Reading List · The American West
Authors Like
He wrote Lonesome Dove to kill the western. The plan was to strip the myth out of the cattle drive and show what it actually was — boredom, dysentery, boys dying pointlessly of snakebite — and readers took it as the most romantic book of the decade and gave it a Pulitzer. He spent the rest of his life mildly annoyed about that. He also ran a second-hand bookshop in Archer City, Texas, and filled several buildings in a town of two thousand people with several hundred thousand books. The writers below are working the same country, mostly with the same intention.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Westerns · Small-town Texas · Elegy · Updated September 2026
Quick answer
Cormac McCarthy is the closest for the anti-mythic western, Wallace Stegner for the literary West, and Annie Proulx for the hard Wyoming version. If what you loved was small-town Texas rather than the trail, read Kent Haruf or Willa Cather.
10 authors like Larry McMurtry
Where to start if you loved Larry McMurtry
If you want the closest match, read Cormac McCarthy.
All the Pretty Horses first, Blood Meridian only when you are ready for it.
If you loved the scale of Lonesome Dove, read Wallace Stegner.
Angle of Repose covers a century of the West through one marriage.
If you loved The Last Picture Show, read Kent Haruf.
Same dying small town, same restraint, Colorado instead of Texas.
If you want the West without any romance, read Annie Proulx.
The Wyoming stories are short and they do not let anyone off.
If you want to laugh, read Charles Portis.
True Grit is funnier than any of them and the voice is unforgettable.
If you want more of his own work first
My guide to all thirty-two McMurtry books has them in order.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Larry McMurtry
Who writes books most like Larry McMurtry?
Cormac McCarthy is the closest for the anti-mythic western, though considerably darker. Wallace Stegner is the closest for literary treatment of the West at historical scale, and Thomas McGuane is closest in temperament — wry, unimpressed, very good on ranch life and marital wreckage.
What should I read after Lonesome Dove?
Within McMurtry's own work, Streets of Laredo continues the story and Dead Man's Walk goes back to Call and Gus as young men. Outside it, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose are the two most common next steps.
Are there authors like Larry McMurtry who write about small-town life?
Kent Haruf is the closest — his Colorado novels have the same dying-small-town setting as The Last Picture Show and the same refusal to sentimentalise it. Ivan Doig writes Montana family life across generations in a similar register.
Is Cormac McCarthy similar to Larry McMurtry?
They share the territory and the project — taking the myth out of the western — but not the warmth. McMurtry lets you love Gus and Call before he shows you what the trail costs. McCarthy withholds that comfort entirely, and Blood Meridian in particular offers no character to hold on to.
Which women write about the American West?
Willa Cather is the foundation — her Nebraska prairie novels are where American writing about the West became literature. Annie Proulx's Wyoming stories are the hardest contemporary version, and Edna Ferber's Giant is the Texas dynasty novel written by an outsider who owed the myth nothing.
Sources
List last reviewed 5 September 2026.
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