Books weird west Five Books Set in A Weird Version of the Wild West Gunslingers and cowboys vs. werewolves, zombies, space outlaws, and more… By Lorna Wallace | Published on June 30, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Setting a story in the Wild West tends to lead to a plot filled with adventure and danger. While Stetson-wearing gunslingers can bring enough excitement to the party all on their own, I can’t help but love it when the genre is given a weird twist with the inclusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and/or horror elements. The five books on this list land in different places on the Weird Western spectrum. On one end are classic cowboy tales, but with the addition of supernatural creatures, and on the other are more out-there stories (and by “out-there,” I mean one of these books is set on the Martian frontier). Deadman’s Road by Joe R. Lansdale (2010) Collecting together one short novel and four short stories, Deadman’s Road follows Reverend Jebediah Mercer as he travels through the West on a mission to hunt down and kill various supernatural monsters. While preachers are typically expected to be peaceful and God-loving, Jeb has a lethal quick-draw and not much affection for his maker. The stories all follow a fairly similar shoot-‘em-up plotline, but with different monsters to battle in each. For instance, Dead in the West sees Jeb ride into a busy Texan town that is soon to be overtaken by a cursed zombie horde, while “The Gentleman’s Hotel” sees him fight off werewolves in a small derelict settlement with the help of a working girl. The stories are all pulpy, gory, and crass—which feels pretty fitting for the Wild West setting. Jeb may not exactly be a beacon of godliness, but in this nasty landscape his own brand of morality certainly stands out.  Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (2018) Seventeen years before the action of Dread Nation kicks off, the Battle of Gettysburg ended with the dead rising. This new zombie threat derailed the Civil War and led to enslaved people being drafted into the new war against the undead. The plot then picks up in 1880, with Black teenager Jane McKeene having spent the last few years being trained in the art of zombie killing. The first half of the book is set in Baltimore—or “The Civilized East” as the section’s heading has it—with Jane making her first bold moves in a society ruled by political machinations. The second half of the book sees Jane and her enemy-turned-friend Kate winding up in Summerland, a small town in Kansas—or “The Cruel West”—where things are just as shadowy and secretive. With Jane as its kick-ass driving force, Dread Nation skilfully weaves together alternate history and zombie-killing action with just-as-relevant-today social commentary. Even more Western adventure can be found in the sequel, Deathless Divide (2020). The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud (2023) The setting (Mars) and time period (1931) of The Strange may not initially make it seem like a Western, but trust me, it absolutely is. New Galveston is a small colony on the Martian frontier and life there has been extra hard for the settlers ever since communication, supplies, and people suddenly stopped coming from Earth. Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp is still in the depths of mourning her mother—who returned to Earth just before ties between the planets were mysteriously cut—when things go from bad to worse. A group of outlaws storm her family’s diner one night and inadvertently steal the only thing she has left of her mother: a recording of her voice. After getting no help from the law, Anabelle boldly—some might say foolishly—ventures out into the Martian wilderness to retrieve the recording herself. The Strange reads as though Ballingrud took the heart and mettle of Charles Portis’ True Grit (1968) and set those elements loose within his own creative and fantastical vision of Mars. Red Rabbit (2023) by Alex Grecian Red Rabbit is a story that self-consciously plays with the tropes of classic Westerns. It starts with a bounty being placed on the head of accused witch Sadie Grace. Old Tom—a self-proclaimed witch hunter—is convinced that he’s the man for the job and while venturing through Kansas to collect the bounty he ends up amassing a motley crew of travelers. The eclectic posse encounter more than just the expected outlaws and bandits on their journey, with demons and ghosts also crossing their path. Morality can often be quite clear-cut in classic Westerns, but many of the characters in Red Rabbit resist being boxed into the binary of good versus evil. The story has all of the ingredients needed for a fun adventure: compelling characters, gruesome ghouls, and a pace that could outrun a galloping horse.  If you want more from the world of Red Rabbit, then the short story “The Price of Rye” (2023) and the novel Rose of Jericho (2025) are both set in the same spooky and magical landscape. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (2025) The Buffalo Hunter Hunter opens with an old diary being found in a wall. Written by Lutheran pastor Arthur Beaucarne, the diary switches back and forth between Arthur’s own thoughts and his transcription of a strange story told to him by a Blackfeet called Good Stab, who claims to be a vampire (although that isn’t the word he uses). Arthur and Good Stab’s conversations take place in Miles City, Montana, in 1912. Although the Wild West was starting to fade into history by that time, Good Stab’s bloody and emotional narrative is set years earlier, firmly in chaos of the Old West. At its heart, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a revenge tale. While classic Westerns often have a starry-eyed view of the American frontier, Jones’s book faces the terrible violence inflected upon Native people and buffalo head-on. As might be expected from such a story, copious amounts of blood are shed—and since it’s a vampire story, a copious amount of blood is also drunk. There are, of course, many more stories set in weird versions of the Wild West beyond just these five examples. If I’ve missed any of your favorites, please leave the recommendations in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five Books Set in A Weird Version of the Wild West appeared first on Reactor.