Books with author Tony Hillerman

Officer Bernadette Manuelito found the dead man slumped over in the cab of a blue pickup abandoned in a dry gulch off a dirt road, with a rich ex-con's phone number in his pocket . . . and a tobacco tin nearby filled with tracer gold. It's her initial mishandling of the scene that spells trouble for her supervisor, Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, but it's the echoes of a long-ago crime that call the legendary former Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn out of retirement. Years earlier, Leaphorn followed the trail of a beautiful, young, and missing wife to a dead end, and his failure has haunted him ever since. But ghosts never sleep in these high, lonely Southwestern hills. And the twisted threads of craven murders past and current may finally be coming together, thanks to secrets once moaned in torment on the desert wind. This is #15 in A Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn Mystery.

TONY HILLERMAN HAS WON A PLACE IN AMERICAN LETTERS AND NOT SIMPLY AMONG CRIME WRITERS. HILLERMAN'S LONG-AWAITED NEW NOVEL SHOWS HOW AMPLY HE DESERVES SUCH HIGH PRAISE, AS IT REUNITED NAVAJO TRIBAL POLICEMAN JOE LEAPHORN AND JIM CHEE IN AN EFFORT TO UNRAVEL A TREACHEROUS WEB OF TRIBAL POLITICS AND MURDER. TO OFFICER CHEE AND LIEUTENANT LEAPHORN, NOW WORKING AS AN UNEASY TEAM, THE SOLUTION TO THE KILLING AT THE MISSION SCHOOL SEEMS STRAIGHTFORWARD, AND THE DEATH AT TANO SEEMS TO BE OUT OF THEIR JURISDICITON. BUT THE ODD BEHAVIOR OF A RUNAWAY STUDENT CONNECTS THE TWO CRIMES AND SHOWS THAT NEITHER IS WHAT IT SEEMS. CHEE AND LEAPHORN'S SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH PROPELS THEM INTO A REALM WHERE BATTLES AS OLD AS HUMANITY'S FOIBLES AND AS NEW AS ITS HIGH TECHNOLOGY ARE FOUGHT TO THE DEATH.

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

When Tony Hillerman looks back at seventy-six years spent getting from hardtimes farm boy to bestselling author, he sees lots of evidence that Providence was poking him along. For example, when an absentminded Army clerk left him off the hospital ship taking the wounded home from France, the mishap put him on a collision course with a curing ceremony held for two Navajo Marines, thereby providing the grist for a writing career that now sees his books published in sixteen languages around the world and often on bestseller lists. Or, for example, when his agent told him his first novel was so bad that it would hurt both of their reputations, he nonetheless sent it to an editor, and that editor happened to like the Navajo stuff.In this wry and whimsical memoir, Hillerman offers frequent backward glances at where he found ideas for plots of his books and the characters that inhabit them. He takes us with him to death row, where he interviews a man about to die in the gas chamber and details how this murderer became Colton Wolf in one of his novels. He relates how flushing a solitary heron from a sandbar caused him to convert Joe Leaphorn from husband to widower, and how his self-confessed bias against the social elite solved the key plot problem in A Thief of Time.No child abuse stories here: The worst Hillerman can recall is being sent off to first grade (in a boarding school for Indian girls) clad in cute blue coveralls instead of the manly overalls his farm-boy peers all wore. Instead we get a good-natured trip through hard times in college; an infantry career in which he "rose twice to Private First Class" and also won a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart; and, afterward, work as a truck driver, chain dragger, journalist, professor, and "doer of undignified deeds" for two university presidents. All this is colored by a love affair (now in its fifty-fourth year) with Marie, which involved raising six children, most of them adopted. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, seventy-six-year-old Tony Hillerman draws a brilliant portrait not just of his life but of the world around him.

Pub Date: 2010-09-28 Pages: 304 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins US They live ordinary lives. but they are extraordinary They are the Offspring. children of a mysterious experiment gone awry-and they are in terrible danger A government.. -trained assassin. Fonda Raine has her sights locked on her latest target:. Eric Aruda. one of the rogue Offspring-a pyrokenetic who can create fires with just a thought But Fonda has awesome powers of her own-and her ability to astral project and be in two places at one time enables her to put herself exactly where she wants to be... in Erics bed. Eric is stunned and pleased by the inexplicable appearance of the mysterious enchantress. unaware that Fonda plans to seduce him. throw him off his guard. and then eliminate him But the game changes radically with the arrival of an assassin from hell with orders to destroy them both And ...

As with most of Hillerman's novels everyone has different agendas and stories that overlap. There are alleged stolen artifacts form and archeological dig, and possibly a drug interest. They may or may not interact. We also get a good dose of Zuñi culture, and a feel that we are in the area. Hillerman is nice enough to leave sufficient clues to let you figure out the mystery before Leaphorn and you then get to watch as he finally comes around to your way of thinking. Another book by Hillerman "The Boy who Made Dragonfly" further describes the dance hall of the dead (Kothluwalawa.)

Pub Date: 2009-05-26 Pages: 384 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins US Best friends since back in the day. Aggy and Nely are as different as two women could possibly be Aggies slim. stylish. and owns an upscale boutique and. a long history of no-strings relationships. Nely has a busy baby. a metiche mother-in-law. and some extra post-pregnancy pounds she cant quite shed. And when they reconnect at a New Age spa. each friend finds herself wishing . just a little that she had the other ones life Big mistake Thanks to the metaphysical meddling of a somewhat grumpy guru. Nely is now Aggie and Aggie is Nely -!... switching bodies. love lives. families. closets everything The! grass may not be quite as green as it originally appeared. As luck has it. theyll be stuck this way until the next full moon! And with a husband. his very suspicious mama. a temperamental tot. a busin...

Two young boys suddenly disappear. One of them, a Zuni, leaves a pool of blood behind. Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police tracks the brutal killer. Three things complicate the search: an archeological dig, a steel hypodermic needle, and the strange laws of the Zuni. Compelling, terrifying, and highly suspenseful, "Dance Hall of the Dead" never relents from first page til last.