Books like Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry

Of Mice and Men follows two migrant ranch workers—George and Lennie—who dream of owning land while struggling with the hardships of the Great Depression; their friendship is tested by tragedy.

A sweeping late‑nineteenth‑century cattle drive from Texas to Montana follows former Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and William F. Call as they confront the American West's myths, love, and violence in this epic of adventure and friendship.

Cormac McCarthy’s 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses follows a young cowboy’s journey across the Mexican–American border, blending romance, adventure, and a poignant elegy for the fading American frontier.

A sweeping coming‑of‑age story set on Nebraska’s prairie, following Jim Burden’s journey with his grandparents amid immigrant families, especially the Czech Shimerdas, and his complex love and friendship with Antonia.

Craig of the Mohicans, a frontier scout turns away from civilization, forming a bond with a Mohican warrior as they escort two sisters across the perilous wilderness of America's frontier.

Fourteen‑year‑old Mattie Ross sets out from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to hunt down Tom Chaney—whom she blames for her father’s death—guided by the grizzled U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn.

A young woman defends her faith and freedom in a polygamous Mormon community while hunting her captors in the rugged American West.

Marshal Shay McQuillan must track stagecoach robbers while grieving a murdered fiancée; his world is shocked when a twin brother appears and a hotel worker named Aislinn Lethaby offers a potential new love. Meanwhile, Tristan, the twin, seeks peace but finds his own romance entangled with his past.

Edna Ferber's Pulitzer‑winning tale follows Selina Peake Dejong—from marriage to widowhood to thriving as a Western truck farmer—while painting late‑19th‑century Chicago and exploring poverty, Americanization, family tension, sexism and female independence.

Two Texas Rangers, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, confront Indian raids, bandit threats, and personal entanglements with women while navigating life on the frontier.

In 1836 in East Texas, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches. She was raised by the tribe and eventually became the wife of a warrior. Twenty-four years after her capture, she was reclaimed by the U.S. cavalry and Texas Rangers and restored to her white family, to die in misery and obscurity. Cynthia Ann's story has been told and re-told over generations to become a foundational American tale. The myth gave rise to operas and one-act plays, and in the 1950s to a novel by Alan LeMay, which would be adapted into one of Hollywood's most legendary films, The Searchers , "The Biggest, Roughest, Toughest...and Most Beautiful Picture Ever Made!" directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. Glenn Frankel, beginning in Hollywood and then returning to the origins of the story, creates a rich and nuanced anatomy of a timeless film and a quintessentially American myth. The dominant story that has emerged departs dramatically from documented history: it is of the inevitable triumph of white civilization, underpinned by anxiety about the sullying of white women by "savages." What makes John Ford's film so powerful, and so important, Frankel argues, is that it both upholds that myth and undermines it, baring the ambiguities surrounding race, sexuality, and violence in the settling of the West and the making of America.

A sweep of frontier legend, the book follows rough‑hearted outlaws, stoic lawmen and resilient settlers as they clash and change the rugged life of and around Canyon Gap.

In Arizona, a hardened outlaw confronts Apache warriors while defending a father‑daughter pair.

A young goose named Gawain is wrongfully accused of stealing from his king, abandoned by friends and tormented by guilt as the true thief remains hidden.

A speculative twist on a frontier crisis, "Outlawed" blends alternate history with the looming threat of influenza, exploring how communities and midwives confront disease, infertility, and social marginality on the American West's frontier.