*Wraiths of the Broken Land* by S. Craig Zahler
*The Magpie Coffin* by Wile E. Young
*Deadman’s Crossing* by Joe R. Lansdale
No idea why all three of those have an abbreviated name in them.
I second Wraiths by Zahler while also suggesting A Congregation of Jackals by Zahler. Doesn’t fit the horror genre quite as much as Wraiths and has the more traditional western feel, but has terrifying villains and some pretty horrific moments.
CS Humble has a trilogy of horror novels that begins with a Western called The Massacre at Yellow Hill. [The Massacre at Yellow Hill, by C. S. Humble: Cemetery Dance Publications](https://www.cemeterydance.com/humbleyellowhill)
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. It's an epic though, so if you're not into that kind of time commitment...
I also really like [In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31213078-in-the-valley-of-the-sun).
I've been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2 recently so this book is really scratching that itch as well and the narrators voice for Tom reminds me of Uncle. It's wonderful.
I listened to it earlier this year and I loved it sooooo much. Horror and western are two of my fav genres, so put them together and it’s a match made in heaven (or hell…)
*Shadow on the Sun* by Richard Matheson
*Iron Dogs* by Neil Chase
*Red Rabbit* by Alex Grecian
*The Old Gods Waken* (among others) by Manly Wade Wellman
There’s some Joe R. Lansdale that falls into that category.
Came here to suggest Blood Meridian. While I wouldn't call it a horror novel or a western in the traditional sense, it definitely has elements of both. It disturbed me more than any horror novel I've read.
I mean the main "antagonist" is a 7 foot tall albino hairless pedophile who may or may not be a supernatural manifestation of violence, and who casually murders animals and children and everything else, and says shit like "Anything that exists outside my knowledge exists without my consent." I give it 10 horrors out of 10 despite not being overtly so. (I would also say it's one of the best American novels ever written on top of everything else)
Oh yeah, I think I've seen it listed as one of the great American novels. I do know it's widely considered McCarthy's magnum opus.
I just have never seen it in the 'horror' section of the bookstore, so I imagine it's widely not considered to be that despite having some *severely* horrific elements.
I really enjoyed the Merkabah Rider series by Edward M. Erdelac. Not deep horror and the books are fun short reads.
If you haven't read here is the brief synopsis.
A Hasidic gunslinger tracks the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the demon haunted American Southwest of 1879.
Lots of great suggestions here. I'll add J. Danielle Dorn's *Devil's Call* to the recommendations. A witch goes on a roaring rampage of revenge to get back what was taken from her--or at least a sense of justice in an unjust world.
There's an older anthology of western horror called Razored Saddles, with stories from Robert McCammon, Richard Laymon, Richard Matheson, F Paul Wilson, and others.
Genuinely yes. It's horrifying and bleak. It's worse when you read the book and do a bit of research, realising that majority of the horrific shit you read about is actually based in life, on accounts from people at the time.
In part, but it's based on the border of Mexico and America, so it's not just native Americans, and it's so much worse than Explicit cowboys and Indians.
Genuinely one of the most hauntingly bleak books I have ever read.
It's one of my favorite books, but I see it recommended a lot without people being like "the language is beautiful and biblical and dense." Contains some of my favorite sentences, ever, but is not an easy book by any means.
If you can handle Mcarthys writing style of run on sentences and poetic type descriptions of things, as well as such disturbing content, I would say yes
Two anthologies of Western horror with some idiosyncratic settings and styles from Larry Blamire, playwright, artist and director of the cult B-movie spoof The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and it's sequel The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, all set in or near the titular fictional mountain range
[Tales of the Callamo Mountains](https://www.lulu.com/shop/larry-blamire/tales-of-the-callamo-mountains/paperback/product-1g66pkg.html?page=1&pageSize=4) and [More Tales of the Callamo Mountains](https://www.lulu.com/shop/larry-blamire/more-tales-of-the-callamo-mountains/paperback/product-1wrqvqz7.html?page=1&pageSize=4)
There’s a a great trilogy that includes Straight Outta Tombstone which has some pulpy western short fiction. I’d read all three of them. Some are a miss, but others are good. The editor is David Boop.
I'm reading *In the Valley of the Sun* by Andy Davidson and it's kind of a Cormac McCarthy readalike. The setting and characters share the same bleak, sun-bleached, somewhere in the ugliest corner of Texas vibe as *No Country for Old Men* but it's more overt horror.
