Leaphorn & Chee (Tony Hillerman) Books in Order

On the Navajo Reservation, anthropologist Bergen McKee arrives to study tales of witches while Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn investigates a young man's murder, and the two men are drawn together as Navajo beliefs, remote canyons and a ruthless scheme collide.

When two schoolboys, one Navajo and one Zuni, vanish near the Zuni village, Joe Leaphorn must navigate clashing traditions, an anthropological dig and FBI pressure to learn whether the boys fled, were sacrificed or are running from something worse.

After a blind Navajo healer and her young niece are slain outside a remote hogan, Joe Leaphorn follows a trail from an attempted hit and run to a cave-side hostage standoff, confronting political extremists and ancient taboos along the way.

Assigned to a small outpost, Officer Jim Chee is hired off duty to track down a stolen box and finds links to a long ago oil field explosion, a charismatic church and a killer who believes a prophecy is finally coming true.

Working near the Hopi Reservation, Jim Chee juggles vandalism, a missing suspect and a murdered windmill repairman, all while the FBI investigates a drug smuggling plane crash. As cases overlap, Chee must clear his own name and uncover who benefits from the chaos.

A Los Angeles gang shooting echoes on Navajo land when a buried body is found beside a death hogan. Jim Chee follows leads from Shiprock to the back streets of California, torn between his Navajo identity and the temptations of city life.

A series of seemingly random murders and a nighttime attack on Jim Chee's trailer raise whispers about skinwalkers, witches who kill with curses. Chee and Joe Leaphorn work together for the first time to untangle superstition, greed and a very human killer.

A missing anthropologist, stolen backhoes and exquisitely painted Anasazi pots draw Leaphorn and Chee into the canyons around Chaco. Their separate investigations into pot hunters and academic rivalries converge on a remote ruin where ambition has turned deadly.

One dead man near Gallup, a desecrated graveyard in the Northeast and a protest over Native remains in a museum exhibit send Leaphorn and Chee to Washington, DC, where a ceremonial mask and Chilean politics intersect in a high stakes conspiracy.

When fellow officer Delbert Nez is shot beside his burning patrol car, Jim Chee blames himself for arriving late and arrests an elderly drunk shaman at the scene. Joe Leaphorn doubts the simple answer, and their search reaches back to outlaw legends and Vietnam era secrets.

After a popular shop teacher is murdered at a mission school and a sacred clown is killed during a Tano Pueblo ceremony, Leaphorn and Chee must connect the crimes. Their search leads through tribal politics, a missing boy and a valuable Lincoln cane.

When climbers find a skeleton high on sacred Shiprock, retired Joe Leaphorn recalls an unsolved missing person case tied to a wealthy ranch family. Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee, meanwhile, investigates a series of cattle thefts that pull Bernadette Manuelito into danger.

Chee arrests a Hopi man standing over a dying Navajo officer near Yells Back Butte, while Leaphorn is hired to find a missing health department scientist who tracks plague carrying fleas. As the cases converge, questions of guilt, obsession and public safety collide.

Armed robbers hit a Ute casino and vanish into the high desert, leaving a wounded security guard suspected as the inside man. Back from vacation, Jim Chee joins the hunt while Leaphorn quietly pursues an old rancher's tip that points toward an elusive outlaw nicknamed Badger.

Officer Bernadette Manuelito discovers a dead man in a pickup abandoned in a canyon wash, and a small mistake with a tobacco tin draws Jim Chee and retired Joe Leaphorn into the case. Old rumors of a lost gold mine and a vanished woman resurface with deadly force.

A murdered undercover agent, missing tribal oil and gas royalties and a suspicious game ranch on the New Mexico-Mexico border pull Jim Chee, Bernadette Manuelito and Joe Leaphorn into a maze of pipelines, drug smuggling and Washington influence peddlers.

Years after a mid air collision scattered a briefcase of diamonds into the Grand Canyon, a rare stone brings Hopi guide Billy Tuve under suspicion. Jim Chee, Bernadette Manuelito and a determined heiress follow the trail into slot canyons where greed meets flash floods.

Retired Leaphorn spots a unique Navajo rug in a glossy magazine photo, a piece he believed destroyed decades earlier in a trading post fire that also supposedly killed a wanted criminal. Chasing that thread leads him into a cold case that still has teeth.