Steve Dancys Favorite Western Books
Discover Steve Daney’s favorite Western books, a curated list of must-reads featuring literary classics like Lonesome Dove, All the Pretty Horses, and The Virginian, alongside thrilling modern Westerns by James D. Best. Perfect for fans of gritty frontier fiction and timeless cowboy tales.
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Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Tells of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana and shows how one man's dream to create an empire affects others.
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All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
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.
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The Shopkeeper
by James D. Best
In 1879, Steve Dancy sells his New York shop and ventures west to explore and write a journal about his adventures. Though he's not looking for trouble, Dancy's infatuation with another man's wife soon embroils him in a deadly feud with Sean Washburn, a Nevada silver baron. Infuriated by the outrages of two hired thugs, the shopkeeper kills both men in an impulsive street fight. Dancy believes this barbarian act has closed the episode. He is wrong. He has interfered with Washburn's ambitions, and this is something the mining tycoon will not allow. Pinkertons, hired assassins, and aggrieved bystanders escalate the feud until it pulls in all the moneyed interests and power brokers in Nevada. Can the former city slicker settle accounts without losing his life in the process?
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Leadville
by James D. Best
When New York City shopkeeper Steve Dancy moved west to experience the frontier, he wound up embroiled in a deadly feud ... a feud he was forced to settle with guns. Now all he wants to do is follow up on a few business interests, write about his adventures, and continue his exploration of the West. But in the autumn of 1879, Joseph McAllen asks Dancy for help. Ute renegades have abducted a young girl near Mesa Verde, Colorado, and the Pinkerton captain wants him to join the rescue party. Surprisingly, the trail doesn't lead into the San Juan Mountains, but to Leadville -- a rich mining town teeming with the worst elements of a raw frontier. Bitter feuds, vendettas, and greed turn the affair into a bloody conflict that spans the state. Dancy has proven that he can handle himself in dangerous situations. But will this shopkeeper survive the perils of an untamed mountain wilderness?