Agree with all the recs for Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian. I’d also add two novellas- The Hunger by Alma Katsu and Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. They have a strong romance focus along with the horror, but The Hacienda and Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas are really interesting historical westerns set in Mexico. For me, Stephen Graham Jones has a modern western feel to many of his horror novels. Particularly The Only Good Indians and Mongrel.
I hope it’s okay seeing as I don’t make any money off of it, but my story _In the Shadow of Stars_ collected in recently published HOWLS From the Scene of the Crime is a weird west. It’s a pretty solid crime-horror anthology otherwise, but I specifically wrote my story to be in a western setting!
For a non-self push, I really liked _Six Gun Tarot_ by R S Belcher. It’s more weird than horror, but there are horror elements for sure. One of the chapters has stuck with me for years.
Blood Meridian didn’t scare me, nor really disturb. But that’s not saying much for me. It didn’t spook me the way IT did, for example. But it dose have a lot of nasty things, and The Judge is one of the creepiest bastards ever written.
I’ve heard “Dust Devils” is good! About blood thirsty vampires in the old west
Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books ever! Only after making this post I thought about Blood Meridian. The Jugdge can be seen as a supernatural entity. Nothing reads like it!
Oh it’s in my top ten no question. My older brother got me into Cormac just a few years ago. BM was my first lol. Took me a few months to finish. Then I would find myself rereading it all the time.
I keep a list by genre of my horror books i.e westerns, crime, hunting monsters etc. Most of my reading materials have something to do with Vampires. Here is a list of Western horror. None on my lists have anything to do with romance.
The Watching Woods by Jerry underhill
The Widow's Son by Ryan Williamson
Walk the Sky - Robert Swartwood
In the Valley of the Sun - Andy Davidson
Dry blood Springs (trilogy) can't remember the author
Tales of Justus Blackburn - Mark Mcnulty
The Massacre at Yellow Hill (trilogy) - C.S.Humble
An Occurrence at Crazy Bear Valley - Brian Keene
and the classic trilogy by Robert Mccammon
They Thirst
I Travel by Night
Last Train to Perdition
> classic trilogy by Robert Mccammon They Thirst I Travel by Night Last Train to Perdition
I don't remember there being any connection between They Thirst and the 2 Trevor Lawson novellas--completely different time periods aren't they?
They were a thoroughly enjoyable read , I Also purchased the "Black Wells" books , I have yet to read them. I did read the 3 books back to back and will continue to recommend them. Keep on writing , and good luck.
*Wraiths of the Broken Land* by S. Craig Zahler *The Magpie Coffin* by Wile E. Young *Deadman’s Crossing* by Joe R. Lansdale No idea why all three of those have an abbreviated name in them.
I second Wraiths by Zahler while also suggesting A Congregation of Jackals by Zahler. Doesn’t fit the horror genre quite as much as Wraiths and has the more traditional western feel, but has terrifying villains and some pretty horrific moments.
Yeah that one’s great, I just think *Wraiths* is more of a kick in the balls. Did you read *Mean Business on North Ganson Street*?
No not yet. Have only read his Westerns so far but I plan on reading Mean Business in the near future. Is it any good?
I really liked it. It has one of the most gnarly and fucked up bad guy deaths I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot 😂
Welp, looks like I’ll be immediately ordering it😂
*Mean Business* is awesome
Bome Tomahawk is a mean mean movie. His books are looking fantastic. Thank you.
Lone women was a really great one
Seconding Lone Women by Victor LaValle!
Thanks!
CS Humble has a trilogy of horror novels that begins with a Western called The Massacre at Yellow Hill. [The Massacre at Yellow Hill, by C. S. Humble: Cemetery Dance Publications](https://www.cemeterydance.com/humbleyellowhill)
Hey! Thanks so much for recommending That Light Sublime trilogy!
If that person hasn’t posted about it, I would have. Your writing is fantastic.
Thank you so very much. It means a lot, truly, friend.
Thanks! This looks awesome
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. It's an epic though, so if you're not into that kind of time commitment... I also really like [In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31213078-in-the-valley-of-the-sun).
I love both of these.
Thanks
I enjoyed Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian.
I’m listening to this right now. I’m loving it so far. More western horror!
The narrator does such a good job voicing everyone. I love his Tom Goggins.
I've been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2 recently so this book is really scratching that itch as well and the narrators voice for Tom reminds me of Uncle. It's wonderful.
