Native Mystery

The weekend before her coffee shop's Grand Opening in the small Wisconsin town of Horizon, former Chicago marketing exec and hereditary Wiccan, Ellie Gooden, opens the back door to her new business...and finds murder. The former owner is dead in the middle of her kitchen, tied to a chair, covered in syrup and feathers, with a butcher knife sticking out of his chest. A stranger in a new town, Ellie climbs immediately to the top of a suspect list of one. To make matters worse, someone is vandalizing both her new shop and her new home.

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.

In Agatha Christie’s short story “The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge”, Poirot and Hastings are enlisted by a Mr. Roger Havering to help investigate the murder of his aristocrat uncle at his hunting lodge. Hastings discusses the murder with the housekeeper on the scene, but Poirot quickly deduces that her story doesn’t add up.

An icy chill foretells a harsh winter for the Navajo people—and for perpetually down on his luck Harley Ponyboy the situation grows increasingly desperate. What evil is this that dogs his every step? When a lucky lottery ticket comes his way, Harley uses the new resources to search for a lost love—only to find she has fallen to appalling depths. His stubborn resolve to help puts him on a collision course with her abusive companion . . . and with his own mortality.

Lieutenant John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq and the son of Gabriel Du Pré's girlfriend, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Du Pré and Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. They locate him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze, but a sobering visit to a medicine man's sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery.

For Jonathon Roth and his family, a vacation in Cozumel became a nightmare. Pawns in a deadly ritual, Roth and his children barely escaped with their lives, and with the secrets of mastermind Jacob Calakmul. Calakmul’s endgame: to fulfill the Jaguar Prophecies—the foretelling of an inevitable Armageddon, one that will destroy entire nations. The key to stopping it is to retrieve an ancient codex—if Roth can decipher it.

Secrets...scandal...murder...An autistic boy and his brother need potter Shandra Higheagle’s help when a teacher’s body is found after a confrontation with the older brother. Shandra knows the boy is innocent. Digging into the teacher’s life, she and Ryan turn up scandal. Detective Ryan Greer has believed in Shandra’s dreams in the past, but she can’t always be right. When his investigation uncovers a principal on the take, females being harassed, and parents kept in the dark, he discovers more suspects than the brothers.

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.

When a young woman linked to a list of missing Fire-Sky tribal members commits suicide, Pueblo Police Sergeant Nicky Matthews is assigned to the case. As the investigation unfolds, she uncovers a threat that strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Fire-Sky Native: victims chosen and murdered because of their genetic makeup. But these deaths are not just about a life taken. In a vengeful twist, the killer ensures the spirits of those targeted will wander forever, lost to their family, their people, and their ancestors.

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?

When the local trader is found murdered the only clue points directly at Lucy Tallwoman. The FBI sweeps in to discover a decades-old trail of deceit and betrayal as the darker days of Lucy's past come back to haunt her. The family decides they need help . . . and fast.

No one called her Mud in Silicon Valley. There, she was Mae, a high-powered professional who had left her Kiowa roots behind a decade ago. But a cryptic voice message from her grandfather, James Sawpole, telling her to come home sounds so wrong that she catches the next plane to Oklahoma, where she finds a tribe in disarray. When Mud and her cousin Denny discover her grandfather missing, accused of stealing the valuable Jefferson Peace medal from the tribe museum—and stumble across a body in his work room—Mud has no choice but to search for answers.

With his heart blown to bits by a staggering loss, Sheriff Zeb Hanks falls into an abyss of drunkenness, hatred, and rage. With the help of Deputy Kate Steele, former sheriff Jake Dablo, medicine man Jimmy Song Bird, and close friend Josh Diamond, Zeb pulls himself back from the edge and turns his rage on the cause of his torment: a Mexican drug and human trafficking cartel.

When Gabriel Du Pré's precocious granddaughter, Pallas, returns from her studies in Washington, D.C., the entire clan in Toussaint, Montana, is happy to see her. Except Du Pré, that is, because the crotchety old fiddlin' cowboy knows that where Pallas goes, trouble is likely to follow. A van full of praying, protesting fundamentalist Christians has arrived in Toussaint at just about the same time. A young soldier follows, just back from Iraq, missing a leg, an eye, and his grip on reality. Du Pré suspects that he's going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future.

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.

The Spotted Pony Casino’s head of security, Dela Alvaro, receives a late-night call that takes her to a deserted walkway along the river. After confronting a woman babbling about love and bodies being buried, Dela stumbles over a corpse and discovers her knife covered in the victim’s blood.

This remarkable book synthesizes a lifetime of in-depth research into one of America's most storied disasters, the defeat of Custer's 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, as well as the complete annihilation of that part of the cavalry led by Custer himself. The author, Gordon Harper, spent countless hours on the battlefield itself as well as researching every iota of evidence of the fight from both sides, white and Indian. He was, thus, able to recreate every step of the battle as authoritatively as anyone could, dispelling myths and falsehoods along the way.

The gruesome corpse of a young woman is found beside a long Montana highway called the Hi-Line. Her jaw and teeth are missing, and she is impossible to identify. Full of anger and without a clue, Du Pre begins to hunt the countryside for her murderer. As more dismembered corpses - all young women - are discovered, the small ranching community goes into shock.

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.

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.