Native Mystery Fiction

Who owns what is traditionally considered sacred? Can the Catholic Church legally conspire with the federal government to steal the most sacrosanct of Native American holy places? Holes in the Sky, the second in the series Zeb Hanks: Small Town Sheriff with Big Time Troubles, explores these questions in a clash of cultures mixed with mysterious deaths.

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.

hn Signal, fleeing from a murder charge in a fair fight, arrives in the mining town of Monument. Calling himself John Alias, he is made a deputy sheriff by Sheriff Peter Ogden, who puts Alias between two crooked factions and fails to give him any support.

John Henry Cole is an operative of Ike Kelly's Detective Agency, based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Returning to Cheyenne from what had been a deadly assignment in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Cole has decided that he has no alternative but to resign from the agency and pursue a different line of work. However, in Cheyenne, Cole learns that Ike Kelly has been murdered and his body burned in a fire that destroyed both the agency office and the shop next door.

Business lately has been deadly for Ike Kelly. Recent unexpected gunplay has left his agency to a single operative. John Henry Cole is that operative. Kelly has received a letter from former lover Lydia Winslow, who operates an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. "Three young women have been murdered since they arrived in camp." It is obviously a dangerous assignment, and Cole is advised that he must take every precaution - as if he needed such advice.

Nick Drake confronts a double-feature of murder and mysticism when Sheriff Pudge Warbler enlists him to catch a killer among the movie stars and film crew turning Harney County into a celluloid version of the Old West. At the same time, he runs afoul of a sinister gold mining company after finding an old prospector shot in the back.

From one of the most beloved Western authors comes an epic historical tale of adventure and romance in the great wilderness. Against the epic backdrop of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad across plains and deserts and through the mountains to meet up with the Southern Pacific in Utah comes a sprawling, historical tale. Warren Neale is a brilliant civil engineer who is constantly confronted with construction problems. He is sided by Larry Red King, a Texas gunfighter and friend.

A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of 19th-century America. While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim Wales struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom. Robbers' Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West.

Lew Sherry and Pete Lang accept an offer they simply can't resist. Oliver Wilton is willing to pay the cowboys $1,000 a day for ten days to protect him from danger that has him living in a state of terror. A seafaring man has arrived at the inn in town and has made no secret of the fact that he's come to settle a score with Wilton.

On a sunny July day, Jennifer becomes lost in a sacred wilderness area and stumbles upon evidence of terror and murder. As darkness falls, she learns of crimes that modern day tribal police know only too well - insertion of meth on reservations by cartels, Middle Eastern jihadists laundering money in Indian casinos, and the secret creatures in the sacred areas of the reservation that the Indians won't talk about. A night of terror begins for Siyapu (white girl) Jennifer Kruger.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

A string of gruesome deaths in the Shiprock area has attracted the attention of FBI agent Diane Lopez. The killer is unmistakably a vampire - but the only vampire Diane knows of is State Police officer Lee Nez. One of the good guys. The victims worked for a secret government lab that was studying a captured vampire, Stewart Tanner. Driven mad, Tanner broke free and took revenge on his tormenters. Now he’s threatening to kill a powerful judge unless the feds promise to leave him alone.

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.

It's frustrating for local law enforcement to come up against a piece of scum like Newton Glover. He's dirty as hell, everyone knows that - breaks into and vandalizes his neighbors' homes; cheats and steals from everyone; folks suspect he deals drugs and porn. He's even killed a man and gotten away with it. He gets away with all of it, hinting that he has a secret government background and that he's "protected" by the Powers That Be. Glover may finally have gone too far.

A tribe will do anything to protect their own. Described as a modern day Dances with Wolves, Cold River Rising is unlike any novel you've heard before. While on spring break from college, Native American Tara Eagle is kidnapped in a foreign land. Her tribe closes its borders, declares war, and sends an unlikely team to rescue her. They are joined by others.

For FBI Agent Zack Tolliver, a pleasure trip to the Central Coast of California turns into dangerous business when he becomes immersed in a case involving drug smuggling, rival cartels, murder, and an ancient myth. The clues add up, the victims pile up, the mystery grows, the danger deepens.

When US Fish & Wildlife Ranger Nick Drake gets a beautiful and impetuous new supervisor, he quickly becomes pulled into a physical and emotional cauldron after she orders him to guide her down a dangerous and deadly river. As rapids roar and passions roil, Nick must battle waterfalls and whirlpools, an unearthly predator killing anything that ventures into its realm, and doubts about his frayed marriage following the adoption of a psychologically scarred boy.

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.

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.