Shannon Baker Books in Order
Explore Shannon Baker books in order, with quick summaries, series guides for Kate Fox, Nora Abbott, and Michaela Sanchez, plus easy where-to-start tips.
Last updated: June 10, 2026
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Publication Order
21 books
Tainted Mountain
by Shannon Baker
2013
Nora Abbott is struggling to keep her northern Arizona ski resort alive through drought and political warfare when her husband is murdered. With Hopi spiritual claims, corporate pressure, and sabotage closing in, she has to find the truth before she is the next target.
Broken Trust
by Shannon Baker
2014
A chance encounter lands Nora Abbott a dream job at an environmental nonprofit in Boulder, then things turn dark fast. The previous finance director is missing, corruption is everywhere, and Nora cannot tell who is helping her and who wants her gone.
Tattered Legacy
by Shannon Baker
2015
When her friend Lisa dies in Moab, Nora Abbott suspects murder behind the accident. Her search pulls her into a fight over public land, old legends, and dangerous secrets buried in the red rock country.
Stripped Bare
by Shannon Baker
2016
Kate Fox's life on a Nebraska ranch shatters when a murder, her husband Ted's shooting, and her niece Carly's disappearance hit at once. As betrayal and land politics surface, Kate has to uncover the killer before the danger circles back to her.
Close Enough
by Shannon Baker
2017
In this prequel novella, sheriff candidate Kate Fox joins the search for a missing boy as a brutal snowstorm bears down on the Nebraska Sandhills. When the story stops adding up, she trusts her own instincts and goes looking for the truth.
Dark Signal
by Shannon Baker
2017
On the day she's sworn in as sheriff, Kate Fox is called to a gruesome death on the railroad tracks. Everyone else sees an accident, but Kate sees murder, and solving it means standing up to doubters, suspects, and a whole town watching.
Bitter Rain
by Shannon Baker
2018
New sheriff Kate Fox is still finding her footing when Deputy Kyle Red Owl's sister disappears from a nearby reservation. The search uncovers buried family secrets, rising tensions, and a case far more dangerous than it first appears.
Ashes of the Red Heifer
by Shannon Baker
2019
Annie is swept into a deadly religious conspiracy when extremists take her best friend hostage and force her to help produce a perfect red heifer in Israel. The chase stretches from Nebraska cattle country to the Middle East, with lives and faith on the line.
Echoes in the Sand
by Shannon Baker
2019
Twenty years after a desert crash killed her parents and shattered her family, Arizona Rangers officer Michaela Sanchez faces a fresh crisis when her brother is charged with murder. Proving his innocence means reopening the night that changed everything.
The Desert Behind Me
by Shannon Baker
2020
Jamie Butler came to Tucson to outrun the murder of her daughter and the breakdown that followed. When another girl disappears in a chillingly similar way, Jamie and Deputy Rafe Grijalva are pulled into a case that blurs memory, grief, and hard fact.
The Desert's Share
by Shannon Baker
2020
Rookie agent Michaela Sanchez expects to find a lost migrant in the Tucson desert, but instead finds a murdered aid worker at the center of a border firestorm. With vigilantes, activists, and her own family in the mix, every answer raises the stakes.
Easy Mark
by Shannon Baker
2021
A hated ranch foreman turns up dead in Kate Fox's brother's truck, and her missing brother becomes the obvious suspect. As Kate investigates, she finds secrets on every side, including inside her own family.
Broken Ties
by Shannon Baker
2022
Still searching for her missing niece, Sheriff Kate Fox gets pulled into a fresh nightmare when her ex-husband's wife leaves a baby on her doorstep and vanishes. The trail leads Kate into the Wyoming mountains and toward a secretive group with deadly reach.
Exit Wounds
by Shannon Baker
2022
When an intruder attacks her mother and dies in the struggle, Kate Fox knows the break-in is not random. A hidden phone sends her digging into her mother's buried past, where old lies and new danger threaten the whole family.
Double Back
by Shannon Baker
2023
A mysterious older woman arrives in town and charms two aging bachelor brothers, but Kate Fox suspects she wants more than companionship. Rumors of hidden money turn the case dangerous, and Kate soon realizes the newcomer's past is anything but harmless.
Bull's Eye
by Shannon Baker
2024
When a top bull breeder is killed at a rodeo, Kate Fox refuses to accept the easy answer. Her off-the-books digging exposes fraud, grudges, and danger in the rodeo world, just as her own political troubles threaten to sideline her.
