Native American Thrillers

The night of Nan's eighteenth birthday was spent on graveyard duty at the Sequoyah Boarding School for Orphan Indians. You would think that it would have been a quiet night. However, the apparition of her grandmother and her message changed the course of her life in mere seconds. Nan does everything she can to outrun destiny but fate, and her grandmother, have something else in mind: to take her place as the Beloved Woman of the Cherokee. Rather than face the unknown at the Indian Village of Galowhisdi, Nan does the one thing everyone knows you shouldn't—she runs from her destiny. Nan is ...

A woman's skeleton is found on the Wind River Reservation. Forensics determine the woman was shot to death in 1973. Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden and Father John O'Malley are determined to find the identity of the forgotten woman and see that she is laid to rest in the traditional Arapaho way. As the life and death of the woman begin to come into view, Vicky and Father John realize that, after 30 years, the killer still on the reservation and that they are about to be his next victims.

In the snowy Aerie Valley of Aspen, Colorado, asking too many questions can result in abduction and death. Greed and vengeance trigger a chain of events fraught with monstrous corruption and violent struggles in the snowbound communities where Indigenous and Non-Native people share a landscape of natural wonder and exorbitant riches. In a race against a perilous deadline, Kayne Sorenson and Nick Sechi must uncover a murder-for-hire scandal that plagues this playground of winter activities and a land sacred to an ancient and noble people. When blood revenge demands justice, who will win and ...

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.

She found love in the West but no peace. He found forgiveness but no rest. Now a new adversary threatens their future together: a proud Lakota warrior named Crazy Horse. Southern war widow Annabelle is eager to start a new life in a Montana gold rush town with Union cavalryman Josey Angel. But the infamous gunman has one last debt to repay. Then a band of warriors seizes Annabelle in a bloody raid, placing her at the center of the deadliest Indian war America has ever seen. Her captor, Crazy Horse, seeks to kill the white men who have trespassed on his people’s land, even as he’s ...

Dreams tell old man Paul T'Sosi he's dying. So why is Navajo trickster Magpie trying to tell him a far more terrifying secret? Hungry for revenge, Ma'iitsoh Dine', the Navajo Wolf, is out for blood. Summoning his darkest powers, the Witch of Ganado circles tribal investigator Charlie Yazzie's young son and close friends. Some may survive the witch's evil vendetta, but others will die to settle an old score.

The murder of an esteemed archaeologist is fueling an already heated war between natives and the academics who excavate their land. And when the coroner confirms that the victim was cannibalized, the story takes a twisted turn. Private eye Howard Moon Deer and ex-police chief Jack Wilder are on the case. The killing appears to be a modern mimicry of the Anasazi's rumored past - one the tribe thinks would be best left buried. But Howard and Jack must search for clues even if it means digging up sacred land. As they struggle to fight tribal politics, the killer strikes again.

Former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn comes out of retirement to investigate a simple robbery. But soon the trail leads back 50 years, to a plane crash in the Grand Canyon that killed a man protecting a fortune in diamonds.

An ancient, disabled girl holds the key to unlock two modern day murders on the Dine Bikeyah. Archeology and murder entwine in Chappell's latest Canyon Lands thriller.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

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. ...

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.

From one of the bestselling western novelists of all time, comes another classic story. Templeton Lambeth had so desperately wanted a son - an heir to ride by his side through the vast, wild ranges just west of the Pecos River. But to his disappointment, his wife bore a girl. His hopes crushed and in denial, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a boy. In honor of Lambeth's more successful brother, they named her: Terrill.

Though he may be retired, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn hasn’t lost his curiosity or his edge. He’s eager to help Sergeant Jim Chee and his fiancée Bernie Manuelito with their latest case—clearing an innocent kid accused of robbing a trading post. Billy Tuve claims he received the precious diamond from a strange old man in the canyon. Could it be one of the gems that went missing in an epic plane crash decades earlier? Now that it may have resurfaced, it’s attracted dangerous strangers to the Navajo lands.

Though he’s officially retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Joe Leaphorn occasionally helps his former colleagues Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito crack particularly puzzling crimes. But there is that rare unsolved investigation that haunts every lawman, including the legendary Leaphorn. Joe still hasn’t let go of his “last case”—a mystery involving a priceless Navajo rug that was supposedly destroyed in a fire. Nine years later, what looks like the same one-of-a-kind rug turns up in a magazine spread, and the man who showed Joe the photo has gone missing.

The story of a Civil War soldier finding his humanity in the face of horrible savagery. Emerging from the Civil War a shamed and broken man, Stephen Latch turns to a life of thievery and murder. Still hoping to uphold the values of the Confederacy, Latch sets his sights on the wealth of resources pouring westward from the northern United States, putting together a band of ruthless misfits to help him stake his claim of the riches of the caravans.

Unfairly convicted and force into indentured servitude, young Highland Scot Duncan McCallum finds himself aboard a prisoner ship bound for the New World. A series of mysterious deaths plagues the passengers and claims the life of Duncan’s dear friend Adam Munroe. Enlisted by his captors to investigate, a strange trail of clues leads Duncan into the New World and eventually thrusts him into the bloody maw of the French and Indian War.

Historical photographs are on display at the museum of St. Francis Mission on the Arapaho reservation, and history seems doomed to repeat itself. A descendant of the tribal chief who appeared in the pictures has been shot to death, and the museum's curator has disappeared. The two incidents may be linked to a near century-old murder.

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.

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?