Results by title

11 books match the query 'Women Sleuths'

cover of Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch

Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

University of Arizona Press, 2018

When Sadie Walela learns that her new neighbor in Cherokee Country, Angus Clyborn’s Buffalo Ranch, offers rich customers a chance to kill buffalo for fun, she is horrified. No good can surely come from this. It doesn’t, and murder soon follows.

Even though Deputy Sheriff Lance Smith, Sadie’s love interest, suspects a link to the Buffalo Ranch, he can find little evidence to make an arrest. And when a rare white buffalo calf is born on the ranch and immediately disappears, Sadie’s instincts tell her something is wrong—and she sets out to prove it. Her suspicions—and fears of more violence—escalate when a former schoolmate returns to Oklahoma to visit her ailing father and finds employment at the ranch. Will she be the next victim?

Drawn deeper and deeper into danger, Sadie uncovers an unparalleled web of greed and corruption. It will take all of her investigative skill to set things straight—assuming she and her wolfdog can stay alive long enough to succeed.
 
[more]
cover of Death Before Compline: Short Stories by Sharan Newman

Death Before Compline

Short Stories by Sharan Newman

Sharan Newman

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012

[more]
cover of Death of a Department Chair: A Novel

Death of a Department Chair

A Novel

Lynn C. Miller

University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

In Death of a Department Chair, protagonist Miriam Held recounts the events of the previous fall when she was suspected of killing Isabel Vittorio, the chair of her department and her former lover. The controversial and contrary Vittorio was, at the time of her death, attempting to block the hire of a brilliant African American female professor. Already under siege for her attempts to increase diversity on campus, Miriam is forced to defend her reputation and her life. As she searches for the truth, Miriam amasses evidence that leaves few friends and colleagues free from suspicion. Both a classic whodunit and a witty satire, Death of a Department Chair dramatizes how communities can create the very climate of mistrust and paranoia that victimizes them.
[more]
cover of Deception on All Accounts

Deception on All Accounts

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

University of Arizona Press, 2003

Is murder always a simple transaction? Don't bank on it.

Sadie Walela's life is about to be turned upside down.

One morning Sadie unlocks the door at the Mercury Savings Bank and confronts a robber who's been lying in wait for her and her fellow employees. He flees after stealing money and killing her coworker. When a whirlwind of events leaves Sadie herself under suspicion, she sets out to clear her name.

This banker turned sleuth is suddenly plunged into an unfamiliar world in which people are not always as they appear-not her employer, not the homeless man she's befriended, not the police officer who takes an interest in the case, not the man she falls in love with. And, as she's beginning to imagine, not even herself.

Sadie is a blue-eyed Cherokee living in northeastern Oklahoma, a half-blood who finds she sometimes has to adapt to get by in the white man's world, much as her father's ancestors did. In this story of robbery, murder, love, and intrigue, she faces adversity at each bend in the road, but in the tradition of her people she adapts and moves forward—even if it means having to re-think her relationships and expectations.

Set against the backdrop of small-town Oklahoma and its Native culture, Deception on All Accounts draws readers into the real lives of contemporary American Indians as it shines a light on violence, corporate corruption, and prejudice in modern America. As Sadie Walela comes to terms with murder, romance, and her hopes for a career, she finds deception on all accounts.

[more]
cover of Discipline

Discipline

Debra Spark

Four Way Books, 2024

How does art mirror and shape our lives? Can it transcend the boundaries of time, wealth, and circumstance? Debra Spark—whose previous work the Washington Post described as "richly imaginative" and "real world magic"—explores these themes in her new novel Discipline. With a trio of important paintings missing, the book weaves together three narratives that span almost a century. From an inhumane boarding school in Maine in the late 1970s to a contemporary Boston art appraiser struggling with raising a teen to the long-lost love letters between a painter and his wife, Discipline is a propulsive literary mystery about family strife and devotion, ambition and authorship, and the abiding and mysterious power of art.

Inspired by the life and family of Walt Kuhn (the painter responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that introduced Americans to modernism) and the scandal-ridden Elan boarding school that was forced to shut down in 2011, this richly drawn, suspenseful novel shows Spark at her most masterful.
 

[more]
cover of Elita: A Novel

Elita

A Novel

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Northwestern University Press, 2025

An American literary take on the Nordic noir genre

Unfolding during the moody Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, we follow Bernadette Baston, scholar of child development and language acquisition, as she travels to a penitentiary on the remote island Elita in the Puget Sound to consult on a curious case: two guards have discovered an animal-like adolescent girl living alone in the cold woods beyond the prison’s walls. There are few answers, but many people who know more than they are saying. According to official reports, the girl, dubbed Atalanta, does not speak. Is her silence protecting someone? The prison warden, court-appointed guardian, and police detective embroil Bernadette in resolving a secret that the tight-knit island community has long held, and her investment in the girl’s case soon becomes more personal than professional. As a mother, wife, and woman bound by mid-twentieth-century expectations, Bernadette strategizes to retain the fragile control she has over her own freedom, identity, and future, which becomes inextricably tied to solving Atalanta’s case.

