Saddle Up, Yellowstone Fans: You’ll Love These 8 Western Reads

A gripping new mystery from the “fresh new voice in the thriller genre” (Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author) and author of The Wild Inside, set in the magnificent and brutal terrain of Glacier National Park—for fans of C.J. Box and Nevada Barr.

In the darkening days of autumn, in a remote region near the Canadian border, a journalist has been murdered. Anne Marie Johnson was last seen with Reeve Landon, whose chocolate Labrador was part of an article she had been writing about a scientific canine research program. Now Landon is the prime suspect. Intensely private and paranoid, in a panic that he'll be wrongfully arrested, he ventures deep into in the woods. Even as he evades the detective, Landon secretly feels the whole thing is somehow deserved, a karmic punishment for a horrifying crime he committed as a young boy.

While Montana FBI investigator Ali Paige is not officially assigned to the case, Landon—an ex-boyfriend and the father of her child—needs help. Ali has only one objective for snooping around the edges of an investigation she’s not authorized to pursue: to save her daughter the shame of having a father in jail and the pain of abandonment she endured as a child. As the clock ticks and the noose tightens around Landon's neck, Ali isn’t sure how far she will go to find out the truth. And what if the truth is not something she wants to know?

A Sharp Solitude is a study of two flawed characters, bonded by a child, trying to make their way in an extraordinary place where escape seems possible. But no one can ever really outrun their demons, even in the vast terrain of Glacier, the ultimate backdrop for a journey of the soul.

ONE OF USA TODAY'S “20 SUMMER BOOKS YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS”

In the bestselling tradition of works by such authors as Susan Orlean and Mary Roach, a New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist explores why so many people—including herself—are obsessed with horses.

It may surprise you to learn that there are over seven million horses in America—even more than when they were the only means of transportation—and nearly two million horse owners. Acclaimed journalist and avid equestrian Sarah Maslin Nir is one of them; she began riding horses when she was just two years old and hasn’t stopped since. Horse Crazy is a fascinating, funny, and moving love letter to these graceful animals and the people who—like her—are obsessed with them. It is also a coming-of-age story of Nir growing up an outsider within the world’s most elite inner circles, and finding her true north in horses.

Nir takes readers into the lesser-known corners of the riding world and profiles some of its most captivating figures. We meet Monty Roberts, the California trainer whose prowess earned him the nickname “the man who listens to horses,” and his pet deer; George and Ann Blair, who at their riding academy on a tiny island in Manhattan’s Harlem River seek to resurrect the erased legacy of the African American cowboy; and Francesca Kelly, whose love for an Indian nobleman shaped her life’s mission: to protect an endangered Indian breed of horse and bring them to America.

Woven into these compelling character studies, Nir shares her own moving personal narrative. She details her father’s harrowing tale of surviving the Holocaust, and describes an enchanted but deeply lonely upbringing in Manhattan, where horses became her family. She found them even in the middle of the city, in a stable disguised in an old townhouse and in Central Park, when she chased down truants as an auxiliary mounted patrol officer. And she speaks candidly of how horses have helped her overcome heartbreak and loss.

Infused with heart and wit, and with each chapter named after a horse Nir has loved, Horse Crazy is an unforgettable blend of beautifully written memoir and first-rate reporting.

“These murder cases expose systemic problems... By examining each murder within the context of Indigenous identity and regional hardships, McDiarmid addresses these very issues, finding reasons to look for the deeper roots of each act of violence.” —The New York Times Book Review

In the vein of the bestsellers I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and The Line Becomes a River, a penetrating, deeply moving account of the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and a searing indictment of the society that failed them.

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The corridor is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis.

Journalist Jessica McDiarmid meticulously investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate in which Indigenous women and girls are overpoliced yet underprotected. McDiarmid interviews those closest to the victims—mothers and fathers, siblings and friends—and provides an intimate firsthand account of their loss and unflagging fight for justice. Examining the historically fraught social and cultural tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the region, McDiarmid links these cases to others across Canada—now estimated to number up to four thousand—contextualizing them within a broader examination of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in the country.

Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for the victims and a testament to their families’ and communities’ unwavering determination to find it.

The Dutton family doesn’t generally have the most favorable opinion of newcomers to the Rocky Mountain region who come in search of a little piece of the area’s natural splendor. Still, I get the sense they’d make an exception for Mary Beth Baptiste, whose memoir, Altitude Adjustment, offers a glimpse of what it’s like for an East Coast gal (in this case, one from suburban Massachusetts) to throw caution to the wind and move out west to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a radically different environment from the one she’s always known, to put it mildly. Baptiste divorces her husband, steps away from a stable career, and endures the disappointment of her close-knit family for a chance at pursuing her lifelong dream of living and working in the majestic Grand Teton National Park. If nothing else, the Duttons would admire her pure grit in never backing down and successfully carving out a peaceful life for herself amid the mountains, despite job and financial setbacks, grizzly bear encounters, and complicated interactions with fellow park rangers.

Detective Dave Robicheaux travels to the mountains of Montana to help his best friend and unearths a larger plot that threatens them both.

Oil speculator Weldon Sonnier is the patriarch of a troubled family intimately bound to the CIA, the Mob, and the Klan. Now, the murder of a cop and a bizarre assassination attempt pull Detective Dave Robicheaux into the Sonniers’ hellish world of madness, murder, and incest. But Robicheaux has devils of his own—and they may just destroy the tormented investigator and the two people he holds most dear.

As good as Kevin Costner is in Yellowstone, there’s no denying that his character, John Dutton, is a hard man to love. Not only does he rule the Yellowstone ranch with ruthless efficiency that can include a gruesome eye-for-an-eye justice, but he’s cruel and unforgiving toward his adult children, from whom he demands total loyalty and regular sacrifices. He reminds me of the similarly powerful and manipulative patriarch of Nora Roberts’s Montana Sky, a contemporary romance and family saga rolled into one. When Jack Mercy passes away, his will stipulates that in order to inherit the ranch, his three daughters (half-sisters who have never met) must live together on his Montana ranch for a year. Willa, Tess, and Lily resent their father’s ability to control their lives even after death, yet manage to find a happiness he never could, which just may have been his (poorly expressed) intention. Oh, and they catch a murderer, to boot.

Other than their shared DNA, the one thing that bonds the Duttons together is their devotion to the land. Montana is in their blood and it’s in their bones. It was the same way for celebrated author Norman Maclean, whose novella “A River Runs Through It” is required reading for anyone who wishes a better understanding of what it’s like to grow up in such an untamed place. (And yes, it inspired the 1992 movie by the same name.) Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is a collection of works based on his own childhood experiences in Missoula, back when fly-fishing and cribbage were the height of entertainment.

While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology. As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive. Welcome to the Sixth World.