A Leaphorn and Chee Novel

Latest release: October 13, 2009
Series
18
Books

About this ebook series

Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“Brilliant…as fascinating as it is original.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, the first novel in his series featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn & Officer Jim Chee who encounter a bizarre case that borders between the supernatural and murder

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place—a corpse with a mouth full of sand—abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer.

There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch leads him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.

The Blessing Way
Book 1 · Mar 2009 ·
4.5
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“Brilliant…as fascinating as it is original.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, the first novel in his series featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn & Officer Jim Chee who encounter a bizarre case that borders between the supernatural and murder

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place—a corpse with a mouth full of sand—abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer.

There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch leads him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.

Dance Hall of the Dead
Book 2 · Oct 2009 ·
4.5
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

The Edgar-Award winning second novel in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s bestselling and highly acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series

“Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller.”—New York Times Book Review

Two Native American boys have vanished into thin air, leaving a pool of blood behind them. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police has no choice but to suspect the very worst, since the blood that stains the parched New Mexico ground once flowed through the veins of one of the missing, a young Zuñi. But his investigation into a terrible crime is being complicated by an important archaeological dig . . . and a steel hypodermic needle. And the unique laws and sacred religious rites of the Zuñi people are throwing impassable roadblocks in Leaphorn’s already twisted path, enabling a craven murderer to elude justice or, worse still, kill again.

Listening Woman: A Novel
Book 3 · Oct 2009 ·
4.3
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!

“Hillerman’s mysteries are special . . . Listening Woman is among the best.”— Washington Post

The third novel in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s highly acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series.

The blind shaman called Listening Woman speaks of witches and restless spirits, of supernatural evil unleashed. But Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police is sure the monster who savagely slaughtered an old man and a teenage girl was human.

Now the solution to a horrific crime is buried somewhere in a dead man’s secrets—and in the shocking events of a hundred years past. To ignore the warnings of a venerable seer, however, might be reckless foolishness when Leaphorn’s investigation leads him farther away from the comprehensible . . . and closer to the most brutally violent confrontation of his career.

People of Darkness
Book 4 · Mar 2009 ·
4.7
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!

“Hillerman . . . is in a class by himself.”— Los Angeles Times

The fourth novel in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s highly acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series.

A dying man is murdered. A rich man’s wife agrees to pay three thousand dollars for the return of a stolen box of rocks. A series of odd, inexplicable events is haunting Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and drawing him alone into the Bad Country of the merciless Southwest, where everything good struggles to survive, including Chee. Because an assassin waits for him there, protecting a thirty-year-old vision that greed has sired and blood has nourished. And only one man will walk away.

The Dark Wind
Book 5 · Mar 2009 ·
4.4
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+! 

The fifth novel in Tony Hillerman's iconic Leaphorn and Chee mystery series

The corpse had been “scalped,” its palms and soles removed after death. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police knows immediately he will have his hands full with this case, a certainty that is supported by the disturbing occurrences to follow. A mysterious nighttime plane crash, a vanishing shipment of cocaine, and a bizarre attack on a windmill only intensify Chee’s fears. A dark and very ill wind is blowing through the Southwestern desert, a gale driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed. And it will sweep away everything unless Chee can somehow change the weather.

The Ghostway
Book 6 · Oct 2009 ·
4.6
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+! 

The sixth installment in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee series—an electrifying thriller of revenge, secrets, and murder.

“One of the best of the series.”—New York Times Book Review

Old Joseph Joe sees it all. Two strangers spill blood at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One dies. The other drives off into the dry lands of the Big Reservation, but not before he shows the old Navajo a photo of the man he seeks.

This is all Tribal Policeman Jim Chee needs to set him off on an odyssey that moves from a trapped ghost in an Indian hogan to the seedy underbelly of L.A. to an ancient healing ceremony where death is the cure, and into the dark heart of murder and revenge.

Skinwalkers
Book 7 · Oct 2009 ·
4.6
Don’t Miss the AMC television series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, coming this summer! 

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, Skinwalkers is the seventh novel featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee—a riveting tale of sorcery, secrets, and murder.

