Open Season
Summary
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game wardenâespecially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other wayâis far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the "outfitter murders," as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police. As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
©2001 C.J. Box (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
Wolf Pack
Summary
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett encounters bad behavior on his own turf - only to have the FBI and the DOJ ask him to stand down - in the thrilling new novel from number-one New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box. The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back, after his last adventure in The Disappeared. The bad news is that he's come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife - and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose grandson is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy. When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack have arrived. Their target seems to be the mystery man and everyone - including Joe, Nate, and others - who are associated with him. Teaming up with a female game warden (based on a real person, one of the few female game wardens at work in Wyoming today) to confront these assassins, Joe finds himself in the most violent and dangerous predicament he's ever faced.
©2019 C. J. Box (P)2019 Recorded Books
Long Range
Summary
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett must investigate an attempted murder - a crime committed from a confoundingly long distance - in the riveting new novel from number one New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box. When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One survivor of the grizzly's rampage tells a bizarre story, but just as Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems, he is brought home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife is severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers - and the shooter. The search for the would-be assassin becomes personal when Joe's best friend, Nate Romanowski - just as he's adjusting to the arrival of his first child - falls under suspicion for the crime. It's a race against the clock as Joe tries to clear Nate's name and identify the real shooter, all while deciphering the grizzly encounter. Beset by threats both man-made and natural, the two men must go to great lengths to keep their loved ones safe.
©2020 C. J. Box (P)2020 Recorded Books
Savage Run
Summary
An Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Award winner, C. J. Box delivers the second pulse-pounding installment in his critically acclaimed series. While investigating a string of bizarre murders, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is forced to flee across treacherous terrain with a deadly tracker on his trail.
©2002 C.J. Box (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Winterkill
Summary
In the third adventure in C. J. Boxâs engrossing series, Joe Pickett finds himself at the center of a confrontation between a special investigative team and a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. With the help of a mysterious stranger, Joe lays his life on the line to protect an innocent girl before a wave of violence surges over the Bighorn Mountains.
©2003 C.J. Box (P)2013 Recorded Books
The Disappeared
Summary
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett has two cases to contend with, both of them lethal, in the electrifying new novel from the number-one New York Times best-selling author. Wyoming's new governor isn't sure what to make of Joe Pickett, but he has a job for him that is extremely delicate. A prominent female British executive never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British Embassy is pressing hard. Pickett knows that happens sometimes - these ranches are stocked with handsome young cowboys, and "ranch romances" aren't uncommon. But no sign of her months after she vanished? That suggests something else. At the same time, his friend Nate Romanowski has asked Joe to intervene with the feds on behalf of falconers who can no longer hunt with eagles even though their permits are in order. Who is blocking the falconers and why? The more he investigates both cases, the more someone wants him to go away. Is it because of the missing woman or because he's become Nate's advocate? Or are they somehow connected? The answers, when they come, will be even worse than he'd imagined.
©2018 C. J. Box (P)2018 Recorded Books
Force of Nature
Summary
New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box delivers a novel starring Joe Pickettâs sidekick: fan favorite Nate Romanowski. In Force of Nature, trouble comes calling from Nateâs past in the Special Forces, and the colleague he once called a friend wonât stop until those who know a deadly secret are silenced. Everyone close to Nate is at risk, including Joe and his family. To save them, Nate will have to convince law-abiding Joe to finally break a few rules along the way.