[more]
cover of Nobody's Here: A Novel

Nobody's Here

A Novel

Sarah Blackman

University of Alabama Press, 2026

An end-of-life sex worker accused of murdering the man she loved—and a town forced to reckon with what makes a life meaningful

Set amid the lush landscapes and winding waterways of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Nobody’s Here is a haunting and compassionate novel about love, loss, and the value of a life. Flossie Taw works as an end-of-life sex worker, providing live-in care and companionship to men in their final days. Her latest client, Leonidas “Leo” Bane, has kept her by his side longer than anyone before him. Against her own rules, Flossie falls in love.

When Leo is found dead from what may or may not have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Flossie becomes the subject of suspicion in her small Maryland town. As she struggles with an unfamiliar grief, she becomes the subject of intense local speculation as neighbors, friends, police officers, the county coroner, and countless others weigh in on her character, her profession, and her possible role in Leo’s death.

Told through a rich chorus of voices alongside Flossie’s own, Nobody’s Here explores how ordinary people wrestle with life’s biggest questions while navigating the demands of everyday life. As the residents of Canterbury, Maryland, debate Flossie’s culpability, they are also forced to consider what makes a life meaningful and what we owe one another at the end of it. Nobody’s Here asks readers to look beyond appearances and decide for themselves whether Flossie Taw is responsible for Leo’s death, or whether she was responsible for giving his life meaning.
 

[more]
cover of Sinking Suspicions

Sinking Suspicions

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

University of Arizona Press, 2014

Suspicions run high when murder mixes with identity theft in the latest installment of the popular Sadie Walela mystery series set in Cherokee Country. No sooner does Sadie embark on an unexpected business trip to the beautiful island of Maui, when her long-time neighbor, Buck Skinner, a full-blood Cherokee and World War II veteran, goes missing and becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a petty identity thief.

Iconic lawman Lance Smith joins a community-wide search, but Buck is nowhere to be found. As evidence mounts against her old friend, Sadie rushes to return home to help—only to be delayed by an island-wide earthquake and her own sinking suspicions.

A diverse cast of characters weave together a breathless story of murder, thievery, and the toll of war on the human spirit. In her effort to restore balance to her neighbor’s life, Sadie not only uncovers the truth, but unravels much more than a murder.
 
[more]
cover of The American Café

The American Café

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

University of Arizona Press, 2011

2012 WILLA Literary Award Winner: Best Original Softcover Fiction

When Sadie Walela decides to pursue her childhood dream of owning a restaurant, she has no idea that murder will be on the menu.

In this second book in the Sadie Walela series, set in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, Sadie discovers life as an entrepreneur is not as easy as she anticipated. On her first day, she is threatened by the town’s resident "crazy" woman and the former owner of the American Café turns up dead, engulfing the café—and Sadie herself—in a cloud of suspicion and unanswered questions.

Drawing on the intuition and perseverance of her Cherokee ancestry, Sadie is determined to get some answers when an old friend unexpectedly turns up to lend a hand. A diverse cast of characters—including a mysterious Creek Indian, a corrupt police chief, an angry Marine home from Iraq, and the victim’s grieving sister and alcoholic niece—all come together to create a multilayered story of denial and deceit.

While striving to untangle relationships and old family secrets, Sadie ends up unraveling far more than a murder.
[more]
cover of The Hatak Witches

The Hatak Witches

Devon A. Mihesuah

University of Arizona Press, 2021

After a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building.

Monique discovers that a portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton had also been stolen from the neglected museum archives. Her uncle, the spiritual leader Leroy Bear Red Ears, concludes that the stolen remains are those of Hatak haksi, a witch and the matriarch of the Crow family, a group of shape-shifting Choctaws who plan to reestablish themselves as the powerful creatures they were when the tribe lived in Mississippi. Monique, Leroy, and Chris must stop the Crows, but to their dread, the entities have retreated to the dark and treacherous hollow in the center of Chalakwa Ranch. The murderous shape-shifters believe the enormous wild hogs, poisonous snakes, and other creatures of the hollow might form an adequate defense for Hatak haksi.

But what no one counts on is the unexpected appearance and power of the Old Ones who guard the lands of the Choctaw afterlife. Blending tribal beliefs and myths into a modern context, The Hatak Witches continues the storyline of Choctaw cosmology and cultural survival that are prominent in Devon A. Mihesuah’s award-winning novel, The Roads of My Relations.
 
[more]
cover of The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band

The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band

Frances Washburn

University of Arizona Press, 2014

Opening July 4, 1969, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band begins with a raucous Fourth of July gig that abruptly ends with the Red Birds ducking out of the performance in a hilarious hail of beer bottles. By the end of the evening, community member Buffalo Ames is dead, presumed to be murdered, just outside the bar. Sissy Roberts, the band’s singer and the “best female guitar picker on the rez,” is reluctantly drawn into the ensuing investigation by an FBI agent who discovers Sissy’s knack for hearing other people’s secrets.

The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is part mystery, part community chronicle. Shaped by a cast of skillfully drawn characters, all of whom at one time or another are potential suspects, at the core of the story is smart and compassionate Sissy. Four years past high school, Sissy’s wry humor punctuates descriptions of reservation life as she learns more about Ames’s potential killer, and as she embarks on a personal search for ways to buck expectations and leave rural South Dakota to attend college.

Ames’s death is just an example of the undercurrents of violence and passions that run through this fast-moving novel of singing, loving, and fighting. Following Sissy as she unravels the mystery of both Buffalo Ames’s death and her own future, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is the story of Indian Country on the verge of historic change and a woman unwilling to let change pass her by.
[more]