William Kent Krueger Books In Order

Iron Lake

Rare is the author whose sheer mastery of detail, character, and storytelling succeeds in evoking the underlying essence of a place Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles…
Tony Hillerman’s Southwest…
Carl Hiassen’s Florida. Now, in a dazzling debut, William Kent Krueger joins them, taking us into the lake country of northern Minnesota to reveal the dark side of its snow covered landscape. Part Irish, part Anishanaabe Indian, Corcoran ‘Cork’ O’Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota population 3,752. Embittered by his ‘former’ status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, he’s found that there’s not much left in life that can shock him. But when the town’s judge, Robert Parrant, is brutally murdered, and Eagle Scout Paul LeBeau is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind jolting case of conspiracy, corruption and scandal. Asked by LeBeau’s panicked mother to find her son, Cork’s investigation grows icier, and more treacherous, than a frozen lake at midnight. The coroner declares Judge Parrant’s death a suicide and quickly cremates the corpse. The current sheriff throws critical evidence in the incinerator. And a right wing paramilitary group makes it violently clear that Cork would be better off letting dead dogs lie. To top it all off, Cork discovers a small town secret with the big time implications that hits painfully close to home. With bodies and questions piling up faster than the Minnesota snow, Cork’s the only one stubborn enough to uncover the truth a truth he can’t ignore, a truth he’s determined to face…
even if it kills him.

Boundary Waters

The Quetico Superior Wilderness: two million plus acres of primeval forest, white water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh a country western singer at the height of her fame has disappeared. Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, intent on hiring Cork O’Connor former Aurora sheriff and an old family friend to find his daughter. Reluctant at first, Cork finds himself forced into joining a search party comprised of Shiloh’s father, an angry ex convict, a pair of FBI agents, and a ten year old boy. But they are not the only ones hunting Shiloh. Others are on her trail as well. Hired men: hired not just to find her…
but to kill her. As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town’s snow whitened streets over a fifteen year old unsolved murder. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork’s team of searchers loses all contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a relentless Minnesota blizzard, death violent and sudden stalks them. ‘Iron Lake’ marked William Kent Krueger as an electrifyingly fresh voice in the annals of suspense. Vivid, explosive, and utterly compelling, ‘Boundary Waters‘ is a masterpiece of mystery and much more. It is a brilliant novel of love, greed, murder, and survival, an uncommon page turner that establishes Krueger as one of the most versatile and talented authors writing today.

Purgatory Ridge

Winner of the prestigious Loft McKnight Fiction Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, William Kent Krueger has established himself as a startlingly original voice in thriller fiction. With Purgatory Ridge he cements his standing as a suspense writer of the highest caliber. Not far from the small town of Aurora population 3,752 lies an ancient two hundred acre expanse of great white pines, sacred to the Anishinaabe and known to them as Minishoomisag Our Grandfathers. Wealthy industrialist Karl Lindstrom does not have a reputation as a sensitive environmentalist, and some members of the Anishinaabe tribe are concerned about the proximity of the trees to his lumber mill. So when an explosion at the mill results in the death of a night watchman, it’s obvious whom suspicion will fall upon. Cork O’Connor, in the throes of straightening out his life and repairing his marriage, is asked by his successor as sheriff to help with the investigation. His sense of community obliges him to accept, but Cork has distinctly mixed feelings about the case. For one thing, he is part Anishinaabe himself. For another, his lawyer wife, Jo, represents the tribe. Meanwhile, in a secluded house that overlooks the lakeside home of the Lindstrom family, a reclusive shipwreck survivor and his sidekick also seem to be harboring some resentment of their own against the industrialist. And it soon becomes clear to Cork that harmony, both at home and in the town, will be on the back burner for some time. William Kent Krueger’s precise and atmospheric prose, combined with his keen eye for the telling details of small town life and his vivid sense of the land and seascapes of northern Minnesota, will impress and delight both his old fans and those discovering him for the first time.

Blood Hollow

A brilliant new installment in the prize winning Cork O’Connor series from the acclaimed author of The Devil’s Bed and Purgatory Ridge immerses readers in an eerie mystery surrounding a racially charged murder in small town Minnesota. Winner of the Loft McKnight Fiction Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, William Kent Krueger is a wholly original talent among mystery writers, managing to fuse inspired, fluid storytelling with complex, finely textured characterizations. Now, in a briskly paced novel that outstrips even its predecessors in its ability to ratchet up the suspense, Krueger takes us back to Aurora, Minnesota, where the charismatic Cork O’Connor encounters his most baffling case to date. When the corpse of a beautiful high school student is discovered on a hillside four months after her disappearance on New Year’s Eve, all evidence points to her boyfriend, local bad boy Solemn Winter Moon. Despite Solemn’s self incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O’Connor, Aurora’s former sheriff, isn’t about to hang the crime on the kid, whom O’Connor is convinced is innocent. In an uphill battle to clear Solemn’s name, Cork encounters no shortage of adversity. Some he knows all too well small town bigotry and bureaucracy foremost among them. What Cork isn’t prepared for is the emergence of a long held resentment hailing from his own childhood. And when Solemn reappears, claiming to have seen a vision of Jesus Christ in Blood Hollow, the mystery becomes thornier than Cork could ever have anticipated. And that’s when the miracles start happening…
. Praised by critics and peers alike for his bold and insightful writing, William Kent Krueger has become a master of mixing brilliant, evocative prose with stunning, nonstop suspense. Readers are sure to be riveted by his latest foray into the darkest corners of a small town paradise and the detective who is determined to bring it all to light.

