Tony Hillerman Books in Order

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.

Co edited with Rosemary Herbert, this anthology revisits the idea of an earlier Omnibus of Crime, gathering landmark short stories that showcase how detective and crime fiction has changed, from classic puzzles to contemporary psychological pieces.

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.

Pairing Frank Kessler's gritty World War II photographs with Hillerman's narrative, this book shows infantry soldiers at rest and under fire from France to Germany, capturing the mud, fear and small acts of kindness that rarely appear in official war images.

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.

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.

In this plainspoken memoir, Hillerman looks back on his Depression era Oklahoma childhood, brutal infantry service in Europe, years in small town newsrooms, long marriage and late blooming success as a novelist, explaining how modest expectations helped him feel lucky rather than bitter.

In this Southwestern picture book, Buster Mesquite recruits a crew of desert animals to form a cowboy band and outwit the local bully. Lively drawings and wordplay introduce young readers to ranch life and a playful sense of Native humor.

With co editor Otto Penzler, Hillerman selects fifty five outstanding American crime and mystery stories, arranging them from early twentieth century classics to late century innovators, and introducing readers to the breadth of voices the genre contains.

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.

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.

In this limited edition essay, Hillerman pays tribute to Canyon de Chelly, reflecting on its sheer sandstone walls, ancient dwellings and Navajo families who still live and farm there, and on the canyon's role as a living character in his fiction.

Co edited with Rosemary Herbert, this hefty anthology traces 150 years of American detective fiction, from Edgar Allan Poe through hardboiled classics and modern voices. Hillerman's introduction and story selections highlight how the genre has evolved in style and setting.

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.

In the frantic final days before the fall of Saigon, small town Colorado editor Malcolm "Moon" Mathias travels to Southeast Asia to retrieve the orphaned niece he never knew existed. His rescue mission forces him to face wartime chaos, family history and his own regrets.

Edited by Martin Greenberg, this reference volume offers a biography, critical essays, plot summaries, timelines and a concordance for Hillerman's work, plus an extended interview, giving readers and researchers an organized guide to his life and stories.

Hillerman edits this award winning anthology of twenty mystery stories set across the American West, selecting tales that range from seedy Las Vegas streets to remote Alaskan bush settlements and introducing each with brief notes on the authors and locales.

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.

Hillerman assembles more than a century of classic and contemporary writing about the American West, mixing explorers' journals, letters, reportage and fiction. His introductions and commentary help readers see how myth and reality have shaped the region's image.

In this conversational volume, Hillerman and scholar Ernie Bulow talk through the nuts and bolts of writing mysteries, from plotting and pacing to using Navajo settings. Essays, an interview, photos and a short Leaphorn story give fans a behind the scenes tour.

This photo rich travel book pairs Hillerman's essays with his brother Barney's color images, visiting mesas, ruins, trading posts and small towns that inspired the Leaphorn and Chee novels, and explaining how landscape, history and people shaped each story.

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.

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.

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.

This folded map and guide traces key locations from the Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito novels across Navajo and Hopi country, with Hillerman's notes and brief descriptions so readers can match mesas, canyons and towns on the page to the real landscape.

With Hillerman's text and Béla Kalman's photographs, this large format book tours sacred and everyday places in Indigenous communities of the Southwest, honoring the land and its people as central characters rather than background scenery.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Edited by Hillerman, this anthology brings together essays by notable writers who try to explain New Mexico's peculiar pull, from its harsh deserts to its layered cultures, offering context and stories for readers drawn to the state.

Combining several of Hillerman's nonfiction pieces with striking photography, this volume explores New Mexico's landscapes, the Rio Grande corridor and the wider Southwest, blending history, travel writing and personal reflection on why the region holds such power.

This collection of true stories gathers Hillerman's wry essays about New Mexico, from a bungled bank heist to small town politics, Native and Hispano communities and everyday oddities that define life in the Land of Enchantment.

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.

Hillerman retells a classic Zuni myth about a boy and his little sister left behind during a terrible drought. When he fashions a dragonfly from cornstalks to comfort her, the small creation brings help and wisdom to their people.

In a Midwestern state capital, newspaper reporter John Cotton suspects his colleague's supposed suicide is tied to political corruption. Chasing the truth through smoky press rooms and back corridors, he uncovers a payoff scheme someone will kill to keep buried.

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.