamity Jane, who Nell is convinced is her mother.Her quest takes her down rivers, up rivers and across the Badlands to Deadwood, South Dakota and introduces her to Soot, a big, lovable black dog, and Jeremy Chatterfield, a handsome young Englishman who isn’t particular about how he makes his way, as long as he doesn't have to work for it. Together they trek across the country meeting characters as wonderful and bizarre as the adventure they seek, learning about themselves and the world along the way.

So Far from Heaven


Richard Bradford - 1973
    The Tafoyas include a physician philosopher, a radical daughter with a degree from Bryn Mawr, a clumsy, stupid son, and a governor of New Mexico. From these elements Bradford creates a story as funny and tender as RED SKY AT MORNING, also set in New Mexico, also well worth reading.

Mobley's Law


Gerald Lane Summers - 2011
    President Grant appoints Judge Mobley Meadows to the Texas Federal Circuit Court and charges him with preventing the situation from getting out of hand. Davis quickly realizes that Mobley is a threat when he overturns the Governor’s land reappraisal decree, a source of graft for Davis’s supporters, and sends his personal assassin to get rid of Mobley. Mobley and his two deputy marshals, Edson Rabb, a handsome Cherokee Indian, and Jack Anthony Lopes, the illegitimate son of General Santa Ana and the English Lady Madeleine Smythe, are repeatedly attacked on their journey from Waco to Austin. They know Davis is behind the attacks, but they cannot make a case against him. Davis loses the election by a majority of two to one, but arranges for his personally appointed state Supreme Court to overturn the election on a technicality involving a single misplaced semi-colon in the new Texas constitution. He then refuses to leave office or to participate in a trial in Mobley’s court. Davis’s opponent, Richard Coke, does not accept this decision and with his supporters storms the state administrative building in Austin. Davis’s forces counterattack and manage to take back the first floor of the building. A standoff then prevails that can only be resolved by the action of President Grant. Mobley suggests a course of action to the president, that in the end works, but not without Mobley having to compromise his beliefs, his sense of honor, and everything he thinks he stands for.

The Maverick Queen


Zane Grey - 1950
    But South Pass is overrun with gamblers and gunslingers, and Bradway's search leads him straight into the bloody action where he finds he's going to need much more than a gun to stay alive.

Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr


Phil Truman - 2012
    A good read.” -- Dusty Richards, Spur and Wrangler Award winning author “Author Phil Truman captured a slice of Indian Territory history and has woven it into an interesting period novel. Anyone who loves the history of the West will enjoy Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr.” -- Tammy Hinton, author and winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Unbridled "Truman’s storytelling shines throughout..." -- Kathleen Rice Adams, Western Fictioneers In the last years of the tough and woolly land called Indian Territory, and the first of the new state of Oklahoma, the outlaw Henry Starr rides roughshod through its midst. A native son of “The Nations” he’s more Scotch-Irish than Cherokee, but scorned by both. Never really wanted to journey west of the law, yet fate seems to insist. He’s falsely accused of horse-thieving at sixteen, sentenced to hang for murder at nineteen by Judge Isaac Parker, but escapes the gallows on a technicality. Given that opportunity, the charming, handsome, mild-mannered Henry Starr spends the rest of his life becoming the most prolific bank robber the West has ever known.