"When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. First, he finds the professor's vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then Joe finds the professor's frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents,...

"Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett must investigate an attempted murder--a crime committed from a confoundingly long distance--in the riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box"--

She was gone. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more — Joe’s eighteen-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway — alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with...

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man's wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but...

In “One-Car Bridge," one of four Joe Pickett stories, Pickett goes up against a “just plain mean" landowner, with disastrous results, and in “Shots Fired," his investigation into the radio call referred to in the title nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does. In “Pirates of Yellowstone," two Eastern European tough guys find out what it means to be strangers in a strange land, and in “Le Sauvage Noble," the stranger is...

He never wanted to tell Joe Pickett about it, but Nate Romanowski always knew trouble was coming out of his past. Now it's here, and it may not only be the battle of his life -- but of Joe's. In 1995, Nate was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it -- by striking at Nate's friends...

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...

It was always good to see Lyle Pendergast, Joe thought -- a hard-working, upright local business owner whose daughter was friends with his own. Little did he know that when he talked to Lyle that day, the man was about to disappear. He was heading into the mountains to hunt, he said, but instead he was running. Two EPA employees had just been murdered, and all signs pointed to him as the killer. As the manhunt organized itself, Joe heard more of the...

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 arrow-riddled corpse of Lamar Gardiner, district supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest, and the bodies of seven illegally shot elk start Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett on a pursuit that endangers the life of his beloved foster daughter April. Box's latest novel once again centers around the environment and land management, adding a dose of realism to the rough-and-tumble action, which works well with the realistic characters and Western...