Series

For the first time since the pandemic, Thumps DreadfulWater has finally found some peace in small-town Chinook. Sure, his beloved cat is still missing and his relationship with Claire is more than uncertain, but at least he can relax in the comfort of his home. And now that local businesses are starting to open their doors again, everything can go back to normal.

But when Thumps unintentionally discovers a body at the bottom of a treacherous canyon, he becomes entangled once again in an inexplicable mystery. As more puzzling details come to the surface, Thumps begins to question whom he can truly trust—especially when an unexpected visitor walks back into his life.

In the follow-up to Obsidian, a Globe and Mail Favourite of 2020, Thumps DreadfulWater returns with wit and wry humour to solve a mystery that only Thomas King could create.

Series Information
This book is from the DreadfulWater Mystery series, a mystery/detective series from Thomas King.

Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information
400 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Marcie R. Rendon’s follow-up to Murder on the Red River finds Cash helping Sheriff Wheaton solve a murder that has likeness to the cases of missing and murdered Native women.

Cash is off to a local college with the help of Wheaton, who wants her to take hold of her life and aspire to better things. At Moorhead State she sees that people talk a lot but mostly about nothing, not like the men in the fields she’s known all her life, who hold the rich topsoil in their hands, talk fertilizer and weather and prices on the Grain Exchange.

In between classes and hauling beets, drinking beer and shooting pool, she begins to dream of the Cities and blonde Scandinavian girls calling for help.

Reviews
"Rendon is a natural storyteller and a consummate writer, and we’re indebted to Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso for bringing the unforgettable Cash Blackbear to life. There isn’t a protagonist in recent fiction with the bearing of Rendon’s creation, and we’re the better for knowing her."—Jeffrey Mannix

"I won’t recount the terror, the drama, and the bravery of what follows. You can read the book yourself. The ending, I’ll just say, is deeply satisfying. Rendon has been working for years in the prisons with women who are incarcerated for prostitution, soliciting, and other offenses. Teaching them to tell their stories and access their inner writing voice. She’s able to convey the savagery of the system, what it does to women and their families, how deeply it is connected to poverty, and how it reaches into white rural and suburban areas as well as communities of color." —Ann Markusen, Grand Rapids Herald-Review

"Darn that Marcie Rendon but she did it again. She wrote another book featuring Renee “Cash” Blackbear which invariably led to non-stop, compulsive reading and thoughts about the 19-year-old protagonist...This is a good book. If you read it, block out uninterrupted time. It’s hard to put down."—Deborah Locke,The Circle News: Native American News and Arts

"The vivid writing and keen eye keep the pages turning and readers hoping for another book in this series."—Wendy J. Fox, Buzzfeed

"Rendon's refreshing sequel to 2017's Murder on the Red River...When [Cash] hears about a missing coed, she contacts [Sheriff] Wheaton. Since they previously worked together successfully on a murder, Wheaton trusts Cash’s sharp instincts and asks for her help in solving the case...Rendon, herself a member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation, highlights the plight of Native Americans who were forcibly adopted by whites and Cash’s discomfort in a land that is and is not hers. Readers will look forward to Cash’s next outing."—Publishers Weekly

"In her second outing, Cash Blackbear goes off to college and finds herself embroiled in the mystery of a missing classmate. 'I'm not used to folks treating me like I'm stupid,' says Cash. But Moorhead State is another world, one slow to disclose the secrets of its initiated."—Kirkus Reviews

Series Information
This is the second book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon.  

Additional Information
336 pages | 5.51" x 8.26" | Paperback

1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota: Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system.

One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man’s weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that’s the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression.

Reviews
“More of a coming of age story than a mystery … the spare prose-poetry of her descriptions and dialogue is a lot more interesting than anything she has to say about crime or detection.”—Kirkus Reviews

“An appealing 19-year-old heroine, Renee 'Cash' Blackbear, lifts [Marcie] Rendon’s first mystery.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Rendon] is one heck of a mystery novelist. Rendon’s Cash Blackbear books are gripping vehicles that tell broader stories about the historical persecution of American Indians.”—Oprah Daily

Series Information
This is the first book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon.

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.52" x 8.22" | Paperback

Old grudges, tribal traditions, and outside influences collide for a Kiowa woman as forces threaten her family, her tribe, and the land of her ancestors, in this own-voices debut perfect for fans of Winter Counts.

No one called her Mud in Silicon Valley. There, she was Mae, a high-powered professional who had left her Kiowa roots behind a decade ago. But a cryptic voice message from her grandfather, James Sawpole, telling her to come home sounds so wrong that she catches the next plane to Oklahoma. She never expected to be plunged into a web of theft, betrayal, and murder.

