An offbeat, often hilarious crime novel set in the sleepy Alaskan town of Cold Storage from the Shamus Award winning author of the Cecil Younger series.Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity at the height of the ...

In this mind-bending crime novel by Shamus Award–winner John Straley, one man attempts to save his town from nuclear annihilation.It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends histime trying to forget the past.Then one ...

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, retired marine biologist Delphine is on the brink of throwing in the towel. She has outlived her PI husband and worries she’s become a burden to her son and his growing family. One night, while contemplating how to go on, Delphine witnesses a violent argument between a man and his girlfriend. When Delphine discovers the woman has gone missing along with her young child, Delphine embarks on a quest to find them.What begins as a chance encounter balloo...

Alaska, 1935: Slippery Wilson is on his way out of town when he runs into a woman, her neice, and a crashed car. His life is about to get a lot more complicated.It's 1935 and jobs are scarce, but Slippery Wilson walks off his job at a logging camp after a gruesome accident kills a coworker. He's headed for Seattle with all his savings; he plans to buy a piece of farmland and be his own boss.When he stops to help a woman get her car out of a ditch, his life ...

“Highly refreshing setting, a great cast of characters and an intriguing plot.”—The Bloomsbury Review“Atmospheric.”—The New York Times Book Review“Flashes of the dark poetry of Ross MacDonald.”—Chicago Tribune“A rich stew of deception and menace.”—Anchorage Daily News“Outstanding . . . satisfies on all levels.”—The Kansas City StarSitka, Alaska, is a subarctic port surrounded by snow-dusted mountains. In a...

John Straley brings his storytelling abilities to a new level in this completely original period crime story.It's 1935, and Slip Wilson, rattled by the gruesome accidental death of a coworker, has quit his job at a logging camp, hoping to make a clean start in Seattle. But along the way he rescues a woman and her young niece from their car in a ditch, and his life takes a hard turn. The woman, Ellie Hobbes, is an anarchist with big dreams—but first, she has to take care of that pes...

In the third entry to the series, Alaska P.I. Cecil Younger is fresh out of rehab with a head wound, a child custody case from hell, and the clients to match.Confrontational and obsessed, Priscilla DeAngelo is sure her ex is conspiring with a state senator to wrest her son from her, and thus, she hires Cecil Younger to investigate. This is the first time Younger has to deal with lawyers in flashy suits and overused paper shredders. When she storms off to Juneau for...

Trapped on an Alaskan cruise line, PI Cecil Younger must expose a killer—and fast—or he may just find himself sleeping with the fishes.Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this: running surveillance on a chicken coop that’s being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan PI. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation, of course.Well, it’s not exactly a vacation. Cecil has been paid to investigate a ...

From the wild and wonderful mind of Shamus Award–winning author John Straley comes a poetic masterpiece that explores the ugly truths of the prison industrial complex, the crumbling state of humanity, the role memory plays in the formation of the self, and much more.It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska....

“Strong and sobering … with his storyteller’s sense of dramatic action [Straley’s] in his glory.”—The New York Times Book Review“One of the strongest series since Hillerman set up shop.”—Kirkus ReviewsCecil Younger is an investigator for the public defender in Sitka, Alaska. A woman who hired him to investigate her rape is found dead in the estuarial waters of Ketchikan township, “her throat cut so deeply that the trachea flopped out like a rubbery white r...

P.I. Cecil Younger returns for another “thoroughly enjoyable and slightly wacko” mystery as he connects the dots between a modern-day murder and an Armistice Day tragedy (Boston Globe).In the Alaskan town of Sitka, the living is tough and the crimes are aplenty—and plenty personal.When 97-year-old William Flynn is accused of killing his neighbor, Angela Ramirez, he turns to private investigator Cecil Younger with an odd—and, frankl...

After years on the job as a private investigator in Sitka, Alaska, Cecil Younger doesn’t claim to have learned much about humanity as a whole, but he does know this: truth is a slippery thing.When the wife of a former client comes to Cecil to ask for help finding her husband, Cecil agrees. After all, helping get Richard exonerated during a tragic murder trial three years ago had been one of the biggest successes of Cecil’s career. But why, if Richard’s name had bee...