Tom Lin’s astounding debut reimagines the classic Western through the eyes of a Chinese American assassin on a quest to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact his revenge on her abductors. Jonathan Letham calls The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu “a fierce new version of the Westward Dream,” and “declares the arrival of an astonishing new voice.” “Beautifully imagined,” raves Booklist. “Lin’s first novel is an extraordinary epic with page-turning, often cinematic action that transcends the parameters of genre fiction.” These recent diverse westerns are all either books I’ve read, books I am in the process of reading (my Libby shelf is straining!) or books I have requested from the library and am waiting for. I have not included any books by Lisa See, because hers are less westerns and more epic in scale, much like Isabel Allende’s books, but they are very much worth checking out and her family is very important in the history of Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Lurie is an outlaw haunted by ghosts on a long trek that will lead him straight to Nora. I have the audiobook of this one (read by Anna Chlumsky, Edoardo Ballerini, and Euan Morton) and am looking forward to ever traveling again so I can listen to it! Living in California post–Colorado River Compact, I am especially interested in draught stories.
