Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2024 - Mysteries and Thrillers by Indigenous Authors
- Sara M.
- Thursday, February 15
Collection
Check out a book from this list to fulfill the 2024 Broader Bookshelf prompt "Read a book by or about someone from an Indigenous culture".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Indian Killer
Published in 1996
The plight of John Smith, an Indian stolen as a baby from his parents and brought up by whites. Angry because he has no roots he joins the street people, becoming a suspect when Seattle is hit by a serial killer who scalps his all-white victims. By the author of Reservation Blues.
The Darkness Rolling
A Novel
Published in 2015
"Upon his return from World War II, Seaman Yazzie Goldman realizes that not much has changed at his family's trading post in Monument Valley--and yet everything is different. His grandfather, Moses Goldman, has suffered a debilitating stroke, and while Yazzie's mother Nizhoni is doing her best, the post is slowly falling apart. Nizhoni is thrilled that Yazzie has returned to help bring the trading post back to prosperity. Excitement comes from the nearby filming of a John Ford movie starring Henry Fonda. Director Ford enlists the tall, strong, half-Navajo and half-Jewish Yazzie to serve as a translator, and as a bodyguard for the beautiful actress Linda Darnell. Someone is sending Linda threatening letters, and as Yazzie investigates, he finds himself falling for her. Yazzie isn't the only one to have recently returned home. A man who calls himself Zopilote, the Buzzard, has spent the last twenty-five years in jail steeping himself in the ancient Navajo chant "Darkness Rolling" and consumed with rage at the people who put him there--Yazzie's mother and grandfather. A thrilling, heart-pounding read of family, adventure, romance, and vengeance, The Darkness Rolling is the first in an evocative historical mystery series by award-winning authors Win and Meredith Blevins"-- Provided by publisher.
Skeleton Man
Published in 2009
A chilling middle grade novel featuring a brave young girl, missing parents, and a terrifying stranger, based on a Native American legend. R.L. Stine, New York Times bestselling author of the Goosebumps series, raved, "This book gave ME nightmares!" Molly's father, who grew up on the Mohawk Reserve of Akwesasne, always had the best scary stories. One of her favorites was the legend of Skeleton Man, a gruesome tale about a man with such insatiable hunger he ate his own flesh before devouring those around him. But ever since her parents mysteriously vanished, those spooky tales have started to feel all too real. Don't miss The Legend of Skeleton Man: a spine-tingling collection of Skeleton Man and its sequel, The Return of Skeleton Man!
Chenoo
A Novel
Published in 2016
"Jacob Neptune, a wise-cracking, two-fisted Penacook private investigator with a checkered past, lives in upstate New York--four hundred miles from his tribal community on Abenaki Island. Then one night the phone rings. "We. got. trouble," Neptune's cousin Dennis says from the other end. And trouble is where it all starts in this brilliant, often hilarious novel by acclaimed Abenaki storyteller Joseph Bruchac. Attacked by bikers before he can even board his plane, Neptune--"Podjo" to his friends--quickly begins to realize just how much trouble surrounds his people's ancestral home. Guided by his sense of duty to his homeland, he agrees to help protect Dennis and other Penacooks as they stage a takeover of a state campground on land that should have reverted to their tribe. But encroaching developers, government operators, and even fellow Penacooks eager to build a casino each pose a threat to the Abenaki lands--and all have reasons to want Neptune out of the picture. Podjo greets each challenge with self-deprecating humor--but it's difficult to shake his increasingly disturbing dreams, and an unsettled feeling when his return leads to a reunion with a long-ago love interest. As he and Dennis contend with hired guns, police, and security, a far greater threat appears: someone, or something, is brutally killing people in the woods. It will take all of Neptune's skills as a martial arts fighter and the wisdom gained from tribal elders to battle the forces that threaten the sacred land--and his and his people's lives. Bruchac ratchets the tension from the first page to the last in this detective novel that pairs comedy and action with serious consideration of corporate greed, environmental destruction, cultural erosion, and other modern-day issues pressing Native peoples"-- Provided by publisher.
Shutter
Published in 2022
"Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases-she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won't let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from her hometown on the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law. And now it might be what gets her killed. When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim-who insists she was murdered-latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque's most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome prose, Shutter is a blood-chilling debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices"-- Provided by publisher.
Entangled Moon
A Novel
Published in 2018
"Long ago, Heather left her old life behind. Now, she has everything: a marriage to a handsome executive, a managerial human resources position in a powerful multinational, and a beautiful daughter. And she will do anything to keep it that way. But everything has a price. When a bullet ends the life of another woman--an ex-employee whom Heather helped fire--it sets off a chain of events that jeopardizes everything for which Heather has worked. Events of Heather's past soon collide with her company's wrongdoings, and she must risk everything to expose them. But all she's ever known is the peril of being visible. Frightened and desperate, Heather calls upon her constant childhood friends--friends who long ago saved her from a life of pain--and, together, they will once again face the events of a traumatic night that each has sought to forget. Because sometimes the only ones who can save you are those with whom you share your deepest and darkest secrets--those who know that fear is the price of silence."--Publisher's description.
Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch
Published in 2018
The fourth cozy mystery featuring Cherokee sleuth Sadie Walela features murder, intrigue, and romance--Provided by publisher.
Anadarko
A Kiowa Country Mystery
Published in 2015
"This is the second installment of the story begun in "The Osage Rose." Set in 1923, two years after the first novel, this sequel follows two detectives, the Irish ex-cop J.D. Daugherty, and the part-time detective/part time auto mechanic/fulltime Oklahoma Cherokee Hoolie Smith as they investigate the disappearance of a white geologist, Frank Shotz. The novel is set in the aftermath of the violent Tulsa race riots in June 1921 and moves between its primary setting--the small town of Anadarko, Oklahoma and the adjacent Kiowa allotments--and the secondary setting of Tulsa. It is 1923 and Prohibition is in full swing, thus the two private detectives' investigation into what seems to be a simple missing persons case ultimately brings to light a web of murder, graft, and injustice tied to a network of bootlegging." Provided by the publisher.
The Things She's Seen
Published in 2019
The ghost of a girl who recently died in an accident makes contact with her grieving father to help solve a mystery in a remote Australian town, where a girl who speaks entirely in riddles is the only witness to a fatal fire.
Evil Dead Center
A Mystery
Published in 2017
"An Ojibwa woman has been found dead on the outskirts of the Minnesota Red Earth Reservation. The coroner ruled the death a suicide, but after an ex-lover comes back into her life saying foul play was involved, Renee LaRoche wants to prove otherwise. As the events begin to unfold, Renee conducts a presumably normal welfare check on a young Ojibwa boy in foster care. After she learns the boy has suffered abuse, Renee finds herself amid an investigation into the foster care system and the deep trauma it has inflicted on the Ojibwa people. As Renee uncovers horrible truths, she must work through her own childhood issues to help shine a light on the dark web she has stumbled into"-- Provided by publisher.
Elatsoe
Published in 2020
"Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day. Seventeen-year-old Elatsoe ("Ellie" for short) lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect façade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family" -- Publisher's description.
The Cherokee Rose
A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts
Published in 2023
"Conducting research for her weekly column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owed by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century. At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house's dark history, the three women's connection to place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property's rightful ownership, Jinx reexamines assumptions about her tribe's racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family's past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance." -- Back cover.
Murder on the Red River
Published in 2017
Cash and Sheriff Wheaton make for a strange partnership. He pulled her from her mother's wrecked car when she was three and has kept an eye out for her ever since. Cash navigated through a succession of white foster homes, and at thirteen was working on farms. She's tough as nails and makes her living driving trucks. It's a rough place to live -- Fargo-Moorhead in the early 1970s. Wheaton wants her to take hold of her life, stop fooling around with married men and the American Indian Movement, and attend junior college. So there they are, staring at the dead Indian lying in the field. Soon Cash was dreaming about the dead man's cheap house on the Red Lake Reservation, mother and kids waiting. She has that kind of power.
Sinister Graves
Published in 2022
"A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe. Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home. When Cash happens upon two small graves in the yard of a rural, "speak-in-tongues kinda church," Cash is pulled into the lives of the malevolent pastor and his troubled wife while yet another Native woman dies in a mysterious manner"-- Provided by publisher.
Never Name the Dead
A Novel
Published in 2022
"Old grudges, tribal traditions, and outside influences collide for a Kiowa woman as forces threaten her family, her tribe, and the land of her ancestors...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...When Mud and her cousin Denny discover her grandfather missing...and stumble across a body in his work room--Mud has no choice but to search for answers. Mud sets out into the Wildlife Refuge, determined toclear her grandfather's name and identify the killer"-- Provided by publisher.
This Town Sleeps
A Novel
Published in 2020
"Set on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, This Town Sleeps is the story of Marion Lafournier, a gay Ojibwe man, and his search for meaning in a town he cannot seem to leave. When he begins a romance with a closeted former high school classmate Shannon, Marion finds himself struggling to connect with the volcanic and unstable man. One night, while roaming the dark streets of Geshig, Marion unknowingly brings to life a dog from underneath the elementary school playground. The mysterious revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered at the young age of seventeen, and whose presence still lingers in the memories of the townsfolk. While investigating the fallen hero's death, Marion discovers family connections and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the secret to unraveling the mystery he has found himself in." --Provided by publisher.
Stealing
A Novel
Published in 2023
"Since her mother's death, Kit Crockett has lived alone with her grief-stricken father, spending lonely days far out in the country tending the garden, fishing in a local stream, and reading Nancy Drew mysteries from the library bookmobile. One day when Kit discovers a mysterious and beautiful woman has moved in just down the road, she is intrigued. Kit and her new neighbor Bella become fast friends. Both outsiders, they take comfort in each other's company. But malice lurks near their quiet bayou and Kit suddenly finds herself at the center of tragic, fatal crime"-- Provided by publisher.
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
Published in 2021
"Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell in this deliciously strange and daringly original novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble: set in 1926 Nashville, it follows a death-defying young Cherokee horse-diver who, with her companions from the Glendale Park Zoo, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries"-- Provided by publisher.
Winter Counts
A Novel
Published in 2020
Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop. They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.