©2012 C. J. Box (P)2012 Recorded Books, LLC
Back of Beyond
Summary
The Edgar Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author delivers a thriller about a troubled cop trying to save his son from a killer in Yellowstone. Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man whoâs fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that. Sober for 14 years, Hank took pride in his hard-won sobriety and never hesitated to drop whatever he was doing to talk Cody off a ledge. When Cody takes a closer look at the scene of his friendâs death, it becomes apparent that foul play is at hand. After years of bad behavior with his department, heâs in no position to be investigating a homicide, but this man was a friend and Codyâs determined to find his killer. When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a multi-day wilderness horseback trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park - a pack trip that includes his son, Justin - Cody is desperate to get on their trail and stop the killer before the group heads into the wild. Among the tourists is 14-year-old Gracie Sullivan, an awkward but intelligent loner who begins to suspect that someone in their party is dangerous. In a fatal cat-and-mouse game, where it becomes apparent the murderer is somehow aware of Codyâs every move, Cody treks into the wilderness to stop a killer hell bent on ruining the only thing in his life he cares about. C. J. Box's Back of Beyond is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Mysteries title.Â
©2011 C.J. Box (P)2011 Macmillan Audio
Trophy Hunt
Summary
It's an idyllic late-summer day in Saddlestring, Wyoming, and game warden Joe Pickett is fly-fishing with his two daughters when he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a moose. Whatever - or whoever - attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal's face has been sliced away, the skin peeled back from the flesh. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes in an isolated incident. Days later, after the discovery of a small herd of mutilated cattle, Joe realizes this is something much more terrifying than he could have imagined. Local authorities are quick to label the attacks the work of a grizzly bear, but Joe knows otherwise. The cuts on the moose and the cattle were too clean, too precise, to have been made by jagged teeth. Are the animals only practice for a killer about to move on to another, more challenging prey? Soon afterward, Joe's worst fears are confirmed. The bodies of two men are found within hours of each other, in separate locations, their wounds eerily similar to those found on the moose and cattle. There's a vicious killer, a modern-day Jack the Ripper, on the loose in Saddlestring - and it appears his rampage is just beginning.
©2004 C. J. Box (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Nowhere to Run
Summary
Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who simply vanished one day. Joe doesn't mind admitting that the farther he rides, the more he wishes he could just turn around and go home. And he is right to be concerned. Because what awaits him is like nothing he's ever dealt with, like something out of an old story, except this is all too real and too deadly. When he'd first saddled up, he'd thought of this as his last patrol. What he hadn't known was just how accurate that thought might turn out to be.
©2010 C.J. Box (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
Cold Wind
Summary
When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for game warden Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in- law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do - especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck. Whichever way this goes... it's not going to be good.
©2011 C.J. Box (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Below Zero
Summary
New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box's Below Zero is the 10th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. The telephone calls from her stepdaughter April send chills down the spine of Joe's daughter Sherry. Wasn't April murdered six years ago in a bloody massacre? Wondering how this youthful caller knows details only April could know, Sherry becomes confused while Joe grows suspicious. Is the caller April - or are Joe and his family victims of a cruel hoax?
©2009 C.J. Box (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Vicious Circle
Summary
The plane circled in the dark. Joe Pickett could just make out down below a figure in the snow and timber, and then three other figures closing in. There was nothing he could do about it. And Joe knew that he might be their next target. The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he'd always wondered if there'd be a day of reckoning. He's not wondering any longer. Joe knows they're coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.
©2017 C. J. Box (P)2017 Recorded Books
In Plain Sight
Summary
C. J. Box has won a host of awards, including the Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry. In Plain Sight sees game warden Joe Pickett's life take a turn for the worse after millionaire Opal Scarlett goes missing. As Pickett discovers more and more disturbing truths, it becomes clear that someone wants the dogged game warden to keep his nose out of the investigation.
©2006 C.J. Box (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
Endangered
Summary
New York Times - best-selling writer C. J. Box returns with a thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. She was gone. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more: Joe's 18-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway - alive but just barely, the victim of blunt-force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren't sure if she'll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it - says she ran away from him, too - and there's evidence that points to another man. But Joe knows in his gut who's responsible. What he doesn't know is the kind of danger he's about to encounter. Cates is bad enough, but Cates' family is like none Joe has ever met before. Joe's going to find out the truth even if it kills him. But this time it just might.
©2015 C. J. Box (P)2015 Recorded Books
The Bitterroots
Summary
2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year "What happens when you combine an acclaimed a C.J. Box novel with a terrific narration? A stellar audiobook like this one, narrated by Christina Delaine." (AudioFile Magazine) A riveting new audiobook from New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award-winning author C. J. Box. Former police officer Cassie Dewell is trying to start over with her own private investigation firm. Guilty about not seeing her son and exhausted by the nights on stakeout, Cassie is nonetheless managing...until an old friend calls in a favor: She wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young girl from an influential family. Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out in the Big Sky Country of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against the ghosts of her own past that threaten to pull her back under. With The Bitterroots, master storyteller C. J. Box delivers another audiobook featuring fan favorite Cassie Dewell from the Highway Quartet series.
