Native Mystery Fiction

This white-knuckled tale is about Idaho game warden Charley Cove struggling to stop a bloody string of deer shot and left in the snow. He's stymied by a lackadaisical prosecutor and a questionable deputy - the tug of two cultures running through his veins seem to be pulling him in different directions. Cove uncovers evidence that ties the shooter to crimes against people, and unknown to the warden, his bad guy is about to come unglued and drag his bloodbath into a nightmare for a two-legged victim.

Hazel Lesage never expected it to be her. Then again, she didn’t plan on becoming an unlicensed PI, helping the 'throwaway people.' However much has changed in Amiskwaciy, the problem of poor Indigenous women and girls being expendable hasn't. Nobody else is going to help the Augusts find out who killed their daughter Nell; so Hazel takes the case. And then she takes the dog. What follows will force Hazel and her family to confront the question of what it means to be Human, and what it matters to be Humane.

The Mighty Muskrats are off to the city to have fun at the Exhibition Fair. But when Chickadee learns about Grandpa’s little sister, who was scooped up by the government and adopted out to strangers without her parents’ permission many years ago, the Mighty Muskrats have a new mystery to solve. Once in the bright lights of the big city, the cousins get distracted, face off with bullies, meet some heroes and unlikely teachers, and learn many of the difficulties of life in the city, as well as hard truths about their country’s treatment of First Nations people.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

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.

Fish and Wildlife State Trooper Gabriel Hawke's job is to find a missing family in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. After finding the parents murdered, can he find a little girl on the run? Hawke is an expert tracker, but he isn’t the only one looking for the child. Even leaving the mountain, the girl isn’t safe. The murderers are looking for something - something they believe the child possesses.

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.

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.

Bureau of Indian Affairs special agent Joe Evers still mourns the death of his wife and, after a bungled investigation, faces a forced early retirement. What he needs is a new career, not another case. But when Congressman Arlen Edgerton's bullet-riddled Lincoln turns up on the Navajo reservation—twenty years after he disappeared during a corruption probe—Joe must resurrect his failing career to solve the mysterious cold case.

The ancient Indian art of tracking is his greatest strength...and also his biggest weakness. Fish and wildlife state trooper Gabriel Hawke believes he’s chasing poachers. However, he comes upon a wildlife biologist standing over a body that is wearing a wolf-tracking collar. He uses master tracker skills taught to him by his Nez Perce grandfather to follow clues on the mountain. Paper trails and the whisper of rumors in the rural community where he works draws Hawke to a conclusion that he finds bitter.

"How do you overturn an election?" It's a question that has obsessed presidential candidate Jamie Carter ever since her loss to businessman and political neophyte President Jack Smart. In spite of the election results, she's determined to take what she sees as her rightful place in the White House - through any means possible.

In 1988, a crumbling personal diary is unearthed near an Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The weathered pages reveal disturbing insights into the author's guilt-ridden mind. The journal, written by James Johansen in 1966, details his brief stay on a desolate Reservation. James is a middle-aged psychologist recruited from East Los Angeles who becomes too intrigued with the disjointed stories of a young Indian woman who appears at the door of his primitive two-room Counseling Center.

Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself.

Brandon Walker, once the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, no longer feels he has purpose. A reluctant retiree living in the long shadow of his wife, Diana Ladd, a successful author of true-crime books, he is bored with life. Salvation comes with an invitation to join The Last Chance, an exclusive fraternity of former cops and forensic experts who look into unsolved murders.

Barney Dwyer is a gentle giant who has yet to find a place in the world. Capturing two notorious outlaws has made a hero of him, so much so that rancher Robert Parmelee offers him a job on his ranch to put a stop to persistent rustling. Taking the job promises an income sufficient for Barney to marry his sweetheart. But this promise for the future falls into jeopardy when the outlaws escape, determined to kill Barney.

In Agatha Christie’s short story “The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman”, Poirot and Hastings investigate the suspicious death of Count Foscatini in his apartment in Regent’s Court. Found dead at the dinner table, with three empty dinner plates, the suspicion is immediately placed on his two dinner guests. But is there more to the story?

Unfairly convicted and force into indentured servitude, young Highland Scot Duncan McCallum finds himself aboard a prisoner ship bound for the New World. A series of mysterious deaths plagues the passengers and claims the life of Duncan’s dear friend Adam Munroe. Enlisted by his captors to investigate, a strange trail of clues leads Duncan into the New World and eventually thrusts him into the bloody maw of the French and Indian War.

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

The residents of Alaska’s largest national park are stunned by the death of one of their oldest members, 87-year-old Old Sam Dementieff...even private investigator Kate Shugak. Sam, a lifelong resident, dubbed the “father” of all of the Park rats - even though he had no children of his own - was especially close to Kate, his niece, but even she is surprised to discover that in his will he’s left her everything, including a letter instructing her simply to, “find my father".

In Agatha Christie’s short story “The Case of the Missing Will,” Poirot must help clever student Violet Marsh meet the terms of an unusual will by her Uncle Andrew. She must live in his house for a month and “prove her wits” if she is ever to receive his fortune. But is there another will?