Native American Thrillers

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.

Henry Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away. Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.

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.

The car fire didn’t kill Navajo Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez—a bullet did. And the old man in possession of the murder weapon is a whiskey-soaked shaman named Ashie Pinto. Officer Jim Chee is devastated by the slaying of his good friend Del and confounded by the prime suspect’s refusal to utter a single word of confession or denial. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believes there is much more to this outrage than what appears on the surface as he and Jim Chee set out to unravel a complex weave of greed and death that involves a historical find and a lost fortune.

One man’s curse is another man’s weapon. Genetic engineer Neah Haversham thought unlocking the code to her psychic gift would ease the way to blocking it, something she’d wanted since puberty. Within months of finishing her studies, she discovers the life she’d planned has vanished with the rescue of a sarcastic, hardheaded teen with an unprecedented ability. Ouray Bernard is a healer and warrior, a Native American who uses his skills to train other uniquely talented individuals. When called to help the woman invading his dreams, he can’t refuse. Loyalties collide as each defends ...

Tony Hillerman's best-selling reservation series occupies a unique place in the world of mystery novels. By combining Native American lore and history with suspenseful crime stories, he enlightens and entertains his many fans. Hunting Badger takes you to the Navajo reservation where police sergeant Jim Chee is facing a thorny dilemma. One year ago, Sgt. Chee was part of an FBI search for two cop killers. The men were never caught, and Chee has always blamed police rivalry for the failure. Now several commandos have robbed a casino on the Ute reservation.

Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.

As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown 15 years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling. When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home.

A tenacious Maori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to an historic crime: 160 years before, during the brutal and bloody British colonization of New Zealand, a troop of colonial soldiers unjustly executed a Maori Chief.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa—daughter of Sámi reindeer herders—sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these “stolen” animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the Sámi’s livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself.

This white-knuckled tale is about Idaho game warden Charley Cove struggling to stop a bloody string of deer shot and left in the snow. He's stymied by a lackadaisical prosecutor and a questionable deputy - the tug of two cultures running through his veins seem to be pulling him in different directions. Cove uncovers evidence that ties the shooter to crimes against people, and unknown to the warden, his bad guy is about to come unglued and drag his bloodbath into a nightmare for a two-legged victim.

Sunny Kinnion thought he had left his past behind when he retired from the NFL. But a brutal attack by his long-lost father sends him to a remote cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he begins to experience strange visions. With the help of his Native relatives, he travels to the Shakopee reservation in Minnesota, where he uncovers a hidden world of power and secrets. But he also faces a new threat: a federal agent who can destroy the reservation and its sacred land. ‘Welcome to South Dakota’ is a riveting adventure that explores the themes of identity, culture, and destiny. ...

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.

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.

Tony Hillerman's mysteries offer a combination of Native-American lore and intriguing crimes that has made each one an instant best-seller. A wealthy Washington businessman will do anything to protect a covert operation that earns him millions of dollars. But when his activities attract the attention of reservation police, his power becomes as unstable as the desert wind.

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.