Jake Page Books In Order

Mo Bowdre Books In Order

The Stolen Gods (1993)
The Deadly Canyon (1994)
The Knotted Strings (1995)
The Lethal Partner (1996)
A Certain Malice (1997)

Novels

Shoot the Moon (1979)
Hopi (1982)
Navajo (1995)
Operation Shatterhand (1996)
Wild Justice (1997)
Apacheria (1998)
Cavern (2000)

Mo Bowdre Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Jake Page Books Overview

The Stolen Gods

The first book in Jake Page’s mystery series featuring Mo Bowdre, a blind sculptor, is now available only from the University of New Mexico Press.

Mo Bowdre and his Anglo Hopi girlfriend, Connie Barnes, find themselves at a remote desert research station in the bootheel of New Mexico thirty miles from the Mexican border and three hundred miles from nowhere. It’s an unlikely site for Bowdre s newest sculpture commission not to mention conspiracy, sexual deception, smuggling, and murder. When a female corpse turns up in Skeleton Canyon, the research station is plunged into turmoil. Bowdre, with his sixth sense for trouble, goes into action when it is discovered that the murdered woman was a scientist and an FBI special agent. But the murder is only the first sharp thorn in a dense thicket of mystery. Another memorable book. Tony Hillerman

The Knotted Strings

The movie in progress is based on a historical event, a Native American victory over Spanish invaders. But some Indians deeply resent the movie company’s filming on tribal land. Shooting has just begun when a deadly real life scenario rapidly eclipses the one slated for the screen: the man who leased the Santo Esteban Pueblo to Hollywood suddenly dies, and the leading man is murdered. Blind sculptor Mo Bowdre, whose beautiful Hopi girlfriend has a small role in the movie, is fascinated. Who are the players and what are the stakes? Finding the answer tests Mo’s inner vision to its limits.

The Lethal Partner

In Confidence Woman, the third Claire Reynier mystery, the use and abuse of identity entangle Claire in a murder for which she becomes the prime suspect. Claire’s struggles to prove her innocence plunge her into a treacherous and ever shifting quest to figure out who people really are. Claire s troubles begin because she helped a down on her luck friend from college, Evelyn Martin, who asked to stay with Claire while deciding where to live and what to do following the loss of her job in Denver. A short time later Claire realizes she s the victim of identity fraud and thinks Evelyn might be the perpetrator. Not long after, police find the decomposed body of Evelyn in a house she rented in a desirable Santa Fe neighborhood. Also discovered are credit cards with Claire s name on them along with credit cards and personal items stolen from three other women Claire and Evelyn knew at college. A rare signed first edition of Herman Melville s The Confidence Man, missing from Claire s house, is not among the items recovered by police. When a witness tells police about an argument she saw the evening of the murder, and the description fits Claire, suddenly all the twists of fate seemed aligned against her. To establish her innocence, Claire draws on her expertise as a librarian at the University of New Mexico s Center for Southwest Research, contacts with rare book dealers, and her ability to see through pretense and guise in herself and others.

A Certain Malice

A bizarre murder leaves two teenagers dead in a desert arroyo, their naked bodies side by side, face up under the New Mexican sun. Near them, etched in stone, is a symbol unlike any Native American marking. What does it signify? The puzzle is made to order for Mo Bowdre’s quirky and capacious intelligence. But Bowdre, a wildlife sculptor and occasional sleuth, may be in over his head, as he becomes embroiled in a possible case of ritual killing and A Certain Malice…
. From the Paperback edition.

Hopi

For many centuries the Hopi people have preserved their traditional and very private way of life. But in 1974 Hopi elders, together with the Tribal Council, invited photographer Susanne Page and her husband, author Jake Page, to chronicle the world of the Hopi which is usually closed to outsiders, and particularly to photographers. Since that unprecedented invitation, the Pages have visited the Hopi land and people dozens of times and produced this beautifully illustrated and written book in 1982. hailed as a masterpiece when first published, Hopi remains one 25 years later. It pays a powerful, respectful tribute to the spiritual life, the past and the present, the land, and the culture of the Hopi people.