Three shotgun blasts rip through the side of Officer Jim Chee’s trailer as the Navajo Tribal Policeman sleeps. He survives, but the inexplicable attack has raised disturbing questions about a lawman once beyond reproach.

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn wonders why Chee was a target and what connection the assault has to a series of gruesome murders that has been plaguing the reservation. But the investigation is leading them both into a nightmare of ritual, witchcraft, and blood . . . and into the dark and mystical domain of evil beings of Navajo legend, the “skinwalkers.”

A Thief of Time
Book 8 · Oct 2009 ·
4.8
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“All of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo tribal police novels have been brilliant, but A Thief of Time is flat-out marvelous.”—USA Today

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time is the eighth novel featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee as they find themselves in hot pursuit of a depraved killer.

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. In his breakout novel, Hillerman paints a stunning portrait of the psychology of murder—and offers a heart-rending example of love and forgiveness.

 

Talking God
Book 9 · Oct 2009 ·
4.8
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“For the many enthusiastic fans of Tony Hillerman’s previous mystery novels . . . only one thing needs to be said: Talking God is the best one yet!” — USA Today

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, Talking God is the ninth novel featuring beloved characters Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Office Jim Chee

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 pursuing 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.

Coyote Waits
Book 10 · Mar 2009 ·
4.9
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

Don’t Miss the AMC television series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, coming this summer! 

The tenth novel in Tony Hillerman's acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series — “Bolt the door, disconnect the phone, and declare yourself off limits....Coyote Waits is a real confounder, not at all what you expected.” (Denver Post)

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. But the hungry and mythical trickster Coyote is waiting, as always, in the shadows to add a strange and deadly new twist.

Sacred Clowns
Book 11 · Oct 2009 ·
5.0
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman comes another unforgettable mystery in which Leaphorn & Chee must race against the clock to solve two brutal murders.

“[Hillerman's] clowns are . . . every bit as raucous, profane, and funny as Shakespeare's."—New York Times Book Review

During a kachina ceremony at the Tano Pueblo, the antics of a dancing koshare fill the air with tension. Moments later, the clown is found bludgeoned to death, in the same manner a reservation schoolteacher was killed only days before.

Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believe that answers lie in the sacred clown's final cryptic message to the Tano people. But to decipher it, the two Navajo policemen may have to delve into closely guarded tribal secrets—on a sinister trail of blood that links a runaway, a holy artifact, corrupt Indian traders, and a pair of dead bodies.

 

The Fallen Man: A Leaphorn and Chee Novel
Book 12 · Oct 2009 ·
4.7
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman comes another thrilling mystery featuring Leaphorn & Chee who must investigate a cold case that has far more personal consequences than expected.

“Gripping.”—New York Times Book Review

Human bones lie on a ledge under the peak of Ship Rock mountain, the remains of a murder victim undisturbed for more than a decade. Three hundred miles across the Navajo reservation, a harmless old canyon guide is felled by a sniper's bullet. 

Joe Leaphorn, recently retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, believes the shooter and the skeleton are somehow connected and recalls a chilling puzzle he was previously unable to solve. But Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee is too busy to take an interest in a dusty cold case . . . until the reborn violence of it hits much too close to home.

The First Eagle
Book 13 · Mar 2009 ·
4.7
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

From a brilliant new voice comes a brilliant new epic fantasy saga of war, prophecy, betrayal, history, and destiny.

When Acting Lt. Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal police officer, he has an open-and-shut case—until his former boss, Joe Leaphorn, blows it wide open. Now retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Leaphorn has been hired to find a hotheaded female biologist hunting for the key to a virulent plague lurking in the Southwest. The scientist disappeared from the same area the same day the Navajo cop was murdered. Is she a suspect or another victim? And what about a report that a skinwalker—a Navajo witch—was seen at the same time and place too? For Leaphorn and Chee, the answers lie buried in a complicated knot of superstition and science, in a place where the worlds of native peoples and outside forces converge and collide.

