Native American Mysteries

Reunited by a grave robber and a corpse, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is trying to determine the identity of a murder victim, while Officer Jim Chee is arresting Smithsonian conservator Henry Highhawk for ransacking the sacred bones of his ancestors. But with each peeled-back layer, it becomes shockingly clear that these two cases are mysteriously connected - and that others are pusuing Highhawk, with lethal intentions. And the search for answers to a deadly puzzle is pulling Leaphorn and Chee into the perilous arena of superstition, ancient ceremony, and living gods.

A phone call in 1975 changes Moon Mathias’s life forever, as a voice on the line tells him his dead brother’s baby daughter—a child Moon never knew existed—is waiting for him in Southeast Asia. A task he believes beyond his meager talents is pulling Moon to Vietnam. In a chilling world of mystery and silence, disguise and deception, he’ll risk everything for the sake of one little girl—and discover a Moon Mathias who’s a better man than he ever thought he could be.

What begins as a typical day for Officer Bernadette Manuelito - serving a bench warrant, dealing with a herd of cattle obstructing traffic, and stumbling across a crime scene - takes an unexpected twist when she’s called to help find an old friend. Years ago, Bernie and Maya were roommates, but time and Maya’s struggles with addiction drove them apart. Now Maya’s brother asks Bernie to find out what happened to his sister. Tracing Maya’s whereabouts, Bernie learns that her old friend had confessed to the murder of her estranged husband, a prominent astronomer.

When tribal police officer Bernadette Manuelito arrives to speak at a program for at-risk teens, she discovers chaos. Everyone is concerned about a beloved instructor who went out into the wilds of the rugged lava wilderness bordering Ramah Navajo Reservation to find a missing girl. The instructor vanished somewhere in the volcanic landscape known as El Malpais. The instructor's disappearance mirrors a long-ago search that may be connected to a case in which the legendary Joe Leaphorn played a crucial role.

Book six in the Littlemoon Investigations series. Lennox Easton has one hell of a problem. Someone wants her dead. Her whole family has been eradicated in one single decade, and she’s the last woman standing. It’s all hers, and there’s nothing she wants more than to escape it all. Yes, she’s rich, entitled, and the talk of the town, but not everything is what it seems. Lennox is about her art. She’s about the peace, and then…she’s about one very cranky man. When she busts into Littlemoon Investigations, she needs their help. Her time is running out, and she knows it won’t be...

Truth is Found Book 4 In the Littlemoon Investigations series. The family has taken one hell of a hit. Justin’s wife has lost her baby in an accident that nearly stole all their lives. While the family has rallied around them, it’s not working. Justin is still slipping away. Julian wants to be there for his brother, but Justin is beyond angry-- at Tori. He blames her, himself, and the universe for the accident that stole away his happiness. Just when it gets to the breaking point, Julian and Tori have to take a case. They promised the owner of Darkwoods Monastery Vineyard that they’d ...

Charlie and Thomas Begay find themselves caught up in a dangerous, intrigue-filled adventure involving one of the canyon lands' oldest riddles. Dark secrets are revealed in this fast-paced mystery of a forgotten people.

Doing a good deed for a relative offers the perfect opportunity for Sergeant Jim Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, to get away from the daily grind of police work. But two cases will call them back from their short vacation and separate them - one near Shiprock and the other at iconic Monument Valley.

They survived America’s deadliest Indian war; winning a lasting peace proves even more dangerous for new mother Annabelle and Union sharpshooter Josey Angel. The couple are thriving as ranchers during Montana’s gold rush. With an end to fighting on the “Bloody Bozeman” trail, they can build a family home. But when a series of gruesome murders jeopardizes treaty negotiations, Annabelle and Josey must find and clear the name of the warrior who once held Annabelle captive: Crazy Horse. “He’s just as likely to kill me as listen to me,” Josey says of the man determined to drive off...

With her half-breed son and her abdomen growing with child, returning to the white man society is a struggle, even with the Ranger’s help. In 1858, Clare Rose Coulson of Silver Sage Creek, Texas, is traumatized as a band of Apache Indians murder her husband, her father, and best friend. When kidnapped, she tries to escape only to be captured by another band, but quickly learns this band is Comanche and different. They aren't warriors or savages, but a peaceful, loving people. While living with the band, she learns to respect the Indian ways and settles into a life she never dreamed. Four ...

Joe Leaphorn may have retired from the Tribal Police, but he finds himself knee-deep in a perplexing case involving a priceless artifact - a reminder of a dark time in Navajo history. Joe’s been hired to find a missing biil, a traditional dress that had been donated to the Navajo Nation. His investigation takes a sinister turn when the leading suspect dies under mysterious circumstances and Leaphorn himself receives anonymous warnings to beware - witchcraft is afoot.

A teacher is dead, a boy is missing, and a councilwoman has put a lot of pressure on Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee to find her grandson. Sitting on a rooftop watching sacred clowns perform their antics in a Pueblo ceremony, Chee spots the boy. Then, suddenly, the crowd is in commotion. One of the clowns has been savagely murdered. Without a single clue, Chee and Leaphorn must follow a serpentine trail through the Indian clans and nations, seeking the thread that links two brutal murders, a missing teenager, a band of lobbyists trying to put a toxic dump site on Pueblo land, and an invaluable memento given to the tribes.

A single blade of grass danced wildly on the upper edge of our wallowed-out hole. It waved in victory, and I waved back. I was a survivor also. None of this would break me. Fifteen-year-old Izzy Andrus was a survivor on a mission. In Gum Pond, Mississippi, 1831, the Andrus acreage was the assembling post for the first Choctaw Tribe to be moved west. When several of the young girls disappear, Izzy decides to follow. Being a fan of Mark Sullivan and Dorothy Johnson, Sue entwined her Native American history, with the western culture, and added a hero and storyline that will steal your heart.

Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp, honed by his work as a private detective. His experience will be essential to solve a compelling new case: finding the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagáana family but believes she is Diné based on one solid clue, an old photograph with a classic Navajo child’s blanket.

Jake Webber should be feeling great. He was in the prime of life. He was a young successful corporate attorney in Pittsburgh living in a a posh shadyside townhouse. But Jake didn't feel. Jake had a secret. Since childhood Jake had vivid and powerful dreams that were so realistic he sometimes had trouble distinguishing between his dreams and the real world. His new pro bono case had Jake feeling even more uncertain and had Jake not only questioning his own reality but the very structure of existence!

When a car bomb kills a young man in the Shiprock High School parking lot, Officer Bernadette Manuelito discovers that the intended victim was a mediator for a multimillion-dollar development planned at the Grand Canyon. But what seems like an act of ecoterrorism turns out to be something far more nefarious and complex. Piecing together the clues, Bernadette and her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, uncover a scheme to disrupt the negotiations and inflame tensions between the Hopi and Dine tribes.

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.

An unexpected death on a lonely road outside of Utah’s Bears Ears National Park raises questions for Navajo Tribal Police officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. Why would a seasoned outdoorsman and well-known paleontologist freeze to death within walking distance of his car? A second death brings more turmoil. Who is the unidentified man killed during a home invasion where nothing seems to have been taken? Why was he murdered? An illicit business, a fossilized jaw bone, hints of witchcraft, and a mysterious disappearance during a blizzard add to the peril.

In Alaska, people disappear every day. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak's Park, they've been disappearing a lot lately. Hikers head into the wilderness unprepared and get lost. Miners quit without notice at the busy Suulutaq Mine. Suicides leave farewell notes and vanish. Not only are Park rats disappearing at an alarming rate, but so is life in the Park as Kate knows it.

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.