Native Mystery

By blood, bone and history, Austin Bullock is now chief of his nation, responsible for maintaining the welfare of his people and the land. By choice, he left the reservation years ago to teach high-school history, to coach basketball in the white man's school, and to seek an identity apart from his Native American heritage. Now the waters of Lost Man Marsh and the song of the Tie-snake call Austin to return. Someone outside the Nation has sinister plans for the people who live there.

Journey through the colonies of 19th-century Australia with three stand-alone novels of love, loss, survival, and redemption. In 1806, a fateful decision sends Eleanor Marling from the salons of London to a prison ship bound for New South Wales. She is put to work at the female factory of Parramatta. English settler Grace Ashwell flees an abusive lover in Hobart Town, with six-year-old Violet in tow. Deep in the wilderness, they find a crude hut inhabited by an escaped convict long presumed dead.

The Wind River Reservation agrees to a nuclear-waste storage site in exchange for jobs and millions in revenue. But murder points Vicky Holden and Father John toward a larger plot.

When the body of a white man is recovered from a shallow grave in one of the most troubled corners of the Wind River Reservation, Father John O'Malley knows that if the murderer isn't caught quickly, this tragedy will only be the beginning. The victim's widow is already out for revenge. And the one person Father John believes could lead him to the killer is a terrified 15-year-old girl running for her life.

An historian, who is convinced that the memoirs of 19th-century Shoshone heroine Sacajawea are stashed somewhere on the reservation, has disappeared.

Film star Sharon David travels to Wind River country, convinced that she was adopted at birth from the reservation.

Father John O'Malley and attorney Vicky Holden investigate the murder of an Arapaho student interested in a priceless Arapaho ledger, a ledger recently missing from a museum.

Time is not on Faye Longchamp’s side. She and her husband Joe are working near the mouth of the Mississippi, researching archaeological sites soon to be swamped by oil. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has morphed her run-of-the-mill contract job into a task that might swamp her fledgling company. It isn’t helping that an injured babysitter has left Faye to work with a toddler underfoot.

Mercy Gunderson is a straight shooter with a hard edge. On medical leave from the Army, she returns home to South Dakota, which isn't much safer for her than Iraq. Arriving just after the death of her father, it is up to Mercy to decide what to do with the family ranch. Trying to deal with her irresponsible sister and nephew, while silently coping with her own guilt, Mercy is suddenly pulled into the local community when the body of a Native American boy is found on her land.

From Kirk Mitchell comes a riveting suspense thriller in the tradition of Tony Hillerman and Joseph Wambaugh, featuring Bureau of Indian Affairs Criminal Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, two Native American cops searching for justice between their heritage and the law.

The safest place they know is about to become the most dangerous… Marcella's husband, Quinn "Black Eagle" Hollister, severed ties to his family and friends on the Seneca reservation years ago. He rarely mentions his past-until his young cousin Kitty collapses on the couple's doorstep in the dead of a rainswept night. After two Seneca men break into their home with intent to kill, the Hollisters flee with the mute and injured girl to Tall Pines, their cabin in the Adirondacks.

After four women disappear from the Taos Pueblo reservation, Deputy Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran dives into the case. For her, it’s personal. Among the missing is her best friend, Paloma, a heroin addict who left behind an eighteen-year-old son. Eva senses a lack of interest from the department as she embarks on the investigation. But their reluctance only fuels her fire. Eva teams up with tribal police officer and longtime friend Cruz “Wolf Song” Romero to tackle a mystery that could both ruin her reputation and threaten her standing in the tribe.

Accident or homicide? State trooper Gabriel Hawke is called to a vehicle on fire. When the steam and smoke clears, a charred body is slumped over the steering wheel. The Muzzleloader Rendezvous has attendees from all over the Pacific Northwest, but it’s the local club that raises Hawke’s suspicions.

When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du Pre the man. The Metis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he's got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town. As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe's testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the interrogation program.

Ben Pecos has the opportunity to work in Albuquerque on a research project for the Indian Health Service, and his fiancée Julie Conlin decides to join him when she snags an invitation for the couple to stay at the lavish home of an old family friend, Connie CdeBaca, who is the head of a family of successful land developers. But Connie harbors a deep secret she has never told anyone. Ben and Julie are hardly settled when people begin dying, and they find themselves swept into the midst of another mystery.

It's unlike Erica Davidson's dad to meddle in other people's business, much less write an anonymous letter to a beautiful, young stranger. But that is exactly what Dean Davidson has done. Days later, the girl is found dead at the bottom of Cimarron Falls. Erica, a high-powered attorney in Nashville, travels to the idyllic town of Ridgway, Colorado, to help her parents navigate these shocking developments. She is immediately swept into a series of events that holds everything from closely guarded secrets, to possible murder, to the plot of a John Wayne movie shot in the area.

Gabriel Du Pré’s aunt Pauline has burned through more than her share of husbands, so it’s no surprise when she shows up in Toussaint complaining that the latest one, Badger, has run off. Du Pré, the fiddler and sometimes deputy, agrees to go looking for her man and finds him shot, execution-style, in the wilds of the Montana countryside. A chat with his contacts at the FBI reveals that Badger, a small-time drug smuggler, had been working for them since his last arrest. Pauline’s husband was bait, but the big fish got away.

Retired chief of police Marty Sacco is now the head of the Dead Files Department. His first case involves the 20-year-old murder of Susan Hall. He is then approached by Frank Gibran, a notorious crime boss. There have been five murders at a private school, including Gibran’s grandson. Despite grave reservations, Marty takes on that case too. His investigation into both complicated crimes uncovers old secrets and new revelations that are not what anyone expects.

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.

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.