C.J. Box Books In Order

Open Season

The debut of a writer hailed by Tony Hillerman as ‘a great storyteller’ the first book in an engaging and gritty mystery series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.’C. J. Box has hit the bull’s eye his first time up.’ Margaret Maron’A fabulous debut a great crime novel and a great modern day Western rolled into one. All the elements are here a tremendous sense of Wyoming’s scenic grandeur, vivid characters, and a high stakes plot that moves like a rifle bullet. C. J. Box is a keeper.’ Lee ChildFew first mysteries have been welcomed as enthusiastically as Open Season, or with better cause.’When a high powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive pow WHOP sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance.’ And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with the shot of a rifle, is thrust into a race to save not only an endangered species, but also the life and family he loves.C. J. Box knows the wilderness and he knows how to create a wonderfully authentic, vividly alive sense of place. Most of all, he knows how to create a memorable new hero: a man who is full of failings, but strong and honorable. This is mystery writing at its best and the beginning of a brilliant new career.

Savage Run

C. J. Box’s debut novel, Open Season, with its memorable new hero, thrilling plot, and vivid settings, hit the mystery book world with the force of a speeding rifle bullet and put it ‘on the Best of the Year track’ Los Angeles Times. Now C. J. Box returns with a gripping and suspenseful new novel, as dramatic and brutal as its Wyoming wilderness setting. When a massive explosion occurs deep within the forests of Twelve Sleep County and a colorful environmental activist appears to have perished in the blast, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is called to the scene to help investigate. Pickett soon discovers clues that lead to a deadly conspiracy one that will test his courage, his survival skills, and his determination to ‘do the right thing’ despite all costs. A richly textured novel, Savage Run is an exciting confirmation of the talents of a writer hailed by Tony Hillerman as ‘a great storyteller.’

Winterkill

Award winning writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. It’s an hour away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck’s steering wheel handcuffed to his right and Lamar Gardiner’s arrow riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him. Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. Somewhere in the dense timber, a killer draws back his bowstring with Joe as his prey. Joe’s pursuit of the killer through the rugged mountains that surround the snow packed town of Saddlestring takes a horrifying turn when his beloved foster daughter is kidnapped. Now it’s personal and Joe will stop at nothing to get her back. Steeped in the sharp cliffs and the brutal wilderness of the Wyoming landscape, Winterkill is a masterful performance, darkly compelling and utterly unforgettable. C. J. Box places all the elements of a classic mystery in a setting where the dangerous beauty of one of America’s last frontiers plays accomplice to the darkest of human motives.

Trophy Hunt

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett faces his most dangerous adversary yet in award winning author C. J. Box’s thrilling new novel. 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 assault, Pickett begins to investigate what he hopes is an isolated incident. Days later, after the discovery of a small herd of mutilated cattle, Pickett realizes this is something much bigger. 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 a different, more challenging prey? Joe’s worst fears are realized when the bodies of two men are discovered within days of each other, 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 Saddle string and it appears his rampage is just beginning.

Out of Range

Game warden Joe Pickett returns in a twisting, action packed tale of greed, power, and murder. Joe Pickett is attempting to enjoy all right, survive his mother in law’s wedding to a local big shot rancher when he receives some disturbing news: Will Jensen,a fellow Wyoming game warden and a good friend, has killed himself. And Joe’s been picked to temporarily run Jensen’s Teton district. Jackson, Wyoming, is a far cry from Joe’s hometown of Saddlestring it’s the epicenter for many environmental extremists and an elite playground for the rich and powerful and Joe quickly finds himself in over his head. Yet despite the pressures of his new job, he can’t get his friend’s suicide out of his mind. By all accounts, Will had changed in the last few months, becoming violent and unpredictable. The closer Joe comes to the truth about Will’s death, the more his own life spirals out of control and he realizes that if he’s not careful, he may end up as Jackson’s next victim. Out of Range proves once again that C. J. Box is one of the most original and entertaining voices in mystery fiction.

In Plain Sight

A thrilling tale of suspense, vengeance, and murder, featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. This one will break C. J. Box out to a larger audience. J. W. Keeley is a man with a score to settle. He blames one man for the death of his brother: Joe Pickett. And now J. W. is going to make him suffer. Spring has finally come to Saddlestring, Wyoming, and game warden Joe Pickett is relieved the long, harsh winter is finally over. However, a cloud of trouble threatens to spoil the milder weather local ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett has vanished under suspicious circumstances. Two of her sons, Hank and Arlen, are battling for control of their mother’s multi million dollar empire, and their bitter fight threatens to tear the whole town apart. Everyone is so caught up in the brothers’ battle that they seem to have forgotten that Opal is still missing. Joe is convinced, though, that one of the brothers killed their mother. Determined to uncover the truth, he is attacked and nearly beaten to death by Hank Scarlett’s new right hand man on the ranch a recently arrived stranger who looks eerily familiar. A series of threatening messages and attempts to sabotage Joe’s career follow. At first, he thinks the attacks are connected with his investigation of Opal’s disappearance, but he soon learns that someone else is after him someone with a very personal grudge who wants to make Joe pay…
and pay dearly. Compelling and suspenseful, In Plain Sight is a crackling novel from one of today’s best mystery writers.

