Native American Thrillers

Loki Redmond is positive her grandfather's 100 acre farm in Mississippi will be the perfect place for Jake Savior to heal after the murder of his wife and his banishment from law enforcement before they begin their partnership in Redmond Private Investigations. But fate has other plans. The discovery of a month-old baby and young girl with no memory of her name, running from a man she calls The Devil, plunges them into danger.

FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, a Modoc Indian from California, and Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmett Parker, a Comanche from Oklahoma, are a team, sent by the Feds wherever there are problems in tribal territory.

For four generations, the Messmers have raised cattle in the rough country of eastern Montana. When the current owners die in a motor home accident, they leave the ranch to their son - an ominous development for everyone in the area, both human and bovine. Larry Messmer left Toussaint in the 1980s, when he got in trouble for bludgeoning a horse to death, and Gabriel Du Pré hoped he would never come back. Larry announces his return by having his ranch hands kill every weak cow on the property.

The murder of an esteemed archaeologist is fueling an already heated war between natives and the academics who excavate their land. And when the coroner confirms that the victim was cannibalized, the story takes a twisted turn. Private eye Howard Moon Deer and ex-police chief Jack Wilder are on the case. The killing appears to be a modern mimicry of the Anasazi's rumored past - one the tribe thinks would be best left buried. But Howard and Jack must search for clues even if it means digging up sacred land. As they struggle to fight tribal politics, the killer strikes again.

When Howard Moon Deer's girlfriend Aria storms from his cabin in the middle of the night, he just considers it another conflict in their tempestuous relationship. But when he finds her Jeep abandoned down the road with no sign of her nearby, his instincts lead him on an investigation that uncovers the dark underbelly of a trendy southwestern town.

Shortly after private eye Howard Moon Deer decides to settle down with his latest lady love, he accepts a new case that takes him away from the home front and introduces him to the dangerous passions that drive San Geronimo's thriving art scene. Howard and ex-police commander Jack Wilder have been hired to investigate Sherman Stone, a man notorious for his torrid liaisons and low-life friends. Rumor has it that he's planning to have his wealthy wife killed. But before Howard can separate fact from fiction, a local hobo is murdered, and then Sherman himself meets an untimely end.

Sergeant Jim Chee’s vacation to beautiful Antelope Canyon and Lake Powell has a deeper purpose. He’s on a quest to unravel a sacred mystery his mentor, the Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, stumbled across decades earlier. Chee’s journey takes a deadly turn when, after a prayerful visit to the sacred Rainbow Bridge, he spots a body floating in the lake. The dead man, a Navajo with a passion for the canyon’s ancient rock art, lived a life filled with many secrets. Discovering why he died and who was responsible involves Chee in an investigation that puts his own life at risk.

Tony Hillerman's best-selling reservation series occupies a unique place in the world of mystery novels. By combining Native American lore and history with suspenseful crime stories, he enlightens and entertains his many fans. Hunting Badger takes you to the Navajo reservation where police sergeant Jim Chee is facing a thorny dilemma. One year ago, Sgt. Chee was part of an FBI search for two cop killers. The men were never caught, and Chee has always blamed police rivalry for the failure. Now several commandos have robbed a casino on the Ute reservation.

A lost gold mine, a corpse in an abandoned pickup truck, and an eerie wailing heard on Halloween are among the delicious plot elements Tony Hillerman cooks up in his 15th novel featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The two Navajo cops, one old and one young—who originally debuted in separate series but have been collaborating for many books now—are among the most engaging, fully human characters in crime fiction. As The Wailing Wind beautifully demonstrates, there's only one Tony Hillerman ... and he's at the top of his game.

Jenna Rosen returns to the place in Alaska where her young son, Bobby, disappeared without a trace two years before. Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mystery of his death. But ancient legends may have had a hand in Bobby’s fate, forcing Jenna to sift through her own Native American ancestry to uncover the truth.

Everybody loves scary stories, and nobody loves them more than children. Storytellers Richard and Judy Dockery Young gathered these stories from the most discerning of critics: the children themselves. These are the tales kids tell most often and most often ask to be told.

Something is rotten in the Fort Belknap Reservation. Life has always been tough on this barren stretch just south of the Canadian border, but now the children are dying. While playing his fiddle in a reservation bar, part-time deputy Gabriel Du Pré meets an accordionist who suspects that the children’s health defects and low test scores are connected to the nearby Persephone mine.

In Alaska, 100 years of bad blood between the villages of Kushtaka and Kuskulana come to a boil when the body of a young Kushtaka ne'er-do-well is found wedged in a fish wheel. Sergeant Jim Chopin's prime suspect is a Kuskulana man who is already in trouble in both villages for falling in love across the river. But when the suspect disappears, members of both tribes refuse to speak to Jim. When a second murder that looks suspiciously like payback occurs, Jim has no choice but to call in Kate Shugak for help.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

The seventh novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series: Scarecrows are appearing in the cliffs above the Smith River in Montana, and state investigator Harold Little Feather is trying to discover the culprit leaving the hay figures in the cliffs, with signs painted that read "No Smith River Mine - Not on My Watch." The event is related to a copper mine project that threatens the river, but his investigation takes an ominous turn when a little girl claims that a scarecrow chased her in the night.

In Alaska, people disappear every day. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak's Park, they've been disappearing a lot lately. Hikers head into the wilderness unprepared and get lost. Miners quit without notice at the busy Suulutaq Mine. Suicides leave farewell notes and vanish. Not only are Park rats disappearing at an alarming rate, but so is life in the Park as Kate knows it.

Lt. Joe Leaphorn, who can't seem to stay retired, investigates a case that takes him back to his earliest days with the Navajo Tribal Police. When Erwin Totter's trading post burned to the ground back in 1965, the news that Ray Shewnack, a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted List, had perished in the blaze drew all available officers to the scene. Joe Leaphorn was pulled away from Grandma Peshlakai's, where he'd gone in hopes of recovering the ten gallons of pinyon sap stolen from her. It was a waste of time, Grandma Peshlakai insisted, since the man was certainly dead.

A lost and frightened horse plods down the National Mall, startling the crowd. When Gabriel Du Pré spots the confused animal, the connection is immediate, for neither of these creatures belongs in the sweltering heat of a DC summer. Du Pré, a Métis Indian from the wilds of Montana, calms the horse and leads it to the nearest policeman. Du Pré is in Washington to play his people’s music for a Smithsonian festival, but after leading the horse to safety, he encounters a murder instead.

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

Joe Leaphorn may have retired from the Tribal Police, but he finds himself knee-deep in a perplexing case involving a priceless artifact - a reminder of a dark time in Navajo history. Joe’s been hired to find a missing biil, a traditional dress that had been donated to the Navajo Nation. His investigation takes a sinister turn when the leading suspect dies under mysterious circumstances and Leaphorn himself receives anonymous warnings to beware - witchcraft is afoot.