Native Mystery Fiction

James "Orlando" Sherwood has resurrected the old Shadow Dance religion, having his followers dance for days at a time for the promise of an Indian paradise. And when lawyer Vicky Holden's estranged husband is found murdered, Father John O'Malley believes that Orlando has more to do with it than he lets on. But to get the proof, Father John and Vicky Holden will have to learn to dance to his music.

Someone has left three dead Shoshones on an historic battlefield, positioned to mimic the bodies of those Arapahos killed in the slaughter. Frankie Montana, attorney Vicky Holden's latest client, is a frequent guest of the reservation's holding cells, and after a recent heated encounter with the three dead men, is the number one suspect in their deaths. But despite his faults, Vicky doesn't believe he is capable of murder.

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.

How far would you go to protect a loved one? Would you tamper with evidence? Commit arson? Allow a prime suspect to remain at large? Pegasus Quincy and her former partner, Shepherd Malone, have some difficult choices ahead when Shep’s daughter is caught with a murder weapon in her hand. It doesn’t help when the detective on the case has problems of his own. When he applies to the sheriff’s department, he conveniently forgets to mention that he was terminated from his previous position under a cloud of fraud.

What started out as a favor and a leisurely trip into the mountains, soon turns State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s life upside down. The snowstorm they were trying to beat comes early, a horse accident breaks Dani Singer’s leg, and Hawke finds a body in the barn at Charlie’s Lodge.

Mortician Tennessee England lives to honor the dead. But a slow season means she’s back freelancing as a party planner. Doctor Phillip Saint James warns the stress might worsen her cerebral aneurysm, causing all sorts of mystifying symptoms. To her disgust, he’s right. She’s been hallucinating a sexy ghost samurai all damn day. Or has she? His icy touch on the nape of her neck feels awfully real! So do his dire warnings that she must choose a side: mortal or immortal.

In the dense jungles of 1530 Peru, King Manco Inca finds himself in a hell that he cannot escape. The evil and vicious Pizarro Brothers and their fellow Spanish conquistadors have wreaked havoc on his lands and have conquered his kingdom. A violently real portrayal of the Spanish Conquest of the New World, Brothers and Kings is an epic historical-fiction thriller that presents men at their best and their most cruel.

The Conquistadors Trilogy is a sweeping historical fiction epic that explores the violent and horrific Spanish Conquest of the New World from the years 1527 to 1542. Told through the eyes of a Spanish soldier named Sardina, each journey, from the jungles of Peru, through the vast Arizona deserts, and finally to the great Mississippi River, brutally reveals the traumatic events of the Spanish Conquest of the Natives of the Americas. But each story also depicts the beauty and bravery of these people, and the unyielding courage of each tribe, kingdom, and village.

After a month of mental and spiritual leave, Janice sends Zack on a simple mission to locate a cave containing an ancient earthen pot known only through the ravings of a delirious and dying man, somewhere in the Matilija Wilderness. To his mind, it is a task beneath his rank. And his partner Eagle Feather is taking a college course and is unavailable. But Zack dutifully travels to Ojai, California, locates a guide, and hikes into the wilderness to find the cave. What he doesn't know it is not just any cave, and not just any pot, for inside it lurks a strange and deadly disease.

Shortly after his mother is killed in a car accident, Lucas leaves foster care at Wounded Arrow and returns home to Havelock to live with his dad. At his elementary school, Lucas stumbles upon three Muslim boys forcefully recruiting a young Muslim boy to carry out a school shooting. Lucas intervenes on behalf of Ali Kharim and comes away from the encounter carrying a pistol with scorpions engraved on its pearl handles. Little does he know that inserted into the butt of the gun is a flash drive.

David is a blue-collar man, spending his days managing the Albuquerque Wastewater Utility plant, and nights ruminating over his painful past. Not much of import happens in his world, and that's just fine by him. That is, until a severed hand is found among the filtered debris of one of the waste filtration tanks. Thinking a few hours of paperwork will be all it takes to clear the episode from David's life, fate sends a beautiful Sheriff's Deputy named Gina, along with a series of events that drag him deep into something more sinister than he ever could have imagined.

Lawyer Tom McLaren makes a trip to the outback, where he hopes to talk an Aboriginal community into giving up their land to his client, a mining magnate. Negotiations prove difficult and lengthy, and Tom and his colleagues take a weekend trip deep into the outback, where they hope to get some fresh ideas. To their horror, they become caught in a dangerous altercation with a deranged gunman, and their trip soon becomes a nightmare.

When the local authorities tell State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s mother to wait 72 hours before reporting a missing Umatilla woman, she calls her son and rallies members of the community to search. Hawke arrives at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and learns the single mother of a boy his mom watches would never leave her son. Angered over how the local officials respond to his investigating, Hawke teams up with a security guard at the Indian casino and an FBI agent.

When Sarah brings home a box of assorted items from a market stall, she has no idea what she is about to unleash. Stored within an ornate box, Sarah finds a set of fortune-telling cards, each beautifully and intricately illustrated. Sarah’s dreams become more vivid and start to spill out into the real world - with deadly consequences. It doesn’t take long for Sarah to realise the danger that she, and everyone she knows, is now in.

Cold case disappearances in Western Montana gave renewed relevance to a local Native American legend of Saka'am Skaltamiax, a malevolent entity from the caverns of Great Northern Mountain. But Sheriff Jim Buchanan believed in his daughter, Junior Deputy Alma Rose Two Elk, when she told him, “Today, I saw a flesh and blood man. That’s the killer we’re looking for.”

Living is hard on the high lonesome, but dying is easy. When two of Nick Drake’s oldest Paiute friends disappear during a robbery of ancient relics that leads to a double murder, his race to find them puts him on a collision course with an obsessed killer. And that’s only for starters. A plane crash on a snowy mountainside after a wedding and with a baby on the way leads to a desperate fight for survival. Only one outcome is certain: Life will never be the same for Nick, Gemma, Pudge, November, and the other characters.

An ancient shaman and his granddaughter travel to Harvard to pick up 2,047 skeletons stolen from the ruins of their family pueblo. She wants their time together to heal their broken hearts. He hopes the road trip will make her appreciate family. He fashions a dreamcatcher which sometimes hurls Hollow-Woman into the past to experience her ancestors.

In the shadow of a massive boulder on Oklahoma’s Big Rock Prairie, a squirrel hunter discovers a charred skeleton in a homemade charcoal kiln. Johnston County deputy Hannah Bond and Chickasaw Lighthorse police sergeant Bill Maytubby are called to the scene and soon identify the victim as a young Chickasaw man from a nearby town. What begins as the search for a killer soon throws Maytubby and Bond into the deep end of a conspiracy that puts both the victim’s family and the officers themselves at risk.

In an air-conditioned university office, a man lies dead, brutally bludgeoned. A hundred miles away, in the high, arid New Mexico mountain country that Sheriff Cliff Lansing is sworn to protect, an animal is devastating ranchers' livestock, and is now turning to human prey.... For Lansing, the two cases are linked. The murder victim was part of an archaeological dig, and a local Indian believes that the animal killings have been unleashed by the excavations.

Dela Alvaro is the main suspect in the stabbing death of a man she stopped from beating his wife to death. The detective she abhors is ready to toss her in jail and not look for any other suspects. When FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce is called in and Tribal Officer Heath Seaver is forbidden to work the case, Dela decides to find the killer.