Mercy Falls

In this ‘smart and satisfying’ Booklist Anthony Award winning novel from William Kent Krueger’s stunning Cork O’Connor series, the charismatic detective faces his most dangerous case to date. Back in the saddle as sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork O’Connor is lured to the nearby Ojibwe reservation on what appears to be a routine call only to become the target of sniper fire. Soon after, he’s called to investigate a mutilated body found perched above the raging waters of Mercy Falls. The victim is Eddie Jacoby, a Chicago businessman negotiating an unpopular contract between his management firm and the local Indian casino. Sparks fly when the wealthy Jacoby family hires a beautiful private investigator to consult on the case. But once Cork discovers an old and passionate tie between one of the Jacoby sons and his own wife, Jo, he begins to suspect that dark, personal motives lurk behind recent events. Murder, greed, sex, and jealousy hide around every corner in this maze of danger. But somewhere beneath the turbulent Mercy Falls lies the truth and Cork is determined to find it.

Copper River

Two time Anthony Award winning author William Kent Krueger has ‘moved to the head of the crime fiction class’ Chicago Sun Times with his gripping series featuring Sheriff Cork O’Connor. In Copper River, Cork is running for his life and straight into a murderous conspiracy involving teenage runaways.

Desperately avoiding the clutches of professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he’s hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen year old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River and then another teenager vanishes. Instead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses on tracking a ring of killers who prey on innocent children before anyone else falls victim. But as his deadly followers close in, Cork realizes he’s made an error any good man might make and it may be his last.

Thunder Bay

From acclaimed author William Kent Krueger comes the seventh profound, action packed suspense novel in his award winning Cork O’Conner mystery series.

The promise, as I remember it, happened this way.

Happy and content in his hometown of Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O’Connor has left his badge behind and is ready for a life of relative peace, setting up shop as a private investigator. But his newfound state of calm is soon interrupted when Henry Meloux, the Ojibwe medicine man and Cork’s spiritual adviser, makes a request: Will Cork find the son that Henry fathered long ago?

With little to go on, Cork uses his investigative skills to locate Henry Wellington, a wealthy and reclusive industrialist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When a murder attempt is made on old Meloux’s life, all clues point north across the border. But why would Wellington want his father dead? This question takes Cork on a journey through time as he unravels the story of Meloux’s 1920s adventure in the ore rich wilderness of Canada, where his love for a beautiful woman, far outside his culture, led him into a trap of treachery, greed, and murder.

The past and present collide along the rocky shores of Thunder Bay, where a father’s unconditional love is tested by a son’s deeply felt resentment, and where jealousy and revenge remain the code among men. As Cork hastens to uncover the truth and save his friend, he soon discovers that his own life is in danger and is reminded that the promises we keep even for the best of friends can sometimes place us in the hands of our worst enemies.

Red Knife

The newest book in William Kent Krueger’s award winning Corcoran O’Connor series finds the charismatic private investigator caught in the middle of a racial gang war that’s turning picturesque Tamarack County, Minnesota, into a bloody battlefield.

When the daughter of a powerful businessman dies as a result of her meth addiction, her father, strong willed and brutal Buck Reinhardt, vows revenge. His target is the Red Boyz, a gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the girl’s fatal drug dose. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are murdered in a way that suggests execution, the Ojibwe gang mobilizes, and the citizens of Tamarack County brace themselves for war, white against red.

Both sides look to Cork O’Connor, a man of mixed heritage, to uncover the truth behind the murders. A former sheriff, Cork has lived, fought, and nearly died to keep the small town streets and his family safe from harm. He knows that violence is never a virtue, but he believes that it’s sometimes a necessary response to the evil that men do. Racing to find answers before the bloodshed spreads, Cork himself becomes involved in the darkest of deeds. As the unspeakable unfolds in the remote and beautiful place he calls home, Cork is forced to confront the horrific truth: Violence is a beast that cannot be contained.

In Red Knife, Krueger gives his readers a vivid picture of racial conflict in small town America, as well as a sensitive look at the secrets we keep from even those closest to us and the destructive nature of all that is left unsaid between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and lovers.

