Native American Mysteries

Sergeant Jim Chee’s vacation to beautiful Antelope Canyon and Lake Powell has a deeper purpose. He’s on a quest to unravel a sacred mystery his mentor, the Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, stumbled across decades earlier. Chee’s journey takes a deadly turn when, after a prayerful visit to the sacred Rainbow Bridge, he spots a body floating in the lake. The dead man, a Navajo with a passion for the canyon’s ancient rock art, lived a life filled with many secrets. Discovering why he died and who was responsible involves Chee in an investigation that puts his own life at risk.

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.

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.

The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.

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.

Find the artifacts, solve her parent's disappearance. That is Kai's goal after she notices artifacts missing at the Smithsonian during her internship. Little does she know at the beginning of the summer that her whole is about to change when she embarks on the most difficult mission of her life. As she is discovering her Navajo heritage at the museum, she also discovers she has a gift. Shapeshifting. She meets Atsa on the reservation who helps her harness her ability for good so she can stop the artifact thief before it's too late and the oil pipeline wipes out what is left of her heritage....

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...

At a moonlit Indian ruin where "thieves of time" ravage sacred ground in the name of profit, a noted anthropologist vanishes while on the verge of making a startling, history-altering discovery. Amid stolen goods and desecrated bones, two corpses are discovered, shot by bullets fitting the gun of the missing scientist. There are modern mysteries buried in despoiled ancient places, and Navajo Tribal Policemen Leaphorn and Chee must plunge into the past to unearth an astonishing truth and a cold-hearted killer.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring.

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.

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.

Deadfall tracks Charlie Yazzie, Thomas Begay, and Harley Ponyboy into unfamiliar territory. When a family member unexpectedly dies, a debilitating sense of loss overcomes our friends on the reservation. The ties that have bound them begin to unravel. What witch's evil is at work? Is the bond forever broken? Or is there a connection to the ancient past that might bring this malevolent aura to an end?

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.

On the day after Christmas in 1862, thirty-eight Dakota Sioux Indians were hanged in the largest mass execution in United States history. More than a century later, Kyle Ghostkiller is given the chance to go back and save them. Kyle has just returned to his hometown to accept a medicine bundle that gives him the power to time travel and reverse a curse on an old government document. But when four teenagers are found brutally murdered, newcomer Kyle becomes a prime suspect. With the FBI hot on his trail, and a jilted childhood sweetheart learning to love him all over again, Kyle escapes into...

Book Five in the Littlemoon Investigation series. Roman Remington has a secret. It stems from his childhood and his family. He’s a child of privilege who, on a horrible day, lost it all. His family had created, built, and run a teaching empire. The wealthy from around the country sent their children to Remington Academy to get their educations. At one time, it was the best the East coast had to offer. Haven had it all… Literally. Something horrible lurked there in the hallowed halls. It was death. It was destruction. It was blood. So Roman did what he thought best. He left, never to ...

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".

Alaska aviation entrepreneur Finn Grant died in the fiery crash of his Piper Super Cub. Someone sabotaged his engine, and virtually everyone in southwestern Alaska has a motive, including his betrayed wife, his bullied children, and Liam’s wife, bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard. With few places to turn, Liam asks his former mentor Niniltna post commander Sergeant Jim Chopin, for help, and Jim quickly brings Kate onto the case. Working undercover as - of all things - a waitress at Bill’s Bar and Grill, Kate learns over beer and burgers that Grant’s business had expanded meteorically over the last two years.

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...

Jane Teaberry hopes her life will settle down after all the trouble she found last summer. She moves into her college dorm with her friend, Peaches Parker, and just as they are settling into college life, one of the students is attacked during a break-in at the Archaeology lab where Peaches’ dad works. Two sand paintings from a recent dig in New Mexico are missing and Jane is determined to find out why. On the way to the library to learn more about them, someone pushes Jane out in front of a car. Trouble follows the girls when Jane, Peaches, and her cousin Ashley go on a road trip out ...

This James Lee Burke novel, featuring Son Holland - the great-grandfather of Burke's Billy Bob Holland - as he flees a Louisiana prison camp with a Native American woman and a fellow prisoner in tow, is now available in audio.