Mud discovers a tribe in disarray. Fracking is damaging their ancestral lands, Kiowa families are being forced to sell off their artifacts, and frackers have threatened to kill her grandfather over his water rights. When Mud and her cousin Denny discover her grandfather missing, accused of stealing the valuable Jefferson Peace medal from the tribe museum—and stumble across a body in his work room—Mud has no choice but to search for answers.

Mud sets out into the Wildlife Refuge, determined to clear her grandfather's name and identify the killer. But Mud has no idea that she's about to embark on a vision quest that will involve deceit, greed, and a charging buffalo—or that a murderer is on her trail.

Reviews
“[A] debut wrapped in Kiowa history, stories, and culture . . . Recommended for readers of David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts.”—Library Journal

“Rowell’s Never Name the Dead is an impressive debut, charting a woman’s return from Silicon Valley to her roots, the Kiowa tribal land in Oklahoma, where she finds a divided tribe, land threatened by fracking, and her own grandfather missing and possibly framed for a crime she knows he didn’t commit. The novel then becomes a detective story with a deep sense of place and history. Rowell brings notes of poetry to the dark tale of corruption.”—CrimeReads

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the A Mud Swapole Mystery series.

Additional Information
336 pages | 5.78" x 8.52" | Hardcover 

In the third book of her brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy, Eden Robinson delivers an explosive, surprising and satisfying resolution.

All Jared Martin had ever wanted was to be normal, which was already hard enough when he had to cope with Maggie, his hard-partying, gun-toting, literal witch of a mother, Indigenous teen life and his own addictions. When he wakes up naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat, some of the people he loves--the ones who don't see the magic he attracts--just think he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety. The truth for Jared is so much worse.

He finally knows for sure that he is the only one of his bio dad Wee'git's 535 children who is a Trickster too, a shapeshifter with a free pass to other dimensions. Sarah, his ex, is happy he's a magical being, but everyone else he loves is either pissed with him, or in mortal danger from the dark forces he's accidentally unleashed, or both. The scariest of those dark forces is his Aunt Georgina, a maniacal ogress hungry for his power, who has sent her posse of flesh-eating coy-wolves to track him down.

Even though his mother resents like hell that Jared has taken after his dad, she is also determined that no one is going to hurt her son. For Maggie it's simple--Kill or be killed, bucko. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war--a horrifying place to be for the universe's sweetest Trickster, whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world a kinder, safer, place.

Educator & Series Information
This is the third book in Eden Robinson's Trickster Trilogy. 

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.18" x 7.99" | Paperback

This blood-chilling debut set in New Mexico’s Navajo Nation is equal parts gripping crime thriller, supernatural horror, and poignant portrayal of coming of age on the reservation.

Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook.

As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law.

And now it might be what gets her killed.

When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim—who insists she was murdered—latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome prose, Shutter is an explosive debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices.

Reviews
“Shutter is utterly unputdownable. It is a haunting thriller, written with exquisite suspense, and filled to the brim with beautiful writing, through the lens of cameras and memory—an ode to photography, written across the landscapes of the Navajo Nation and cityscapes of New Mexico, about what it means to witness and capture death, be captured by it, told unflinchingly by an author who knows what she is doing on every page. It is fun, and funny, and chilling. This is a story that won’t let you go long after you finish, and you won’t want it to end even as you can’t stop reading to find out how it does.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There

“Get ready for the next wave of Indigenous thrillers! Shutter is a soulful and mesmerizing exploration of the paranormal, set against the backdrop of New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. Written in tough, edgy prose, this book grabs you by the shoulders and refuses to let you leave. Ramona Emerson is a welcome new voice in Native literature.” —David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts

“Beautiful, imaginative prose with a sharp edge. Shutter is a powerful and supernatural debut. I've never seen a better rendering of gifts and power. This work understands the spirit world and how it does not relent until we bear witness. Ramona Emerson is a badass, propulsive, exacting and true storyteller.”—Terese Mailhot, author of Heart Berries

“Emerson’s striking debut follows a Navajo police photographer almost literally to hell and back . . . A whodunit upstaged at every point by the unforgettably febrile intensity of the heroine’s first-person narrative.”—Kirkus Reviews

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the A Rita Todacheene Novel series.

Additional Information
312 pages | 6.21" x 9.27" | Hardcover

Gideon the Ninth meets Black Sun in this queer, Māori-inspired debut fantasy about a police officer who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.

Reviews
"A wonderful queer noir fever dream."—Tamsyn Muir, internationally bestselling author of Gideon the Ninth

"Fiercely queer. A strange and wondrous re-imagining of noir that takes its cues from biopunk and SE Asian mythos to create something wholly different. There's real imagination at work here—I loved it."—Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning and Black Sun

"The Dawnhounds packs hard-hitting, mind-bending weirdness into a story that’s still touching and human. If you’re looking for gritty queer spec fic that isn’t unrelentingly grim, you’ve found it.”—Casey Lucas, award-winning author of Into the Mire

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of The Endsong series.

Additional Information
352 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.

Reviews
“Rebecca Roanhorse… [is one] of the Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror and fantasy — genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked.” — The New York Times

"The pages turn themselves. A beautifully crafted setting with complex character dynamics and layers of political intrigue? Perfection. Mark your calendars, this is the next big thing." — Kirkus, starred review

"A a razor-sharp examination of politics, generational trauma, and the path to redemption...Roanhorse strikes a perfect balance between powerful worldbuilding and rich thematic exploration as the protagonists struggle against their fates. Fantasy fans will be wowed." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Educator & Series Information
This is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky Series.

Additional Information
496 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

Series Information
This is the first book in The Indian Lake Trilogy.

Additional Information
416 pages | 5.50" x 8.37" | Paperback

The outrageously funny and painfully relatable satire of an aspiring artist and millennial culture.

Walter Scott’s Wendy comics have become a critical sensation, with rave reviews in The New Yorker and The Guardian, and an appearance in the Best American Comics anthology. Learn Wendy’s origin story as Scott hilariously plumbs millennial culture, creative ennui, and the nepotism of the art world’s institutions.

Wendy’s an aspiring artist in a party city, and she’s in a rut. She spends her time snorting MDMA in gallery bathrooms and watching Nurse Jackie reruns on her laptop while hungover. So when she’s accepted into the prestigious Flojo Island residency, Wendy vows to buckle down and get working. But during the remote, woodsy residency, Wendy and her collaborator/bff Winona put on a performance piece that becomes the centre of an art world controversy, and so Wendy returns to Montreal, getting a job in a coffee shop to make ends meet.

With Wendy, Scott launches the Wendyverse, brimming with painfully relatable characters like the back-stabbing frenemy Tina, the name-dropping Paloma, the cool drummer Wendy obsesses over, Jeff, and of course, our treasured Wendy, the hot mess we can’t live without. In blunt, laugh out loud funny vignettes with perfect punchlines, Scott illuminates the opacity of artspeak and the ceaseless anxieties plaguing a largely privileged generation.

Reviews
“Wendy’s lust for life is inseparable from her knee-jerk self-destruction.”–The New Yorker

“Winningly messy.”—The Guardian

“The art school party girl who is perhaps the real voice of our generation (sorry Lena Dunham).”—Vice

Educator Information
Publisher recommends for ages 16+.  

Caution: mature content (swearing and strong language, sexual content, drug/alcohol use, etc.)

Additional Information
216 pages | 6.50" x 9.00" | black and white illustrations throughout | paperback 

"[In Wendy, Master of Art,] Scott manages a rare thing: the sharpness of his satire doesn’t preclude a realistic rendering of personhood, and the seeming flatness opens up, at every turn, to a depth of feeling…. His mastery of his characters’ faces and gestures is also wonderful, his line quick and sure and expressive." —The New Yorker

The existential dread of making (or not making) art takes center stage in this trenchant satire of MFA culture.

Wendy is an aspiring contemporary artist whose adventures have taken her to galleries, art openings, and parties in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Toronto. In Wendy, Master of Art, Walter Scott’s sly wit and social commentary zero in on MFA culture as our hero hunkers down to complete a master of fine arts at the University of Hell in small-town Ontario.

Finally Wendy has space to refine her artistic practice, but in this calm, all of her unresolved insecurities and fears explode at full volume—usually while hungover. What is the post-Jungian object as symbol? Will she ever understand her course reading—or herself? What if she’s just not smart enough? As she develops as an artist and a person, Wendy also finds herself in a teaching position, mentoring a perpetually sobbing grade-grubbing undergrad.

Scott’s incisively funny take on art school pretensions isn’t the only focus. Wendy, Master of Art explores the politics of open relationships and polyamory, performative activism, the precariousness of a life in the arts, as well as the complexities of gender identity, sex work, drug use, and more. At its heart, this is a book about the give and take of community—about learning to navigate empathy and boundaries, and to respect herself. It is deeply funny and endlessly relatable as it shows Wendy growing from millennial art party girl to successful artist, friend, teacher—and Master of Art.

Reviews
"Wendy’s personal life remains chaotic, hilarious, and relatable…" —Quill & Quire

Educator Information
The publisher recommends for ages 16+, but this graphic novel contains very mature content. 

Caution: Mature content

This is the third and largest book in the Wendy series.

Additional Information
276 pages | 6.52" x 9.07" | Black-and-white illustrations | Paperback 

This critique of the art world will have you crying with laughter

In Wendy’s Revenge, Scott’s titular heroine returns with a fresh set of awkward misadventures and messy nights out. When the book opens, aspiring artist Wendy has decided to move to the west coast to clear her head.

She plans on getting some quality time with her collaborator and friend Winona, only to find Winona packing up to leave, having decided to move back in with her mom on the rez. All alone, Wendy endeavours to foster community in Vancouver’s bleak art scene. When her hope and optimism are all used up, she packs her bags for an artist residency in Japan. Wendy then gallery hops and parties around the globe until she stumbles upon the opportunity to unite with former foe Paloma. Together they enact revenge on VVURST, the German publication that once tore her performance art to shreds.

Young artists struggle with mental health issues, they get wasted and hook up with men with gross piercings, and they’re afflicted with an insatiable longing for a stable identity—stability they themselves undermine. Scott’s deceptively simple, inky character drawings evoke millennial culture with such Jungian accuracy that you can’t help but stare and giggle in equal measure. Praised by The New Yorker, Guardian, Globe and Mail, and with an appearance in the Best American Comics anthology, it’s clear why Walter Scott’s Wendy comics have taken critics by storm.

Reviews
“I am blown away by Walter Scott’s Wendy series.” —Zadie Smith

“Wendy, her pals and her milieu comprise a fictional world as fully and funnily inhabited as any in recent Canadian storytelling.”—Globe & Mail

“Funny, poignant, and scary. Scott makes you laugh and then rips your heart out.”—Literary Hub

Educator Information
The publisher recommends for ages 16+, but this graphic novel contains very mature content. 

Caution: Mature content

In this second comic, Winona, an Indigenous character, is introduced.

Additional Information
260 pages | 6.50" x 9.00" | Black-and-white illustrations with partial color section | Paperback 

From the award-winning and #1 bestselling author of The Back of the Turtle; Green Grass, Running Water and The Inconvenient Indian

Thumps DreadfulWater’s world is turned upside down when Nina Maslow, the producer of a true-crime reality-TV show, turns up dead after working on a cold case that Thumps has spent years trying to forget. What’s more, someone seems set on taunting Thumps, leaving reminders of the Obsidian murder case around town. Is it possible that the elusive serial killer who murdered his girlfriend and her daughter all those years ago has resurfaced in Chinook? Or is this the work of a copycat looking to mess with Thumps by stirring up memories from his past?

Dragged back into a case that has haunted him for years, Thumps DreadfulWater is determined to solve the mystery of the Obsidian murders. But as he works the case, he begins to realize just how dangerous the person he is dealing with is—and that he might be the next target.

Thumps DreadfulWater, the sly, wry, reluctant investigator of Cold Skies and A Matter of Malice, returns in another irresistible mystery that only Thomas King could create.

Series Information
This book is from the DreadfulWater Mystery series, a mystery/detective series from Thomas King.

Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information
240 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

When a TV producer asks Thumps to assist with an episode about a local woman from a wealthy family whose death was ruled “misadventure,” he is reluctant to get involved. Then the producer dies in the exact same manner, and Thumps finds himself solving two cases.

Can a reality TV show solve a cold case?

The crew of a true-crime reality TV show, Malice Aforethought, shows up in Chinook to do an episode about the death of Trudy Samuels. Trudy’s death had originally been ruled accidental, but with ratings in mind, one of the producers, Nina Maslow, wants to prove it was murder. And she wants Thumps to help. Thumps is reluctant to get involved until Nina dies in the exact same place and in the exact same way as Trudy. Are the two deaths related? Or are there two murderers on the loose in Chinook? Thumps uses Nina’s Malice Aforethought files to try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, and in the process discovers that she had already started work on another case close to Thumps' heart: the Obsidian murders.

Series Information
This novel is part of the DreadfulWater Mystery series from Thomas King. Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information

Gina Gallo is a mob goddaughter who doesn't want to be one. She's left her loopy family behind to elope with Pete to Vegas. Except that eloping may be a mortal sin in an Italian family. Between that and some weird deliveries and suitors, Gina's nerves are frayed. Vegas is full of great acts, but one impersonation is real: Gina has a crime-committing double whose activities are making Gina front-page news. Gina has to track down this fiendish fraud before the police catch up with her. And, of course, cousin Nico is along for the ride.

Another madcap adventure for the loveable Gallo cousins that proves the rule "Why should things go right when they can go wrong?"

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Rapid Reads series. Rapid Reads are short novels and nonfiction books for young adults aged 16+ and adult readers. They are intended for a diverse audience, including ESL students, reluctant readers, adults who struggle with literacy and anyone who wants a high-interest quick read.

Additional Information
144 pages | 4.75" x 7.25"