Navajo

An intimate portrait of the Navajo Nation. Susanne and Jake Page share their personal experience at the Navajo Nation and cover the culture’s history and traditions, including Jake s own experience in a healing ceremony. Susanne s photography provides an intimate view of a Navajo healing ceremony, along with her skill in highlighting the unique landscape and everyday Navajo activities. 100 full color photographs

Wild Justice

In the long, anguished history of the American Indian, the events comprising the resistance of the Chiricahua Apaches against European encroachment and their subsequent punishment at the hands of the United States were the most heroic, violent, expensive…
and tragic. As settlers swarmed into the Southwest, the Apaches were forced oV their ancestral lands. Led by the infamous warrior Geronimo and outnumbered by five hundred to one, a small group of renegade Apaches waged a fierce rebellion against the U.S. Army for more than a year. Finally surrendering in 1886, Geronimo and the rest of the Chiricahuas including those who didn’t participate in the insurrection and even those who actively assisted the Army were held as prisoners of war for twenty three years in far off Florida, Alabama, and, later, Oklahoma. After World War II, Congress felt obliged to establish a forum specifically to hear and remedy the complaints of Indian tribes against the United States, and, in 1947, Harry S. Truman signed into law the Indian Claims Commission. Focusing on the unique claims of the Chiricahua Apaches, Wild Justice examines the personalities involved in and decisions made by this extraordinary tribunal the first time any national government established a court to redress grievances of its native people and the efforts made by hundreds of other tribes to gain restitution. Jake Page, who has written extensively on the South west Indians, and Michael Lieder, a legal scholar, bring to light this little known saga in American history. The Chiricahua were represented by an unlikely pair of lawyers: Israel Weissbrodt, born to illiterate Jewish emigrants from Poland, educated at Columbia University, and trained by William O. Douglas; and David Cobb, a Mayflower descendant and Harvard graduate. When the government misdated the taking of the Apache lands and left an opening for legal wrangling, this odd couple pounced. The result was a $22 million settlement, forty times what the tribe had asked for a spectacular sum in total, but, divided among several thousand Apaches, it proved slim atonement, and it was at best a bittersweet victory. Rather than negotiating the Indian claims and considering present needs, the United States insisted on battling over ancient grievances in the inherently adversarial Anglo American legal system, which was incapable of grasping the Indians’ way of life. The very concept of land ownership was foreign to the Indians, but payment to the tribes for loss of acreage was all the legal system could muster in recompense for decades of injustice. The destruction of religion, tribal sovereignty, and whole cultures remained unaddressed, and these issues plague U.S./Indian affairs to this day. If ‘our treatment of Indians reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith,’ Wild Justice is the remarkable history of that failure and the unbridgeable legal and cultural chasm at its heart.

Apacheria

In this riveting, action packed alternate history, the Apaches forge their own bold nation and enter the world of racketeering and politics all the while maintaining their traditional ways as a new neighbor to a United States that will never be the same again…
In 1884 only one thing stood in the way of United States expansion: the Apaches. The U.S. Army believed it could easily defeat this ragtag band of savages who viewed one another more as rivals than allies. But one of those ‘savages’ was a military genius: Juh, ‘He Who Sees Ahead.’ It was Juh’s vision that persuaded the various tribal leaders to set aside their differences and work together, thus turning the disconnected bands of warring Apaches into the most cohesive fighting force the West had ever seen and crushing the invading army. Thus was born Apacheria the Apache Nation and a world where Juh and his son, Little Spring, matched wits and weapons with a cast ranging from Teddy Roosevelt and Carrie Nation to Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover. A world where it was best to stand with the Apaches, and never against them…

Cavern

Set in and around the town of Carlsbad, New Mexico home to both the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project WIPP, the underground dumping area for irradiated materials, and the magnificent Carlsbad Caverns Cavern is a truly terrifying thriller, laced with flawless science, caving research, and an excellent romance. The salt tunnel excavations for the WIPP site, and the entombment of radioactive material might seem a dangerous enough risk for humanity; but when a newly revealed series of immense Caverns leads to the discovery of a colony of colossal bears that have survived and adapted to their subterranean environment since the ice age glaciers disappeared from what is now the desert southwest, not only is man at risk, but the whole Department of Energy’s multi billion dollar investment in WIPP.’Cavern is one of the most gripping novels I have read in ages. It is a grand adventure story, a tale of intrigue, science, and terror set in a warren of Caverns deep under the Southwestern desert. But it is more than just a heart pounding thriller: it is a story populated with richly drawn characters, unforgettable descriptions of a magical underground world, exceptionally fine writing, and a creature guaranteed to arouse your most atavistic fears. Jake Page knows his science, and he has created a story that is all too believable. This is most definitely not a novel for anyone with a heart condition or claustrophobia. Read it with the lights on and the doors locked.’ Douglas Preston, coauthor of Relic and Thunderhead