Peter Bowen Books in Order
Browse Peter Bowen books in order, from Gabriel Du Pré to Yellowstone Kelly, with short summaries, series notes, and a simple guide to where to start.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).
Publication Order
19 books
Gentleman and Scout
by Peter Bowen
1987
Bowen's take on Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly begins with wolf hunting alongside the Nez Percé and a job guiding English buffalo hunters. Before long, Kelly is pulled from the northern plains into a much wider imperial adventure.
Kelly Blue
by Peter Bowen
1991
At Buffalo Bill Cody's deathbed, Kelly looks back on the rough making of his legend. His memories carry him from an underage Civil War enlistment to Jim Bridger, Brigham Young, and the hard lessons of the early West.
Imperial Kelly
by Peter Bowen
1992
An older, more irritable Kelly is dragged into Theodore Roosevelt's orbit to help round up Rough Riders for Cuba. The adventure sprawls onward through empire, war, and Kelly's running fight with authority.
Coyote Wind
by Peter Bowen
1994
A decades-old plane wreck in Montana holds three bodies, and one of them was murdered before the crash. Gabriel Du Pré follows the trail into buried family history and a land deal with long shadows.
Specimen Song
by Peter Bowen
1995
In Washington to play Métis music, Du Pré stumbles into the murder of a Cree singer. Back in Montana, more killings follow, each stranger than the last, and the killer seems to be circling closer.
Wolf, No Wolf
by Peter Bowen
1996
Fence-cutting activists push wolf politics into ranch country, then start turning up dead. As winter closes in and the national media arrives, Du Pré sees that the fight over wildlife has become something bloodier.
Notches
by Peter Bowen
1997
When mutilated young women are found along Montana's Hi-Line, Du Pré joins a desperate hunt for a serial killer. The case turns personal fast, and the clues suggest the nightmare may be even worse than it looks.
Thunder Horse
by Peter Bowen
1998
An earthquake uncovers an ancient burial ground, a dinosaur tooth, and a murdered archaeologist. Du Pré is pulled into a knot of tribal history, local greed, and questions the living would rather avoid.
Long Son
by Peter Bowen
1999
The bad son of a ranching family comes home to claim land no one trusts him with. As Du Pré looks into suspicious deaths, past and present begin to stack up around the Messmer ranch.
The Stick Game
by Peter Bowen
2000
Children on the Fort Belknap Reservation are getting sick, and a missing boy turns the fear into a murder case. Du Pré digs into whether a nearby gold mine is poisoning the land and the people.
Cruzatte and Maria
by Peter Bowen
2001
Du Pré signs on as historical adviser for a Lewis and Clark documentary, with his daughter Maria cast as Sacagawea. Then the props burn, bodies come out of the Missouri, and old arguments about who owns the West turn deadly.
Kelly and the Three-Toed Horse
by Peter Bowen
2001
A fossil skeleton found in a Wyoming saloon sends Kelly into the field with paleontologist Jonathan Cope and his assistant Alys. Rival hunters, bad luck, and the wild country make the trip anything but scholarly.
Ash Child
by Peter Bowen
2002
Drought and wildfire are already pressing on Toussaint when an elderly woman is murdered and two teenagers vanish. Fresh out of the hospital, Du Pré chases the case into burning country and meth-fueled trouble.
Badlands
by Peter Bowen
2003
A secretive cult buys a ranch on the edge of Montana's badlands and immediately sets everyone on edge. When former members start dying, Du Pré goes looking for answers in a world built on fear and control.
The Tumbler
by Peter Bowen
2004
Rumors that Du Pré has found the lost journals of Meriwether Lewis bring rich outsiders and dangerous curiosity to Toussaint. When friends are attacked, he can no longer ignore the storm gathering around him.
Stewball
by Peter Bowen
2005
Aunt Pauline's latest husband vanishes, and Du Pré finds him shot dead in the brush. The trail leads to federal bait, illegal horse racing, and gamblers who are as ruthless as the country they hide in.