©2019 C. J. Box (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Blood Trail
Summary
Critically acclaimed, award-winning author C. J. Box's Joe Pickett mysteries are a mainstay on the best seller lists. Former game warden Pickett is now a special agent reporting directly to the governor. With someone targeting elk hunters, Pickett must head off a potentially deadly showdown when a flamboyant anti-hunting activist rolls in to town.
©2008 C. J. Box (P)2008 Recorded Books
Out of Range
Summary
C. J. Box's best-selling Joe Pickett novels have earned him a spot on every serious suspense fan's shortlist of favorites. The tightly constructed Out of Range brings game warden Joe to a new, remote beat in Wyoming's vast countryside to investigate the suspicious death of the previous warden.
©2005 C.J.Box (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
Off the Grid
Summary
New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box returns with a suspenseful new Joe Pickett novel. Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite professional special operators. They're not there to threaten him but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in Wyoming's Red Desert, and in return they'll make Nate's criminal record disappear. But they are not what they seem, as Nate's friend Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just may be something that takes them all down - including Nate and Joe.
©2016 C. J. Box (P)2016 Recorded Books
Breaking Point: A Joe Pickett Novel Book 13
Summary
The recipient of Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box has won almost every honor in his field. In Breaking Point, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is glad to catch up with old friend Lyle Pendergast, but then the man goes missing and is named a suspect in the death of two EPA employees. All signs point to Lyleâs guilt, but the more Joe digs into the case, the more he realizes heâs stepped into the middle of a deadly power play.
©2013 C.J. Box (P)2013 Recorded Books
Free Fire
Summary
Best-selling author C. J. Boxâan Anthony and Macavity Award winnerâearned starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist for this exceptional mystery. Taking advantage of a legal loophole, a lawyer kills four people in Yellowstone National Park and walks away a free man. As the public outcry intensifies, the governor hires former game warden Joe Pickett to conduct a private investigation.
©2007 C. J. Box (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
Stone Cold: Joe Pickett, Book 14
Summary
Everything about the man is a mystery: The massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the manâs wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than heâd bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The other is new - but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesnât frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.
©2014 C.J. Box (P)2014 Recorded Books
Paradise Valley
Summary
"Christina Delaine delivers a thrilling performance of this high-stakes hunt for a killer...Notably, Delaine's sensitive portrayal of a young man with a speech impediment adds emotional depth, while her depiction of the elusive Lizard King generates chills." â AudioFile Magazine She almost caught him once. Now, he's back. For three years, Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on a hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Cassie almost caught him...once. Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff's department, Cassie has set what she believes is the perfect trap, and she has lured him and his truck to a depot. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and the blame falls on Cassie. Disgraced, she loses her job, and investigation into her role is put into motion. At the same time, Kyle Westergaard, a troubled kid whom Cassie has taken under her wing, has disappeared after telling people that he's going off on a long-planned adventure. Kyle's grandmother begs Cassie to find him, and, with nothing else to do, Cassie agrees - all the while hunting the truck driver. Now Cassie is a lone wolf. And in the same way that two streams converge into a river, Kyle's disappearance may have a more sinister meaning than anyone realizes. With no allies, no support, and only her own wits to rely on, Cassie must take down a killer who is as ruthless as he is cunning. But can she do it alone, without losing her own humanity or her own life?
©2017 C. J. Box (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
Summary
New York Times best-selling author C.J. Box's novels have been called "red hot", "edge-of-your-seat read[s]," and "unforgettable, powerful." Now he delivers a novel that will steal your sleep as much as it will wrench your heart. It's a novel about something that could be anyone's worst nightmare. . . . Jack and Melissa McGuane have spent years trying to have a baby. Finally their dream has come true with the adoption of their daughter, Angelina. But nine months after bringing her home, they receive a devastating phone call from the adoption agency: Angelina's birth father, a teenager, never signed away his parental rights, and he wants her back. Worse, his father, a powerful Denver judge, wants him to own up to this responsibility and will use every advantage his position of power affords him to make sure it happens. When Jack and Melissa attempt to handle the situation rationally by meeting face-to-face with the father and son, it is immediately apparent that there's something sinister about both of them and that love for Angelina is not the motivation for their actions. As Angelina's safety hangs in the balance, Jack and Melissa will stop at nothing to protect their child. A horrifying game of intimidation and double crosses begins that quickly becomes a death spiral where absolutely no one is safe. How far would you go to save someone you love?
