Here are 100 books that Figure Eight fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
I love mysteries that are set in the great outdoors, and Pamela Beason’s books definitely fill that bill.
Endangered was the first book of hers that I’ve read and I immediately fell in love with Summer “Sam” Westin, the protagonist of the Sam Westin Mystery series. Sam’s eclectic background combining experience with animals and wilderness environments has landed her an assignment to report on cougars at a Utah park.
When a young child goes missing, the cougars she’s been observing are blamed and Sam embarks on a quest to save both the child and the big cats she’s come to admire. This book taught me about cougars and their habitat and provided a tense whodunit to enjoy.
Summer "Sam" Westin's assignment to report on cougars in a Utah park goes horribly awry when a child vanishes from a campground and the TV news focuses on the local mountain lions as the likely culprits.
As days tick by with no sign of the missing boy and media coverage continues to inflame the public, pressure grows for the park administration to kill the cougars. But Sam was one of the last people to see the child, and she has good reason to suspect a man she spotted in the shadows as little Zachary Fischer ran away from her.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
This book swept me into Sequoia National Park, a place I’ve visited only through Kells’ eloquent landscape descriptions as seen through the eyes of protagonist Felicity Harland, a federal agent with the Investigative Services Bureau.
I felt Felicity’s pain as she hikes ever upward into the forests of an extreme wilderness area that tests the limits of her endurance, having been injured in her last job as an FBI agent. I enjoyed the landscape as well as the story woven into this tight and twisty debut mystery.
For fans of Christine Carbo and Scott Graham, an ex-FBI agent is on a desperate hunt for a party of vanished campers while a killer is on the loose.
The rugged landscape of Sequoia National Park is a challenge on the best of days—but when a park ranger discovers an abandoned exclusive campsite with an empty tent and high-end technical gear scattered on the shores of an alpine lake, the wilderness takes on a sinister new hue.
Thirty-two-year-old Felicity Harland—a former FBI agent who left the service in the wake of a personal tragedy and has taken her skills off…
I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
Saguaro Sanction is the eighth book in Scott Graham’s National Park Mystery series.
I have read every one of Graham’s books, because I love being swept into the backcountry of one of the nation’s national parks and learning about issues that affect that particular location. I also love characters Chuck Bender, an archeologist, his wife Janelle Ortega, and her two daughters Carmelita and Rosie.
Graham is a master storyteller and provides a perfect balance as he weaves in details about this engaging family, the vivid descriptions of park landscapes, and educational elements to deliver an entertaining mystery.
Saguaro Sanction focuses on the cultural and historic aspects of Saguaro National Park and its mystery stands alone, but for the full scope of the characters’ stories, start with book one, Canyon Sacrifice.
Janelle Ortega and Chuck Bender are drawn deep into a threatening web of hostility and deceit in Saguaro National Park in this page-turner of a mystery.
"A winning blend of archaeology and intrigue, Graham's series turns our national parks into places of equal parts beauty, mystery, and danger.” —EMILY LITTLEJOHN, author of Lost Lake
When Janelle Ortega’s cousin from Mexico is found brutally murdered at a remote petroglyph site in Saguaro National Park, she and her husband, archaeologist Chuck Bender, are drawn deep into a threatening web of hostility and deceit stretching south across the US-Mexico border and back in…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
Chasing Justice starts off with a bang, literally, as an explosion in a national forest rocks Maya Thompson, a former marine who has recently started a new job with US Forest Service law enforcement, into a new challenge when she must become handler for K9 Juniper, a Belgium Mallinois whose handler has been killed.
Debut author Kathleen Donnelly delivers a tense, action-packed mystery/suspense set in the Colorado wilderness that provides a terrific start to this new National Forest K9 series. It is apparent that as a narcotics detection K9 handler, Donnelly really knows her stuff about canine nose work and dog training.
I was immediately taken with both Maya and Juniper, and I look forward to the next book in the series.
A former marine learns to love again in this suspenseful, action-packed K-9 search and rescue from debut author Kathleen Donnelly.
After losing her military K-9, former marine Maya Thompson swears she’ll never work with dogs again. But when she returns home to Colorado and accepts a job with US Forest Service law enforcement, fate brings K-9 Juniper into her life just as another tragedy unfolds.
Juniper, a beautiful two-year-old Malinois, isn’t the only new addition to Maya’s life. Josh Colten, the local deputy sheriff, insists on helping with her new case. Handsome and mysterious, he’s all anyone in town can…
Haven’t we all seen things? Done things? Felt guilt or remorse over stuff that happened? I’m fascinated by the darkness within and I’m an eternal student of psychology. I was a musician first. I’ve played piano since age three and studied music at Berklee College of Music. Later, I found my artistic calling when I began to write. Those life experiences have added up and it’s not all roses. My characters have good hearts but they’re struggling with demons—like we all do. I hope my readers can relate and if not, maybe they see something true.
Bad Axe County is placed in my home state, Wisconsin, during the spring. Galligan captures the crazy weather—from blizzard to melting and freezing runoff—using it as the backdrop to this fast-paced thriller. Police detective Heidi White has unanswered questions about her parent’s murder-suicide. But that’s in the past and everyone tells her to leave sleeping dogs alone. In this dark, twisted thriller, she must capture a monster to finally learn the truth. I loved Heidi’s fearless plunge into the dark.
Dennis Lehane meets Megan Miranda in this "dark beauty of a novel" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) about the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, as she searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents twenty years ago-all as a winter storm rages in her embattled community.
Fifteen years ago, Heidi White's parents were shot to death on their Bad Axe County farm. The police declared it a murder-suicide and closed the case. But that night, Heidi found the one clue she knew…
Some places hold our memories with a grip that never lets go. These five books explore the weight of inheritance—of land, trauma, and stories passed down in whispers and sighs. With lyrical prose and unflinching emotional honesty, each illuminates what it means to belong to a place that both nurtures and devours.
Split between the faded bars and backrooms of working-class Polish American communities in Wisconsin and Louisiana, Bukoski’s stories hum with quiet desperation and tender regret. His characters are marked by longing, loss, and the quiet heroism of staying put.
This is a love letter to the forgotten corners of America and to the stories we carry with us like sacred burdens.
The Thief of Words is filled with desperate runaways, the unhappily married, and the displaced. They often long for happiness but struggle to explain-even to themselves-what that would entail.
The lightly interconnected stories in this riveting collection are split between the Polish American communities of northern Wisconsin and Louisiana, where refugees from World War II were resettled under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The collection explores themes of dislocation and assimilation, love and loneliness, and generational conflict. Anthony Bukoski admirably paints portraits of people doing their best, despite the odds and their sometimes-thwarted attempts to follow the urgings of…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I’m a Minnesota writer who loves to read and write books set in places I’ve spent time in. The Upper Peninsula is a favorite vacation destination. It has so much history to unearth, quaint towns and woods to explore, and giant mosquitoes to avoid. I’ve traveled along Lake Superior in all seasons. Lake Superior covers 31,700 square miles and holds more water than all the other Great Lakes combined, so there's a lot to see and enjoy. After my first visit to the U.P., I began to write the Double Barrel Mysteries series. Set in the tiny fictional town of Port Scuttlebutt, Lake Superior isn’t just a backdrop, but part of the story.
This is the first book I’ve read by William Kent Krueger, but it made me want to read the whole series. Set during a miserably cold winter in the northeast corner of Minnesota, a stone’s throw from Lake Superior, this mystery about a brutal murder and a missing native American boy will make you fear frostbite just from turning pages.
Cork O’Connor is a complicated character in a seemingly downward spiral. Once the sheriff of this small town, he’s since lost his wife, his job, and is worried about losing his children. His mixed heritage of Irish and Ojibwe makes him see things a little differently than the new sheriff, but not having a badge won’t stop him from taking action when people he cares about are in danger.