Nails
by Peter Bowen
2006
Pallas comes home, fundamentalist protesters roll into town, and an injured Iraq veteran arrives with trouble close behind. Graffiti, a missing girl, and rising tension tell Du Pré that several bad stories are colliding.
Bitter Creek
by Peter Bowen
2015
A search for a troubled former Marine opens onto a much older wound, the disappearance of a band of Métis people in 1910. Du Pré follows the case across generations, looking for the truth history buried.
Solus
by Peter Bowen
2018
A military whistleblower and his family need a safe place, and Du Pré agrees to shelter them in Toussaint. But powerful enemies are coming, and the town's battered peace may not hold.
Where should I start?
If you want the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries from the beginning: Coyote Wind → Specimen Song → Wolf, No Wolf
If you want Du Pré at his darkest and strongest: Notches → Thunder Horse → Ash Child
If you want frontier adventure and historical swagger: Gentleman and Scout → Kelly Blue → Imperial Kelly
If you want a later return to Toussaint: Bitter Creek → Solus
Author bio
Peter Bowen was born on May 22, 1945, in Athens, Georgia, and was adopted at birth by Keith and Marie Bowen. His father was an educator, so the family moved through Colorado and Indiana before settling in Montana. That mix of movement and rootedness would stay with him for life.
Montana stuck.
When Bowen was ten, the family moved to Bozeman, where his father joined Montana State College and coached wrestling. Bowen later wrote that a paper route led him straight to one of his real educations, a bar called the Oaks, where old cowboys sat, talked, and remembered. He listened. Years later, the rhythms of those stories were still in his books.
He loved the outdoors early. He rode to fishing holes, hunted birds, and knew the mountains around town well enough to test both his luck and his parents' patience. In one family story that became part of his legend, he disappeared into the Bridger Range with a rifle before junior high and stayed out until the weather turned.
Michigan gave him another kind of training. At the University of Michigan he fell into the folk music world and wound up managing a campus coffeehouse for a time, booking performers and soaking up talk, timing, and stagecraft. He also spent time at the University of Montana, but Bowen never sounded like a classroom writer.
He also worked just about every job that could teach a writer how people really talk.
Before and during his writing life, Bowen was a carpenter, cowboy, hunting and fishing guide, folksinger, poet, essayist, and woodworker. He wrote hunting and humor pieces under the name Coyote Jack, and he carried into fiction the habits of someone who knew weather, tools, horses, bars, and long distances between towns.
His first novel, Gentleman and Scout, appeared in 1987 and introduced his version of Yellowstone Kelly, the real frontier scout turned into a wandering, skeptical, very funny survivor. Bowen followed it with Kelly Blue, Imperial Kelly, and, years later, Kelly and the Three-Toed Horse. Those books let him roam through frontier history, meet famous names, poke holes in heroics, and keep one boot planted in the dirt.
In 1994 he turned to the character many readers know best, Gabriel Du Pré, first seen in Coyote Wind. Du Pré is a Métis cattle inspector, fiddler, tracker, and occasional lawman in the fictional town of Toussaint, Montana. Across novels like Specimen Song, Wolf, No Wolf, Notches, Thunder Horse, Bitter Creek, and Solus, Bowen built mysteries that were never just puzzles. They were also about family, old wounds, local history, and what happens when outsiders, money, or ideology push into a place that already has its own memory.
That was really his ground.
Bowen spent much of his adult life in Livingston, Montana, often living close to rivers and keeping mostly to himself. Friends remembered him as a big correspondent even when he was otherwise private. In 2013 he married Christine Whiteside, whom he had known since his Michigan days, and he kept writing late into life. He died on April 8, 2020, but his books still feel lived in, full of weather, music, dry jokes, and the sense that somebody around the corner is about to tell a story worth hearing.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.
Comments
Did we miss something? Have feedback?
Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts