William Kent Krueger

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results...

Aurora is a small town nestled in the ancient forest alongside the shores of Minnesota's Iron Lake. In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to twelve-year-old Cork O'Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown,...

"When a private plane carrying a U.S. senator and her family crashes in a remote area of northern Minnesota, killing everyone on board, Cork O'Connor, his son Stephen, and several Ojibwe men from the Iron Lake Reservation are among the first responders. The crash site lies in the shadow of Desolation Mountain, known to the Ojibwe people as Devil's Eye, a cursed place. They've barely begun to sift through the wreckage when the FBI arrives and assumes...

After the violent deaths of his wife, father, and best friend all occurred in the previous Novembers, Cork O'Connor has always considered it to be the cruelest of months. Yet, his daughter has chosen this dismal time of year in which to marry, and Cork is understandably uneasy. His concern comes to a head when a man camping in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness goes missing. As the official search ends with no recovery in sight, Cork...

On the Fourth of July, just as fireworks are about to go off in Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O'Connor and his new bride, Rainy Bisonette, listen to a desperate voicemail left by Rainy's son, Peter. The message is garbled and full of static, but they hear Peter confess to the murder of someone named Rodriguez. When they try to contact him, they discover that his phone has gone dead. The following morning, Cork and Rainy fly to Coronado County in southern...

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were at the ready at Halderson's Drug Store soda counter, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a summer in which death assumed many forms. When tragedy unexpectedly comes to call on his family, which...

During a houseboat vacation on the remote Lake of the Woods, a violent gale sweeps through and strands Cork O'Connor and his daughter, Jenny, on a devastated island. Amid the wreckage they discover an old trapper's cabin, and find the body of a murdered teenage girl. Outside under a tangle of branches lies a baby boy, hungry and dehydrated but still very much alive. Then powerful forces intent on securing the child pursue them to the isolated Northwest...

Close to the town of Aurora, Minnesota, lies an ancient 200-acre expanse of great white pines, revered by the Anishinaabe tribe as "Our Grandfathers". When an explosion kills a night watchman at the nearby mill of a wealthy industrialist, it's obvious that suspicion will fall upon tribe members.

After 17-year-old Charlotte Kane--the beautiful, brilliant, and brooding daughter of a rich widower--disappears on a drunken New Years' Eve snowmobile ride, a raging blizzard soon snuffs out all search efforts. When her body is found during the spring thaw four months later, preliminary evidence implicates her ex-boyfriend--Ojibwe bad-boy, Solemn Winter Moon. But then a second Charlotte Kane turns up dead, and Cork isn't sure of anything any more....

Leaving behind a stressful law enforcement career to become a private investigator in his small Minnesota hometown, Cork O'Connor is asked by an Ojibwe healer to help him find the son the man fathered years earlier, a case that culminates in an attempt on the Ojibwe's life.