28 Novels set in Montana

Backtrack is a western novel by Milton Lott, published in 1965. The book is about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, and features cowboy Ringo Rose and a Mexican boy whom he fathers. He teaches the kid skills he needs to survive, including gunfighting. When the kid shoots a man and flees, Ringo follows him across Texas to Ringo's former home. The book was made into a movie by Universal Studios in 1969.

The Big Sky is a 1947 Western novel by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. It is the first of six novels in Guthrie's sequence dealing with the Oregon Trail and the development of Montana from 1830, the time of the mountain men, to "the cattle empire of the 1880s to the near present." The first three books of the six in chronological story sequence — The Big Sky, The Way West, and Fair Land, Fair Land — are in themselves a complete trilogy, starting in the 1830s and ending in the 1870s.

A Bloom of Bones: a novel is a 2016 novel by Allen Morris Jones. It follows the life of Eli Singer, a rancher and poet, in eastern Montana.

Buckskin Brigades is a Western novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, first published July 30, 1937. The work was Hubbard's first hard-covered book, and his first published novel. The next year he became a contributor to Astounding Science Fiction. Winfred Blevins wrote the introduction to the book. Some sources state that as a young man, Hubbard became a blood brother to the Piegan Blackfeet Native American tribe while living in Montana, though this claim is disputed. Hubbard incorporates historical background from the Blackfeet tribe into the book.

Canada is a 2012 novel by American author Richard Ford. The novel follows 15-year-old Dell Parsons, who must learn to fend for himself after his parents are arrested for robbing a bank. The book also re-visits Great Falls, Montana, a setting that Ford frequently uses in his work. It was Ford's first "stand alone" novel since Wildlife (1990).

Christine Quintasket or Hum-ishu-ma, better known by her author name Mourning Dove, was a Native American author best known for her 1927 novel Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range and her 1933 work Coyote Stories.

Death of a Dude is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1969.

Ivan Doig was an American author and novelist, widely known for his sixteen fiction and non-fiction books set mostly in his native Montana, celebrating the landscape and people of the post-war American West.

The Englishman's Boy is a novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe, published in 1996 by McClelland and Stewart, which won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1996 and was nominated for the Giller Prize. It deals with the events of the Cypress Hills Massacre (1873) as told 50 years later to a young screenwriter in Hollywood by the last living survivor.

Fair Land, Fair Land is a 1982 Western novel by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. It is one in a sequence of six books dealing with the Oregon Trail and the development of Montana from 1830, the time of the mountain men, to "the cattle empire of the 1880s to the near present".

Fools Crow is a 1986 novel written by Native American author James Welch. Set in Montana shortly after the Civil War, this novel tells of White Man's Dog, a young Blackfeet Indian on the verge of manhood, and his band, known as the Lone Eaters. The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a powerful portrait of a culture under pressure from colonization. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants.

Grizzly is the fifteenth novel in World of Adventure series by Gary Paulsen. It was published on October 6, 1997 by Random House.

The Horse Whisperer is a 1995 novel by English author Nicholas Evans. The book was his debut novel, and gained significant success, becoming the 10th best selling novel in the United States in 1995, selling over 15 million copies. This also makes it one of the best-selling books of all time.

Hunting For Hidden Gold is Volume 5 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap. The book ranks 111th on Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Book List for the United States, with 1,179,533 copies sold as of 2001.

Invasion is a 1975 horror novel by American writer Dean Koontz, originally released under the pseudonym Aaron Wolfe. In 1994 Koontz re-released the book under the title Winter Moon, including updates and revisions. Winter Moon is the current title under which the book can be purchased.

Let Him Go is a 2013 American neo-Western drama novel by Larry Watson. The book was released on September 3, 2013 through Milkweed Editions.

Lords of St. Thomas is a 2018 historical novel by American writer Jackson Ellis. The novel won the inaugural Howard Frank Mosher Book Prize in 2017, selected by Howard Frank Mosher himself shortly before his death in January 2017.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a coming-of-age teen novel by Emily M. Danforth published in 2012. The novel's protagonist is Cameron Post, a 12-year-old Montana girl who is discovering her own homosexuality. After her parents die in a car crash, she lives with her conservative aunt and her grandmother. When the romantic relationship she develops with her best friend is discovered she is sent to a conversion camp.

Mission to America is a novel by American novelist Walter Kirn.

Montana 1948 is a 1993 novella by Larry Watson. The novella focuses on the life of young Montanan David Hayden, his family and the fictional town of Bentrock, Montana, and focuses on the struggles of a family torn between loyalty and justice. It was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize.

Petey (1998) is a children's novel by Ben Mikaelsen, published in 1998 and set in the 1920s and 1990s.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is the debut novel by American author Reif Larsen, first published in 2009. The book follows the exploits of a 12-year-old mapmaker named T.S. Spivet, who lives on a ranch near Divide, Montana, as he receives a prestigious award and accepts it, hitch-hiking on a freight train for the acceptance speech in Washington D.C.. The book is noteworthy for its unique design; the plot-line is illustrated with images which further the narrative by providing charts, lists, sketches, and maps accompanying each page, mirroring T.S.'s cartographic interests and his minute attention to detail.

A Sound of Lightning is a 1976 novel written by Australian author Jon Cleary and set in Montana.

Spill is a 1991 fictional thriller by Les Standiford about a lethal biological weapon that has leaked from a crashed tanker truck in Yellowstone National Park. Agents of PetroDyne Corporation, the Denver-based chemical company responsible for manufacturing the banned agent, works with its co-conspirators in the government to cover up the incident. A Yellowstone National Park Ranger named Jack Fairchild finds himself in the middle of the coverup and does everything in his power to help his friends escape an assassin named Skanz.

Train Dreams is a 2011 novella by Denis Johnson. It was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 30, 2011. It was originally published, in slightly different form, in the Summer 2002 issue of The Paris Review.

Truth and Bright Water is a bildungsroman by Thomas King set in the Canadian Prairies on the Canada–United States border. The novel embeds a number of magical features within painstakingly realist prose, showing its affiliation with Magic realism.

Wolf: The Journey Home, originally titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, is a 1997 American young adult novel written by 'Asta Bowen. Originally published by Simon & Schuster with line drawings by Jane Hart Meyer, it was retitled and reprinted without illustrations in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Based on true accounts of the Pleasant Valley, Montana, wolf pack, the novel traces the life of a female alpha wolf named Marta after the forced relocation of her pack in 1989 to an unfamiliar territory. Terrified, Marta abandons her pack and begins a journey in search of her home; she eventually arrives in Ninemile Valley, where she finds a new mate with whom she starts a new pack.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is the debut novel of author Michael Dorris, published in 1987. It tells the story of three generations of Native American women: Rayona, who is half African-American, her mother Christine, and Christine's mother Aunt Ida. The story is told in three distinct sections, one for each woman. Throughout the book, themes of family, identity, and heritage are highlighted and examined.