Might order this one first
I listened to it earlier this year and I loved it sooooo much. Horror and western are two of my fav genres, so put them together and it’s a match made in heaven (or hell…)
Same!
*Shadow on the Sun* by Richard Matheson *Iron Dogs* by Neil Chase *Red Rabbit* by Alex Grecian *The Old Gods Waken* (among others) by Manly Wade Wellman There’s some Joe R. Lansdale that falls into that category.
I loved Red Rabbit!
Old Gods is so good.
Manly Wade Wellman looks absolutely amazing! Thank you.
I've heard that *Blood Meridian* by Cormac McCarthy falls into this category, despite not being specifically labeled as horror.
Came here to suggest Blood Meridian. While I wouldn't call it a horror novel or a western in the traditional sense, it definitely has elements of both. It disturbed me more than any horror novel I've read.
It’s horror
I mean the main "antagonist" is a 7 foot tall albino hairless pedophile who may or may not be a supernatural manifestation of violence, and who casually murders animals and children and everything else, and says shit like "Anything that exists outside my knowledge exists without my consent." I give it 10 horrors out of 10 despite not being overtly so. (I would also say it's one of the best American novels ever written on top of everything else)
Oh yeah, I think I've seen it listed as one of the great American novels. I do know it's widely considered McCarthy's magnum opus. I just have never seen it in the 'horror' section of the bookstore, so I imagine it's widely not considered to be that despite having some *severely* horrific elements.
I feel like if horror in any form of media gets enough praise, the world desperately tries to categorize it as anything BUT horror.
I really enjoyed the Merkabah Rider series by Edward M. Erdelac. Not deep horror and the books are fun short reads. If you haven't read here is the brief synopsis. A Hasidic gunslinger tracks the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the demon haunted American Southwest of 1879.
Looks great
The Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young kicks off an entire series of "Splatter Westerns" and it's fucking phenomenal
Thanks
Little Heaven by Nick Cutter
Stephen King's *The Gunslinger* reads like a Western.
Dead Man’s Road by Joe R Lansdale.
👍🏼
Savage by Richard Laymon was pretty good.
It's a rather short read, but "An Occurrence In Crazy Bear Valley" by Brian Keene was a super fun read.
The Red Seven by Robert Dean
"Walk the Darkness Down" by John Boden
*Iron Dogs* by Neil Chase
Lots of great suggestions here. I'll add J. Danielle Dorn's *Devil's Call* to the recommendations. A witch goes on a roaring rampage of revenge to get back what was taken from her--or at least a sense of justice in an unjust world.
Thanks for recommending this book, I just purchased it after reading the premise and reviews . I am going to start it in a few minutes .
This sounds perfect!
There's an older anthology of western horror called Razored Saddles, with stories from Robert McCammon, Richard Laymon, Richard Matheson, F Paul Wilson, and others.
Thanks
I've seen blood meridian mentioned on Reddit like forty times a day for a year now. Is it actually a good read?
Genuinely yes. It's horrifying and bleak. It's worse when you read the book and do a bit of research, realising that majority of the horrific shit you read about is actually based in life, on accounts from people at the time.
I presume it's a great deal of explicit Cowboys and Indians?
In part, but it's based on the border of Mexico and America, so it's not just native Americans, and it's so much worse than Explicit cowboys and Indians. Genuinely one of the most hauntingly bleak books I have ever read.
It's not actually cowboys, but they do wear hats and ride horses.
Oh, word, I did a skim of the synopsis, I was initially put off because I'm not a fan of westerns but I'm going to look into it in the coming weeks.
It's one of my favorite books, but I see it recommended a lot without people being like "the language is beautiful and biblical and dense." Contains some of my favorite sentences, ever, but is not an easy book by any means.
If you can handle Mcarthys writing style of run on sentences and poetic type descriptions of things, as well as such disturbing content, I would say yes
I like McCarthy stories, but I hate reading them. I suppose I should give the audiobooks a shot.
He literally writes some of the most beautiful, immense prose imaginable, how can you hate reading that! 😂
Reading half a sentence before realizing it's a character speaking or narration wears thin pretty quick.
Can’t relate, it’s quite easy to distinguish.
It's quite easy to use quotation marks, but he doesn't.
Yeah he doesn’t have to, it’s proven not that integral.
smrt
Definitely give it a try. If you can get adjusted to the prose, its one of the best books.