The 20th anniversary edition of the first novel in William Kent Krueger's beloved and bestselling Cork O'Connor mystery series-includes an exclusive bonus short story!
"A brilliant achievement, and one every crime reader and writer needs to celebrate." -Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Glass Houses
"A master craftsman [and] a series of books written with a grace and precision so stunning that you'd swear the stories were your own." -Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire series
"Among thoughtful readers, William Kent Krueger holds a very special place in the pantheon." -C.J. Box, #1 New York Times…
As a clinical psychologist, a man, and a human being on his own journey of healing and becoming, I suppose I’m interested in stories with struggling but lovable male protagonists because I’m the struggling male protagonist in my own life story, learning how to fall in love again with myself and my story and the little boy who lives on within me. The courage my clients show in the process of facing their pain and finding something beautiful in it is inspiring to me. I hope my life reflects that courage, too. And I want to write stories that give others hope and inspiration for this kind of healing, as well.
I remember as a boy weeping at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, not because the dogs died, but because Billy Colman returned decades later to find the rusted axe from that fateful night still stuck in the tree. Great books show us time isn’t linear; it’s like an accordion folding over on itself, so a pivotal moment from our past can, in some mysterious way, always feel present. Here. Somehow on the tip of time’s tongue. It makes you ache with the fullness of your story, your life. The ending of Ordinary Gracedid that to me. As I turned the final pages, I wept, my kids pounding on the locked door of the bedroom, and my own childhood pounding on the door of my heart.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2014 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL WINNER OF THE 2014 DILYS AWARD A SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2013
From New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger, a brilliant new novel about a young man, a small town, and murder in the summer of 1961.
"That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word."
New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their…
I’ve written books for kids of all ages, and always there were birds. Sparrows singing on windowsills, cardinals arrowing across yards, cormorants diving into Lake Erie, pigeons poking beneath park benches. Those things with feathers make my own heart sing! Slowly it dawned on me that I wanted to write a book where birds didn’t just flit across the pages but nested at the story’s heart. I had to do a lot of bird research for Perfect. What I learned about the precious, fragile bonds among all Earth’s creatures became one of the book’s themes: big and small, bound by gravity or able to defy it, we are all deeply connected.
Because…I love language, and Timberlake spins out one gorgeous sentence after another.
Set in 1871, the story follows Georgie Burkhardt as she tracks her big sister, who’s run away with “pigeoners”, a seedy bunch who follow the migration of passenger pigeons (which once existed in the millions but were hunted to extinction). Georgie’s voice is tough, funny, and wildly original, just like the West itself.
There’s plenty of mystery and suspense, but for me, it’s about the language! Here’s the glorious ending: “I say let all the world be alive and overwhelmingly so. Let the sky be pressed to bursting with wings, beaks, pumping hearts and driving muscles. Let it be noisy. Let it be a mess. Then let me find my allotted space. Let me feel how I bump up against every other living thing on this earth.”
Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Novel
“An adventure, a mystery, and a love song to the natural world. . . . Run out and read it. Right now.”—Newbery Medalist Karen Cushman
In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871, Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle and her habit of speaking her mind plainly.
But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn't, her older sister Agatha flees, running off with a pack of "pigeoners" trailing the passenger pigeon migration. And…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I was working part-time at an independent bookshop in 2008 when this book arrived in the latest shipment. In addition to the title—named for Driftless Region near where I grew up—the author’s personal comeback story was a novel in itself: Iowa Writers Workshop graduate Rhodes published three books in quick succession in the 1970s, then promptly fell off the face of the earth until, decades later, fledgling Milkweed Editions tracked him down and learned he’d been paralyzed in a motorcycle accident but was still very much alive (and writing) in a small farmhouse in rural Wisconsin. Hooked, I read the book—and was moved to my core.
Nobody captures the particular quirkiness, heart and faith of the people that make up tiny Wisconsin communities better than Rhodes.
“A fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.”—The Wall Street Journal
The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers…
