Round Up these Western Award Winners and Finalists

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| By Gale Staff |

Gritty, authentic, and filled with larger-than-life personalities, Westerns remain a perennial favorite of readers. Five Star Publishing, proud of its history of providing engaging narratives and characters, is pleased to announce that seven of its titles have been recognized as 2020 Spur Award-Winners and Finalists from the Western Writers of America. Learn more about these “best of the west” titles ready to delight your loyal Western fans from our family of publishers.  

Available from Five Star Publishing:

The Medicine Robe, Winner – Best Western Short Fiction Category
By Michael Zimmer, ISBN: 9781432854669
(From Contention and Other Frontier Stories)

Contention and Other Frontier Stories features 17 brand new stories that capture the spirit of freedom and individualism in the evolving American frontier through the early 1900s and feature exciting new characters who face life-changing challenges in settings that are in stark contrast to civilized society

Michael Zimmer is the author of 18 novels; his work has been praised by Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Historical Novel Society, and more.

Friends Call Me Bat, Finalist – Best Western Traditional Novel Category
By Paul Colt, ISBN: 9781432855017

William Barclay “Bat” Masterson lived an extraordinary life when the West was wild, encountering some of the most deadly gunfighters and dangerous desperados. Friends Call Me Bat is his story and those of his friends as he might have told them, complete with an otherworldly twist at the end.

“Lively writing style….”
Booklist on The Bogus Bondsman

Legend, Finalist – Best Western Short Fiction Category
By Johnny D. Boggs, ISBN: 9781432864330
Return to Laurel, Finalist – Best Western Short Fiction Category
By John D. Nesbitt, ISBN: 9781432864330
(From Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories)

Seventeen brand-new stories that capture the spirit of freedom and individualism in the evolving 19th-century American frontier will delight historical fiction fans. Ranging from high-action traditional Westerns to introspective historical dramas set in the American West, readers will discover previously untold stories about tenacious individuals.

Johnny D. Boggs, who Booklist magazine said was “among the best Western writers at work today,” has won six Spur Awards as well as other nationally known recognition.

John D. Nesbitt is the author of more than 40 books, including traditional westerns, crossover western mysteries, contemporary western fiction, retro/noir fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Available in large print from Thorndike Press:

On Swift Horses, Winner – Best Western Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel Category
By Shannon Pufahl, ISBN: 9781432872861

A lonely newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law follow divergent and dangerous paths through the American West. On Swift Horses is a debut of astonishing power: a story of love and luck, of two people trying to find their place in a country that is coming apart even as it promises them everything.

“She (Pufahl) evokes the fear and possibility of life in a new place, with new emotions. She writes with a grace and force that’s rare even among seasoned writers.”
–  Los Angeles Times

Cherokee America, Winner – Best Western Traditional Novel Category
By Margaret Verble, ISBN: 9781432865122

In the early spring of 1875, plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check Singer, a Cherokee Nation matriarch: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. Family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community – and painfully expel one of their own.

“Cherokee America is an excellent illustration of how diverse books enrich literature, and the minds of those who read them.”
The New York Times

Available in large print from Wheeler Publishing:

The Cost of Dying, Finalist – Best Western Mass Market Category
By Peter Brandvold, ISBN: 9781432872175

After a hard night with his sometime lover Louisa, Lou Prophet decides to cool his heels at a local honky-tonk. When things heat up and he defends one of the girls from a sadistic brute, who happens to be the deputy sheriff, Prophet is forced to run for his life. Headed south to Mexico, he’s got a bounty on his head and even more trouble headed his way.

 “Here’s a writer with hot, fast violence and the guts to write what he wants.”
– Tom McNulty, Dispatches from the Last Outlaw

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