Arizona

J. A. Jance, Tombstone Courage. Mystery
Newly elected sheriff Joanna Brady must solve the murder of a local cattle rancher while dealing with prejudice in a male-dominated police force.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees. Fiction
A woman who leaves home and heads west finds her life changed by a three-year-old girl left in her car by a Cherokee woman.

Terry McMillan, Waiting to Exhale. Fiction
Four thirty-something Phoenix women are sustained by their friendship while waiting for the right man to come along.

Kirk Mitchell, Cry Dance. Mystery
Agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI investigate the discovery of a mutilated corpse on land belonging to the Havasupai Nation.

Jon Talton, Camelback Falls. Mystery
When a sheriff is shot by a sniper at his induction ceremony, his friend and former partner digs into a 20-year-old case to find the shooter.

Betsy Thornton, High Lonesome Road. Mystery
A victim’s advocate in the high desert region of Arizona investigates the murder of a bookmobile driver who was once her late brother’s friend.

Nancy Turner, These Is My Words. Fiction
A diary recounts one woman's struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last century.

Brady Udall, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. Fiction
After an accident that left him with a head injury, a boy is shunted between caretakers until he finally finds an unexpected home.

Nevada

Dan Barton, Heckler. Mystery
A stand-up comedian agrees to a last-minute gig only to learn that a killer called the Heckler is prowling the Vegas Strip.

Michael Crichton, Prey. Fiction
A deadly cloud of nanoparticles escapes from a secret lab in the Nevada desert.

Michael Connelly, Void Moon. Fiction
A burglar on parole has a special reason for agreeing to a heist at a Las Vegas casino but soon becomes entangled with an enemy from her past.

Linda Lael Miller, The Last Chance Café. Fiction
A woman fleeing her stepfather’s killers takes refuge from a blizzard at a café & meets a rancher.

Alan Watt, Diamond Dogs. Fiction
When a high school quarterback kills a freshman in a hit-and-run, his sheriff father covers up for him.

New Mexico

Richard Bradford, Red Sky at Morning. Fiction
A boy from Alabama learns to adapt when his father goes to war and he and his mother move to a largely Hispanic town in the New Mexico mountains.

Denise Chavez, Face of an Angel. Fiction
A Latina girl raised by a traditional mother and grandmother in a small town learns to become an independent woman.

Robert Gatewood, The Sound of Trees. Fiction
In 1930, a teenager flees with his mother from his abusive father to a frontier town where a black girl has been sentenced to death for stealing a rake.

Kathleen & Michael Gear, The Visitant. Mystery
As an anthropologist excavates an ancient mass grave of Anasazi in the Sonoran Desert, strange things begin to happen around the site.

Laura Hendrie, Remember Me. Fiction
Hoping to make a fresh start, outcast Rose Devonic must first face down her past and the hometown that treated her cruelly.

Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns. Mystery
Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee investigate murders at a Navajo school and a Tano pueblo that may be related to the sacred kachina.

Jo-Ann Mapson, Blue Rodeo. Fiction
A divorcee moves to a small town near Santa Fe and is attracted to a man who is on the run because of a secret in his past.

Cormac McCarthy, The Border Trilogy. Fiction
All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain chronicle the lives of two men coming of age in the borderland between New Mexico and Mexico in the 1940s and ‘50s.

Michael McGarrity, Tularosa. Mystery
A retired sheriff is asked by a friend to find his son who is AWOL from the White Sands Missile Range.

Bradford Morrow, Trinity Fields. Fiction
The sons of atomic scientists grow up together in Los Alamos and are reunited 25 years later after their lives have taken very different paths.

Texas

Susan Wittig Albert, Indigo Dying. Mystery
Herbalist sleuth China Bayles finds her small town is full of suspects when a man who intended to evict residents for a coal mining scheme is murdered.

Nancy Bell, Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man. Mystery
Biggie and her grandson investigate the death of a man found covered in gravy at the grand opening of a chicken restaurant.

Elizabeth Berg, Durable Goods. Fiction
In the sweltering heat of a Texas summer, a girl and her sister struggle to cope with their mother’s death and their father’s violent outbursts.

Jay Brandon, Defiance County. Fiction
An assistant DA who is sent to East Texas to prosecute a double murder must untangle the secrets of the town and its most prominent family.

Cindy Eppes, South of Reason. Fiction
An girl tries to figure out why her parents have moved the family back to their hometown next-door to an eccentric woman and her son.

Stephen Harrigan, Gates of the Alamo. Fiction
A riveting tale about the siege and fall of the Alamo, an event that formed the consciousness of Texas and that resonates through American history.

Joe Lansdale, The Bottoms. Mystery
In East Texas during the Depression, the children of the town constable discover the mutilated body of a black woman.

David Lindsey, Heat from Another Sun. Fiction
A Houston detective discovers that a powerful, wealthy villain is behind a brutal slaying.

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove. Fiction
The saga of life and love on the frontier in the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove.

Ben Rehder, Buck Fever. Mystery
At the start of deer season, a game warden has his hands full with a drug smuggling ring and the accidental shooting of a guy in a deer costume.

Rick Riordan, The Last King of Texas. Mystery
When two San Antonio university professors die after receiving threats, Tres Navarre agrees to take a teaching position to investigate.

Edwin Shrake, Borderland. Fiction
An adventurous and epic tale set in 1839 as the Republic of Texas sought to assert its independence from Mexico & form a government.

Sean Stewart, Galveston. Science Fiction
Magic floods the streets of Galveston during Mardi Gras, leaving half the population trapped in an everlasting carnival.

Karen Stolz, World of Pies. Fiction
A slice of life of a girl growing up in a small Texas town; complete with delicious recipes.

Mary Willis Walker, The Red Scream. Mystery
The author of a book on the Texas Scalper learns that the wrong person may have been convicted just days before his scheduled execution.

Janis Woods Windle, True Women. Fiction
The saga of three generations of women from two dynastic families in Texas.

Utah

Sarah Andrews, Fault Lines. Mystery
A forensic geologist studying an earthquake in Salt Lake City is asked to help the FBI investigate a fellow geologist’s death.

Richard Paul Evans, The Locket. Fiction
A man working in a nursing home in Ogden is asked a favor from an elderly lady who is clinging to memories of a lost love and her life in a prosperous mining town.

Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage. Fiction
A gunslinger arrives in a remote Utah town just in time to save a young and beautiful rancher from having to marry against her will.

Judith Freeman, Red Water. Fiction
Three of the wives of a man convicted of leading a massacre against a wagon train tell their story.

Robert Irvine, Baptism of Fire. Mystery
Salt Lake City P.I. Moroni Traveler is hired to find a missing person and finds himself helping the Mormon Church battle a local cult.