7 Weird Westerns to Read While You Wait for Red Dead Redemption 2

Jonah Hex: Shadows West, by Joe R. Lansdale
Lansdale’s Southern and Western Gothic-tinged novels and stories have long been acclaimed. His runs on DC’s Jonah Hex brought a stiff dose of weirdness to the West, pitting the scarred, gunslinging antihero against man-eating worms, mad scientists, and demonic forces. Lansdale’s experience writing bizarre, gritty Western tales adds a much-needed dimension of weird to Hex’s already off-kilter mythology, and could actually be credited for shifting the longterm direction of the series. Shadows West collects three of the best Lansdale Hex storylines, including the acclaimed “Riders of the Worm and Such.”

Conspiracy of Ravens, by Lila Bowen
The second volume of Bowen’s Shadow series ups the weirdness right away with two shapeshifters and a town full of dwarves, and then branches out into sandworms (a common theme in weird west stories, if Jonah Hex, The Burrowers, and Tremors are any indication) ancient alchemy, and corrupt former Confederates. The West of this installment may be a little less focused on monsters than the previous book, Wake of Vultures, but makes up for it with plenty of inhuman horrors in human garb and fantastic chemistry between the leads, who get a chance to spread their wings now that they’re not constantly under attack.

The Girl with Ghost Eyes, by M.H. Boroson
Set in the immigrant community of Chinatown in the 1800s, The Girl with Ghost Eyes follows Li-lin, a young daoshi exorcist, as she tries to save her father and home from an evil sorcerer and his vile minions. Boroson draws heavily on Asian folklore and Taoist magic to create a fast-paced adventure story, but the true heart of the book is the deep and detailed way he describes Chinatown, a place with its own individual factions, cultural divisions, and insular rules. It makes for a wild adventure in a fully realized world.

Lost Gods, by Brom
Brom’s vast afterlife epic seems an odd choice for a western roundup, given that it’s at least half quest fantasy. But the flourishes are very much there, from a gunslinger who plays every angle, to an outlaw trying to find a missing stash of gold during the major engagements of a civil war, a desert setting, and destructive weapons in the form of a hellforged cannon and gatling gun. One of the villains is even a Confederate officer. These bounty hunters, outlaws, ruthless killers, and other colorful characters definitely wouldn’t be out of place in one of the acid-tinged Western movies of the ’60s and ’70s.

Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear
Bear’s steampunk adventure is set in the city of Seattle at a time when the streets were still being raised up and travelers found themselves passing through on their way to the gold territories of Alaska. The main character, Karen Memery, works as a “seamstress” in the house of Madame Damnable, until the night a strange man with a mind control device and a wounded young woman find their way into the parlor. The plot is plenty weird, with Karen tangling with enough mad science, serial killers, and outsize threats to give even Jonah Hex a headache. Through it all, the novel’s defining feature is Karen herself, a resourceful heroine with an unforgettable voice.

The Hexslinger Trilogy, by Gemma Files
The twisted tale of Pinkerton agent Edward Morrow, “Reverend” Rook, and his lover Chess Pargeter, Hexslinger paints a bizarre picture of the post-Civil War US. It’s a place where brutal Pinkertons, mad science, Mayan deities, and people who can warp reality around them all hold sway. When Rook is used as a vessel for a Mayan goddess, he’s forced to sacrifice Chess to hell. But the story doesn’t end there: Chess claws his way back out and enlists an undercover Pinkerton agent to help exact his revenge, plunging the three of them into a bizarre series of entanglements and pitting them against warring factions. Files’s worlds are always richly built, detail, but the bizarre magic and strange mythos she adds to her weird West world really make this one shine.

Dark Alchemy, by Laura Bickle
Dark Alchemy is more neo-Western than weird Western, but still brings the bizarre West into focus. In the small town of Temperance, Wyoming, a geologist by the name of Petra Dee searches for clues to her father’s disappearance. Instead, she finds a town where meth flows as easily as gold once did, and a series of twisted skeletons somehow tied to the flocks of crows that keep appearing around town. It turns out that Temperance is, of course, a town with many alchemical secrets, and major powers will do anything to keep them hidden. Bickle has a good handle on her setting, but truly excels at building a steadily mounting sense of doom. It’s also a good time to catch up on Petra’s past actions, as her next adventure, Nine of Stars, comes out in December.
What alt-West stories would you add to our list?