Close Range
by Shannon Baker
2024
Attorney Garrett Haney's death is ruled an accident, but Kate Fox and young Sheriff Zoe are not convinced. As they pull at family lies and powerful connections, they discover the killer may be much closer than anyone wants to admit.
Killer Flock
by Shannon Baker
2025
A blizzard strands Kate Fox with a van full of bird-watchers in a high school gym, then one of them turns up dead. Cut off from help, Kate has to keep the peace and find the killer before the storm traps her with a second victim.
Taking Stock
by Shannon Baker
2025
At Denver's National Western Stock Show, Kate Fox gets drawn into a case involving a drugged billionaire, a fake engagement, and a murder that follows fast behind. The deeper she goes, the more the money trail points to old secrets and fresh danger.
Scorched Line
by Shannon Baker
2026
Kate Fox's estranged mother returns to the Sandhills after years away, and almost immediately someone tries to kill her. Protecting her means reopening old wounds, facing new betrayals, and deciding how much family still counts.
South Forty
by Shannon Baker
2027
Kate Fox is pulled far from Nebraska when Baxter disappears in Costa Rica and her niece Carly is arrested while trying to free trafficked wildlife. To save them both, she has to step into a brutal smuggling network far outside her comfort zone.
Where should I start?
For rugged small-town sheriff mysteries: Stripped Bare → Dark Signal → Bitter Rain
For Southwest mysteries with environmental stakes: Tainted Mountain → Broken Trust → Tattered Legacy
For darker desert crime thrillers: Echoes in the Sand → The Desert's Share
If you want a standalone suspense read: The Desert Behind Me → Ashes of the Red Heifer
Author bio
Shannon Baker was born in Garden Grove, California, but her fiction feels rooted in the wide-open West. She has lived in some very different versions of it, including the Nebraska Sandhills, Colorado's Front Range, Flagstaff, and Tucson, and those landscapes show up all through her work. Her books move across prairies, mountains, and desert, but they all share the same sense that place changes people.
The Nebraska years mattered a lot. Baker spent 20 years in the Sandhills, a place where cattle outnumber people by more than 50 to 1. That mix of beauty, isolation, weather, and close-knit communities later became the backbone of the Kate Fox books, which feel like they were written by someone who has actually watched a storm roll over open country and known what it can cost.
She didn't come to writing through a straight line. After college and the start of adult life, she found herself needing a creative outlet while living in rural Nebraska, and she began making up stories. Later, with kids and a full life already in motion, she wrote early in the morning before the rest of the day took over. It was a practical beginning, not a romantic one, and maybe that helps explain why her fiction stays so grounded.
The apprenticeship was long. Baker has said it took close to twenty years to publish that first novel. Her first published book, Ashes of the Red Heifer, arrived in 2010, and it was followed by the Nora Abbott books, the work that first brought her wider attention in the mystery world.
Those Nora Abbott novels, starting with Tainted Mountain, mix murder with environmental battles, corporate pressure, and Hopi cultural threads. They move through northern Arizona, Boulder, and Moab, and readers who click with them usually like the same things: the outdoor settings, the messy moral choices, and the fact that Nora is capable without feeling slick or invincible. Baker's early success with that series helped lead to recognition in the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.
Then came Kate Fox.
With Stripped Bare, Baker turned back to the Nebraska Sandhills and created one of her most popular characters, a ranch woman who is pushed into the sheriff's job and has to solve crimes while her own life is falling apart. Dark Signal and the books that follow keep building on that setup. Readers come for the murders, but they tend to stay for Kate's family, the rural politics, the weather, and the way the land itself keeps shaping every choice.
Baker has also written the Michaela Sanchez thrillers, including Echoes in the Sand and The Desert's Share, and the standalone suspense novel The Desert Behind Me. That book won a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Across all of them, she keeps returning to strong women under pressure, family secrets, public-land fights, and the trouble that starts when private grief collides with something much bigger.
Place matters in her work.
Baker has said that scenery and setting are as much a part of her books as any character, and it shows. She was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Writer of the Year in 2014 and again for 2017-18. She now lives in Tucson, on the edge of the desert, with her Weimaraner and what she calls her favorite human. When she isn't writing, she's usually outdoors, hiking, backpacking, kayaking, cycling, skiing, or heading for the bottom of the Grand Canyon. That restless love of Western country is all over the books, and it's a big part of why they feel so lived in.
Edited by
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