Heaven’s Keep

When a charter plane carrying Cork O Connor’s wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies, Cork must accept the terrible truth that his wife is gone forever. But is she? In Heaven s Keep, celebrated author William Kent Krueger puts his intrepid hero through the most harrowing mission of his life.
Months after the tragedy, two women show up on Cork s doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo s plane was not the man he claimed to be. It may not be definitive proof, but it s a ray of light in the darkness surrounding Cork s loss. Agreeing to investigate, he travels to Wyoming, where he battles the interference of local law enforcement who may be on the take, the open hostility of the Northern Arapaho, who have much to lose if the truth is known, and the continuing attempts on his life by assassins who shadow his every move.
At the center of all the danger and deception lies the possibility that Jo s disappearance was not the end of her, that somewhere along the labyrinthine path of his search, maybe even in the broad shadow of Heaven s Keep itself, Cork will find her alive and waiting for him.

Vermilion Drift

Some nights, Corcoran O Connor dreams his father’s death. William Kent Krueger s gripping tale of suspense begins with a recurring nightmare, a gun, and a wound in the earth so deep and horrific that it has a name: Vermilion Drift. When the Department of Energy puts an underground iron mine on its short list of potential sites for storage of nuclear waste, a barrage of protest erupts in Tamarack County, Minnesota, and Cork is hired as a security consultant. Deep in the mine during his first day on the job, Cork stumbles across a secret room that contains the remains of six murder victims. Five appear to be nearly half a century old connected to what the media once dubbed ‘The Vanishings,’ a series of unsolved disappearances in the summer of 1964, when Cork s father was sheriff in Tamarack County. But the sixth has been dead less than a week. What s worse, two of the bodies including the most recent victim were killed using Cork s own gun, one handed down to him from his father. As Cork searches for answers, he must dig into his own past and that of his father, a well respected man who harbored a ghastly truth. Time is running out, however. New threats surface, and unless Cork can unravel the tangled thread of clues quickly, more death is sure to come. Vermilion Drift is a powerful novel, filled with all the mystery and suspense for which Krueger has won so many awards. A poignant portrayal of the complexities of family life, it s also a sobering reminder that even those closest to our hearts can house the darkest and deadliest of secrets.

Northwest Angle

William Kent Krueger’s next nail biting suspense in his critically acclaimed, award winning series, featuring private detective Cork O’Connor.

The Devil’s Bed

The creator of the critically acclaimed, award winning Cork O’Connor mystery series presents a haunting, atmospheric conspiracy thriller. Locked in a tight battle for reelection, President Clay Dixon knows his best chance for victory is the popularity of his wife, Kate. But the disenchanted First Lady is about to desert him. When an orchard accident seriously injures Kate’s father, a retired senator and former vice president, she returns to the family farm in Minnesota to be at his side. Assigned to protect her, Secret Service agent Bo Thorsen soon falls under Kate’s spell. Bo suspects that the accident is part of a trap to lure the First Lady home, a trap set by a man named David Moses, an escaped mental patient who once loved Kate. But although Bo and Moses don’t realize it, they’re caught in a larger web of deadly intrigue spun by a shadowy, seemingly insignificant bureaucratic department within the federal government itself. Racing to find answers before an assassin’s bullet kills Kate, Bo comes to understand that when you lie down with the Devil, there’s hell to pay. Both ambitious and compelling, The Devil’s Bed is sure to thrill and surprise devotees of Cork O’Connor and win new fans alike.

Mystery Writers of America Presents Death Do Us Part: New Stories About Love, Lust, and Murder

From the Civil War–era south to 1950s New York to the present day’s gritty cities and seemingly innocuous suburbs, the eighteen stories in this anthology edited by the award winning mystery writer Harlan Coben chart the complications always surprising, sometimes deadly that arise between lovers, dear friends, and even complete strangers coming together for a single, shocking encounter. In Lee Child’s ‘Safe Enough,’ a blue collar city boy takes up with a wealthy suburban wife, with dire consequences. In Harlan Coben’s ‘Entrapped,’ a woman’s husband disappears and is replaced by a handsome impostor. In Laura Lippman’s ‘One True Love,’ a high end prostitute seeks a radical solution to a public relations problem. And in P. J. Parrish’s ‘One Shot,’ a man returns to his childhood home to learn the truth about a long ago tragedy. Other contributors of original stories include Ridley Pearson, R. L. Stine, Jim Fusilli, Jeff Abbott, Charles Todd, and Tom Savage.

These Guns for Hire

They have a combined total of 500 million book sales, and have won every possible award in the mystery, thriller, and dark fiction genres.

Thirty original hitman stories by today’s modern masters. Noir. Wise guys. Sex. Freelance assassins. Humor. Violence. Femme fatales. Amateurs. Horror. Surprise twists. Hardboiled.

Get ready for some wet work!