Indigenous Fiction

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce listeners to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history.

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection - but it can be harder when Joe's around.

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive....

Rewilding the Blue and Gold Macaw, her companion for twenty years and the last of the exotic birds she’d rescued, rehabilitated and rehomed has left Mattie with a big hole in her life. Being brought up in foster care, she’s never had a family and isn’t even convinced it’s good or even necessary, but there have been moments when she’s felt its power–and her need. Maybe that’s what’s missing. Birds band together for safety, socialization–for a better chance of survival. It’s called a flock. Mattie wants to bring people together for the same reasons. She’s getting little ...

What Price Success? Kimberley James is hoping her new assignment will jumpstart her stalled career with a New York corporate relations firm. Her client wants to develop a mega ski resort in northern Canada. Her job is to convince the current owners of the land to sell. With millions of dollars to be made, it seems like a done deal. Until she runs up against Jonah Baker. Baker is part owner of a lodge on the land and an ardent environmentalist. He’s not about to permit a development that threatens ancient rainforests and the habitat of the rare and endangered Spirit Bear for any price. Kim...

Llankaray’s grandmother left a rich inheritance: her medicine, an undefeatable spirit, and the stories of her Mapuche ancestors. These tales are forever etched in Llankaray’s memory—and the soil of their beloved Patagonia. She begins with Fresia, a gifted Mapuche medicine woman who communicates with plants. She raises her granddaughter, Pirenrayen, to be a strong healer and leader for her people. And then there’s Chekeken, a Tehuelche woman who was once kidnapped and sold but escaped.

The first time Dieter Schmidt meets Mad Maggie is at a blockade on a logging road. He’s there to threaten the local First Nations band with court action if they don’t allow his client’s heavy equipment access to Deadman’s Island. Maggie emerges from the forest, but rather than chastise the lawyer for his part in trying to replace this unique ecosystem of magnificent old-growth trees with a housing development, she gives him an ultimatum. She will cure his yet-to-be-diagnosed terminal cancer if he saves the trees. Dieter dismisses Maggie's prediction as the delusions of someone ...

Eagle Voice Remembers is John Neihardt's mature and reflective interpretation of the old Sioux way of life. He served as a translator of the Sioux past, whose audience has proved not to be limited by space or time. Through his writings, Black Elk, Eagle Elk, and other old men who were of that last generation of Sioux to have participated in the old buffalo-hunting life and the disorienting period of strife with the U.S. Army found a literary voice.

The Raven is as much a paradoxical creature as he is important in the myths of many native cultures. The central character of these stories, the Raven is considered the benevolent creator, filling the world with beauty and harmony, the master mind behind all that is good and looked upon with warm admiration. On the other hand, he is often viewed as a malevolent conniving, scheming trickster with self-gratification as his only goal.

Located in the history-rich Finger Lakes region in New York, Cadence is a small town with a big secret. When interracially married Marian Greene discovers a desecrated body in the library, she, husband Lester, and friend, Enoch Shenandoah, realize they are in peril and inextricably tied to the tragic, racially-charged secret as descendants of the town founders. They race to solve the murder and reveal the secret, with the occasional guidance of dreams, spirits, and animals, and, along the way, they suffer moments of dark introspection and crises of faith. The journey brings them to ...

A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.

Calhoun, the 7th US Vice President, was mesmerized by Liza's beauty, yet he believed that slavery was ordained by God, a necessary evil. Behind the closed doors of his Fort Hill Mansion, Calhoun risked his infallible reputation by falling in love with Liza, his enslaved captive. Fearing exposure, he committed an unspeakable betrayal, but you cannot wash away the blood.

In Broome's tourist-perfect marina, where million-dollar boats promise wilderness adventures to wealthy visitors, Special Investigator Odysseus "Odie" Kalaris is called to examine what appears to be a robbery gone wrong. What begins as a straightforward marina murder evolves into something far more sinister, revealing connections between luxury tourism and a sophisticated fraud network targeting elderly investors. When Odie's tracking skills expose crime scene staging, he must navigate both the predatory undercurrents of seasonal tourism and the complex relationships that bind Broome's ...

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Pennsylvania’s Juniata Valley, this sweeping narrative masterfully blends historical fiction and documented events to illuminate the early American frontier. Juniata: A Chronicle of Land, Legacy, and Witness traces the sacred bond between people and place—beginning with the spiritual worldview of pre-Columbian shamans, through the clash and co-existence of Lenape and Tuscarora tribes, to the arrival of Swiss Anabaptist settlers who sought peace in a land scarred by war. Anchored by the deeply human experiences of the Longacre, Varner, De Lancey, ...

In the drought-stricken Kimberley, where water means the difference between survival and ruin, Special Investigator Odysseus "Odie" Kalaris is called to a sacred waterhole where the body of water project engineer Michael Crawford lies half-submerged, surrounded by poorly staged traditional elements. What begins as a murder investigation evolves into something far more sinister, revealing connections between ancient underground water systems and generations of deliberate deception. When a second victim—environmental consultant Rebecca Palmer—is found at another sacred site, Odie must ...

Elinor Hanson, a 40-something former model, is struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades away from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers.

American schoolchildren have long been taught that their country was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1492. But the history of Native Americans in the United States goes back tens of tens of thousands of years prior to Columbus’s and other colonizers’ arrivals. So, what’s the true history? Indigenous America introduces and amplifies the oral and written histories that have long been left out of American history books.

Growing up in a gang in the city can be dark. Growing up Native American in a gang in Chicago is a whole different story. This book takes a trip through that unexplored part of Indian Country, an intense journey that is full of surprises, shining a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. This dark, compelling, occasionally inappropriate, and often hilarious linked story collection introduces a character who defies all stereotypes about urban life and Indians. He will be in listeners' heads for a long time to come.