Free Fire

Joe Picket returns, this time to the wilds of Yellowstone National Park. Deftly plotted and full of intrigue, Free Fire is C. J. Box’s best novel yet. Joe Pickett, having recently been fired from his job as a Wyoming game warden, is working on his father in law’s ranch when he receives a call from the governor’s office. Governor Rulon a devious but down home politico has a special request, one Joe knows he can’t refuse. For weeks, the headlines have been abuzz with the story of Clay McCann, a lawyer who slaughtered four campers in cold blood in a far off corner of Yellowstone National Park. After the murders, McCann immediately turned himself in at the nearest park ranger station. It seemed like a slam dunk case for law enforcement except that the crimes were committed in a thin sliver of land with zero residents and overlapping jurisdiction, the so called Free Fire zone. McCann had taken advantage of a loophole in the law: neither the state of Wyoming nor the federal government can try him for his crime, so he walks out of prison a free man. Governor Rulon, sensitive to the rising tide of public outrage over the McCann case, wants his own investigation into the murders. The governor will reinstate Joe as a game warden if he’ll go to Yellowstone to investigate. Joe, happy to get his badge back, even under these circumstances, agrees. However, it quickly becomes clear to Joe that McCann is deeply involved with some illegal activity taking place in the park something tremendously lucrative and unusually dangerous. As Joe and his partner Nate Romanowski search in the unlikeliest places to find the key to the murders, they find out that it may be hidden in the rugged terrain of the park itself.

Blood Trail

Award-winning writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

It’s elk season in the Rockies, but this year a different kind of hunter is stalking a different kind of prey. When the call comes in on the radio, Joe Pickett can hardly believe his ears: game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains-strung up, gutted, and flayed, as if he were the elk he’d been pursuing. A spent cartridge and a poker chip lie next to his body.

Ripples of horror spread through the community, and with a possibly psychotic killer on the loose Governor Rulon is forced to end the hunting season early for the first time in state history. Are the murders the work of a deranged antihunting activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta?

As always, Joe Pickett is the governor’s go-to man, and he’s put on the case to track the murderous hunter, as more bodies and poker chips turn up.

Bold, fast-paced, and with a controversial hook-hunting versus antihunting activists-Blood Trail is proof that C. J. Box is an ever-rising talent.

Below Zero

Award winning and national bestselling writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

Below Zero begins with an unassuming phone message: Tell Sherry April called. But Sherry Joe Pickett’s oldest daughter, Sheridan and the Pickett family are shaken to the core. April, Pickett s foster daughter, was killed in a horrific murder and arson spree six years prior. To Joe, it doesn t seem even remotely possible that April could have survived the massacre described in Winterkill. He was there. But Sherry starts to believe there s a chance that April is still alive; the girl on the other end of the phone is able to recall family incidents that only April could know.

Joe, however, remains suspicious, especially when he discovers that the calls have been placed from locations where serious crimes have occurred.

At the same time, an older man and a much younger girl cross the country. The man is on a mission to repent for the crimes he s committed against the environment during his lifetime. He ultimately wants to offset each incident until he not only becomes carbon neutral, but actually drops Below Zero as if he s never existed. As the path of these travelers starts to intersect with the Pickett family s, the question is raised: Is this young girl April or are Joe and his family the victims of the cruelest of hoaxes?

Nowhere to Run

The extraordinary new Joe Pickett novel from the Edgar Award winning author. ‘Box’s series is the gold standard,’ wrote Library Journal about Below Zero, but never has he written a novel as harrowing as Nowhere to Run. 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.

Cold Wind

The extraordinary new Joe Pickett novel from the Edgar Award winning author. Nowhere to Run was ‘wonderful’ The Denver Post, ‘terrific’ Chicago Tribune, and ‘outstanding’ Publishers Weekly. The new novel from C. J. Box is all that, and more. When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it’s his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for 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.

Back of Beyond

Cody Hoyt, although a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his friend Hank Winters turns up dead in a reomte mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who’s fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that. As Cody digs deeper into the case, all roads lead to foul play. After years of bad behavior with his department, Cody in no position to be investigating a homicide. But he will stop at nothing to find out who murdered Hank. And why When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a multiday wilderness horseback trip in Yellowstone National Park, Cody is desperate to get on the trail and stop the killer in his tracks. There s only one catch: his own son, Justin, is among the tourists. Now, in one of the most remote places on earth, Cody must enter a deadly cat and mouse game with a ruthless enemy who seems to know his every move…
and is hell bent on destroying the only important thing in Cody s life he has left.

Blue Heaven

A nonstop thrill ride. Harlan Coben

A twelve 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.

Grade A…
don t miss it. Rocky Mountain News

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.

A thriller with a heart. The Boston Globe

Rawlins, an old school rancher, knows trouble when he sees it. But he is only one against four men who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses. What these ex cops do not know is just how far Rawlins will go to protect William and Annie…
and see that justice is done.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

New York Times bestselling 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?

C.J. Box has once again written a bone-chilling thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

*Booklist

Omaha World-Herald

Bookreporter. com

Hook, Line & Sinister

Original short stories by best selling mystery writers about their favorite pastime shing. Sixteen of America’s favorite author anglers spin tales of mystery and fishing in this collection. From the tragic to the comic with many stops in between, these stories reflect the authors’ passions for both making stories and catching fish. Michael Connelly, Ridley Pearson, John Lescroart, Don Winslow, Melodie Johnson Howe, Victoria Houston, and others all share a mysterious affection for things piscatorial when not busy writing best selling books. This collection of all original short stories will entertain even the most discriminating mystery reader. Proceeds from this book will help support two charitable groups, Casting For Recovery, which helps women cancer survivors to heal body and soul through fly fishing, and Project Healing Waters, which does the same for our returning veterans. Contributing authors include Ridley Pearson Mark T. Sullivan Michael Connelly John Lescoart Andrew Winer Dana Stabenow Don Winslow Melodie Johnson Howe James W. Hall C.J. Box Victoria Houston William Beall Spring Warren Brian M. Wiprud William Tapply T. Jefferson Parker .