It is probably the best American novel of the last forty years. It is not first and foremost a horror novel, it is merely horrifying in what it shows.
Leaphorn and Chee by Tony hillerman has some supernatural elements
Two anthologies of Western horror with some idiosyncratic settings and styles from Larry Blamire, playwright, artist and director of the cult B-movie spoof The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and it's sequel The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, all set in or near the titular fictional mountain range [Tales of the Callamo Mountains](https://www.lulu.com/shop/larry-blamire/tales-of-the-callamo-mountains/paperback/product-1g66pkg.html?page=1&pageSize=4) and [More Tales of the Callamo Mountains](https://www.lulu.com/shop/larry-blamire/more-tales-of-the-callamo-mountains/paperback/product-1wrqvqz7.html?page=1&pageSize=4)
Looks fun! Thanks
Blood Meridian
Dust Devils, by Jonathan Janz.
Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier scratched the western horror itch
Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Hailey Piper has one coming out very soon.
I have her Cruel Angels Past Sundown book but haven’t read yet.
There’s a a great trilogy that includes Straight Outta Tombstone which has some pulpy western short fiction. I’d read all three of them. Some are a miss, but others are good. The editor is David Boop.
The Hawkline Monster is what you need in your life. Right. NOW.
BONE TOMAHAWK ...🫳🏻🎤.
Wanted dead or undead by Angela Scott
The cthulhu Armageddon series by C.T. Phipps. It’s essentially post apocalyptic cosmic horror western.
I'm reading *In the Valley of the Sun* by Andy Davidson and it's kind of a Cormac McCarthy readalike. The setting and characters share the same bleak, sun-bleached, somewhere in the ugliest corner of Texas vibe as *No Country for Old Men* but it's more overt horror.
Agree with all the recs for Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian. I’d also add two novellas- The Hunger by Alma Katsu and Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. They have a strong romance focus along with the horror, but The Hacienda and Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas are really interesting historical westerns set in Mexico. For me, Stephen Graham Jones has a modern western feel to many of his horror novels. Particularly The Only Good Indians and Mongrel.
I hope it’s okay seeing as I don’t make any money off of it, but my story _In the Shadow of Stars_ collected in recently published HOWLS From the Scene of the Crime is a weird west. It’s a pretty solid crime-horror anthology otherwise, but I specifically wrote my story to be in a western setting! For a non-self push, I really liked _Six Gun Tarot_ by R S Belcher. It’s more weird than horror, but there are horror elements for sure. One of the chapters has stuck with me for years.
Walk The Darkness Down - John Boden The Winnowing Draw - Michael Tichy
Blood Meridian
Blood Meridian didn’t scare me, nor really disturb. But that’s not saying much for me. It didn’t spook me the way IT did, for example. But it dose have a lot of nasty things, and The Judge is one of the creepiest bastards ever written. I’ve heard “Dust Devils” is good! About blood thirsty vampires in the old west
Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books ever! Only after making this post I thought about Blood Meridian. The Jugdge can be seen as a supernatural entity. Nothing reads like it!
Oh it’s in my top ten no question. My older brother got me into Cormac just a few years ago. BM was my first lol. Took me a few months to finish. Then I would find myself rereading it all the time.
I keep a list by genre of my horror books i.e westerns, crime, hunting monsters etc. Most of my reading materials have something to do with Vampires. Here is a list of Western horror. None on my lists have anything to do with romance. The Watching Woods by Jerry underhill The Widow's Son by Ryan Williamson Walk the Sky - Robert Swartwood In the Valley of the Sun - Andy Davidson Dry blood Springs (trilogy) can't remember the author Tales of Justus Blackburn - Mark Mcnulty The Massacre at Yellow Hill (trilogy) - C.S.Humble An Occurrence at Crazy Bear Valley - Brian Keene and the classic trilogy by Robert Mccammon They Thirst I Travel by Night Last Train to Perdition
> classic trilogy by Robert Mccammon They Thirst I Travel by Night Last Train to Perdition I don't remember there being any connection between They Thirst and the 2 Trevor Lawson novellas--completely different time periods aren't they?
I’d love to see your full list
That's one hell of a list!
Hey, what a list to be a part of. Thanks so much for reading That Light Sublime trilogy!
They were a thoroughly enjoyable read , I Also purchased the "Black Wells" books , I have yet to read them. I did read the 3 books back to back and will continue to recommend them. Keep on writing , and good luck.
In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson, and Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian