Recommend a good Western/Western series

Elmore Leonard was quite the talented western writer. Check out some of his stuff.

My personal favorites (not EL) are The Big Sky and Lord Grizzly. I am also a big fan of reading nonfiction about the old west. Its a subject with larger than life characters and amazing stories.

Border trilogy

Have you checked out McMurtry's western novels?

Elmore Leonard started as a western writer. He provided the source material for the classic movies 3:10 To Yuma, The Tall T, and Hombre

AB Guthrie won a Pulitzer for The Way West (about the first wagon train on the Oregon Trail in 1843). He also wrote The Big Sky, about a journey up the Missouri River in 1830

Paul I. Wellman is a favorite of mine, more a historical novelist than a western writer: The Iron Mistress (Jim Bowie) and especially Magnificent Destiny (Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson) are definitely worth checking out

Little Big Man by Thomas Berger

Flashman and The Redskins (part of the wonderfully entertaining Flashman series) by George Macdonald Fraser

The Travels of Jamie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor is another Pulitzer winner about a wagon train, though I have not read it

You also might want to read The Virginian by Owen Wister (1902) to see where it all began



Nonfiction

Go to your local library and see if they have the Time Life Old West series

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

In this order:

Lonesome Dove
Dead Man's Walk
Comanche Moon
Streets of Laredo

Blood Meridian

Lonesome Dove
True Grit

Two of the best books written in any genre.

If you liked L'Amour, ever tried any Giles Lutz?

I randomly picked up The Honyocker by him and enjoyed it. It's pretty compact like a lot of paperpack novels were, but its has a crisp clean writing style I like. Gets the classic "ranch romance" and shootout in town covered without wasting any pages.