©2008 C.J. Box (P)2009 Macmillan Audio
The Disappeared
Summary
Wyoming's new governor isn't sure what to make of Joe Pickett, but he has a job for him that is extremely delicate. A prominent female British executive never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British embassy is pressing hard. At the same time, his friend Nate Romanowski has asked Joe to intervene with the feds on behalf of falconers who can no longer hunt with eagles even though their permits are in order. But the more he investigates both cases, the more someone wants him to go away.
©2018 C. J. Box (P)2018 Recorded Books Inc
The Best American Mystery Stories 2020
Summary
A collection of the yearâs best mystery short fiction selected by New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award-winning author C. J. Box. C. J. Box , number one New York Times best-selling author of the hugely popular Joe Pickett series, selects the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year in this annual âtreat for crime-fiction fansâ (Library Journal).
©2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Shots Fired
Summary
From C. J. Box, the New York Times-bestselling author of the Joe Pickett novels, comes a thrilling book of suspense stories about the Wyoming he knows so well - and the dark deeds and impulses that can be found there. Over the course of eighteen books, C. J. Box has been consistently hailed for his brilliant storytelling and extraordinary skills at creating character, suspense, and a deep sense of place. All of those strengths are in the ten riveting stories - three of them never before published - that make up Shots Fired. In "One-Car Bridge," one of four Joe Pickett stories, Pickett goes up against a "just plain mean" landowner, with disastrous results, and in "Shots Fired," his investigation into the radio call referred to in the title nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does. In "Pirates of Yellowstone," two Eastern European tough guys find out what it means to be strangers in a strange land, and in "Le Sauvage Noble," the stranger is a Lakota in Paris who enjoys playing the "noble savage" for the French women - until he meets Sophie. Then he discovers what "savage" really means.
©2014 C.J. Box (P)2014 Recorded Books
Inherit the Dead
Summary
Twenty thrilling writers. One chilling mystery. Pericles "Perry" Christo is a P.I. with a past. A one-time NYPD homicide cop, Perry has been struggling since he lost his badge, and his marriage, in a notorious corruption scandal. So when wealthy Upper East Side matron Julia Drusilla calls him one cold February night, he jumps at the chance to work what seems to be a straightforward (and lucrative) case. Julia needs Perry to track down the whereabouts of her beautiful yet aimless daughter, Angelina, who is about to become a very wealthy young heiress. But as Perry digs deeper, he discovers there's much more to the story of the lovely "Angel." Her father, her best friend, her boyfriend - they all have agendas of their own. This classic noir tale twists and turns down New York's mean streets and around Hampton's beaches and back roads, during a bitterly cold and gray winter - where nothing is as it seems and everyone has something to hide. Told in the same "serial novel" format that made 2011's No Rest for the Dead such a commercial and critical success, Inherit the Dead is a collaboration among 20 of today's best-selling mystery and thriller authors each taking a chapter of the narrative and infusing it with their signature style. The editor, Jonathan Santlofer, has arranged to donate any royalties in excess of editor and contributor compensation to Safe Horizon, a leading provider of services to victims of violence and abuse, making this a worthy and winning accomplishment that showcases today's finest writers at their very best.
©2013 Lee Child, Lisa Unger, C.J. Box, Lawrence Block, Charlaine Harris, Jonathan Santlofer, and Mary Higgins Clark (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
Blue Heaven
Summary
A 12-year-old girl and her younger brother are on the run in the Idaho woods, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder - four men who know exactly who William and Annie are. And where their mother lives. Retired policemen from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the local sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children. Now there's nowhere left for William and Annie to hide...and no one they can trust. Until they meet Jess Rawlins. Rawlins, an old-school rancher, knows trouble when he sees it. He is only one against four men who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses. But in this thrilling mystery novel from C.J. Box, these ex-cops don't know just how far Rawlins will go to protect William and Annie...and see that justice is done. Blue Heaven is the winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Novel.Â
©2007 C.J. Box (P)2008 Macmillan Audio