Hunting Badger
Book 14 · Mar 2009 ·
4.4
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

The fourteenth novel featuring Leaphorn and Chee by New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, now reissued in the Premium Plus format.

Three men raid the gambling casino run by the Ute nation and then disappear into the maze of canyons on the Utah-Arizona border. When the FBI, with its helicopters and high-tech equipment, focuses on a wounded deputy sheriff as a possible suspect, Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee and his longtime colleague, retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, launch an investigation of their own. Chee sees a dangerous flaw in the federal theory; Leaphorn sees intriguing connections to the exploits of a legendary Ute bandit-hero. And together, they find themselves caught up in the most perplexing—and deadly—criminal manhunt of their lives.

The Wailing Wind
Book 15 · Oct 2009 ·
4.6
Legendary detectives Leaphorn and Chee are pulled into mysteries old and new in this haunting tale of obsessive greed, lost love, and murder from the “national literary and cultural sensation” (Los Angeles Times)—New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman.

“Tony Hillerman’s novels are like no others. His insightful portrayal of the vast Navajo Reservation, the spirit-haunted people who inhabit it and the clash between ancient traditions and modern civilization that has shaped its present and will determine its future has produced a body of work unique in mystery fiction.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

To Officer Bernie Manuelito the man curled on the truck seat was just another drunk—which got Bernie in trouble for mishandling a murder scene—which got Sgt. Jim Chee in trouble with the FBI—which drew ex-Lieutenent Joe Leaphorn out of retirement into an old crime he longed to forget. Legends of the area’s lost gold mines join the mountains and canyons of the Navajo Reservation as elements of Hillerman’s plot, but this tale turns on an obsessive love and memories of a missing woman’s voice wailing in the darkness.

The Sinister Pig
Book 16 · Oct 2009 ·
4.6
Hot on the heels of his huge bestseller, The Wailing Wind, Tony Hillerman brings back Chee and Leaphorn in a puzzling new mystery

The body of a well-dressed fellow, all identification missing, is found hidden under the brush on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. The local FBI takes over from the Navajo Police Sergeant Jim Chee, and quickly has the case snatched all the way to Washington. Washington proves uncooperative and the case is deadended. When Joe Leaphorn, the “legendary lieutenant” of Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police discovers that Washington officials hid the body’s identity, lines surprisingly connect to the case he’s working on at exotic game ranch. A photograph she sends him tells Chee she is facing a danger he doesn’t understand.

Hillerman produces a galaxy of unusual characters in this compelling novel that is sure to confound readers until the very last page.

Skeleton Man
Book 17 · Mar 2009 ·
4.8
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“In his masterly reworking of this powerful myth, Hillerman creates a kachina for contemporary times. . . . No wonder Hillerman’s stories never grow old. Like myths, they keep evolving with the telling.”— New York Times Book Review

From the enduring "national and literary cultural sensation" (Los Angeles Times) Tony Hillerman, a crackling tale of myth, mystery, and murder featuring the legendary Leaphorn and Chee.

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. 

Proving Billy’s innocence won’t be easy. Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito must find the remains of a passenger who died in the crash—one of 172 lost souls whose remains were scattered across the magnificent tiered cliffs of the Grand Canyon.

But nature may prove their deadliest adversary. To find the proof they need, the detectives must battle a thunderous monsoon and a killer as they plunge deeper into the dark realm of the Hopi Lord of Death—the guardian of the underworld known as Skeleton Man.

The Shape Shifter
Book 18 · Oct 2009 ·
4.5
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!  

“With The Shape Shifter, Hillerman once again proves himself the master of Southwest mystery fiction, working in a Hemingway-esque tradition of pared-down writing to bring the rugged Southwest into focus.”—Santa Fe New Mexican

Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is drawn back into the past to solve a cold case that has haunted him for nearly a decade in this atmospheric and twisting mystery infused with the Native American culture and lore of the desert Southwest.

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.

With Chee and Bernie on their honeymoon, Leaphorn plunges into the case solo, picking up the threads of this crime he’d long thought impossible to solve. Not only has the passage of time obscured the details, but a murderer long thought dead continues to roam free—and is ready to strike again to keep the past buried.