Books by Aimée Thurlo

A serial killer stalks young Navajo men and women . . . and Ella Clah''s family might be next in his sights, in Aimee and David Thurlo''s Turquoise Girl! Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah has seen a lot of death in the decade since she returned to the Reservation, but nothing quite as bad as a series of violent murders of young Navajo. Something about the crime scene reminds Ella of her days in the FBI, and she calls on Agent Blalock for help. And that''s not the only link to Ella''s past-clues indicates that Ella''s father may have tried to stop this killer before his own murder. Working long hours, desperate to identify and stop the serial killer before he strikes again, Ella manages to squeeze in a few dates with Reverend Bilford Tome. Ella''s father was a man of the cloth as well-is Ella following her mother''s path, falling for a man whose faith she does not share?

What seems to be a carjacking gone wrong leads to the death of Jimmy Blacksheep, a Navajo member of the New Mexico National Guard recently returned from Iraq. When Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah receives a mysterious package in the mail, she begins to suspect that Jimmy''s death is part of something larger. Complicating the case is the fact that Jimmy''s brother, Samuel Blacksheep, is also a cop, on the Farmington PD. Samuel is also ostensibly investigating Jimmy''s death, but Ella wonders why Jimmy sent his secret message to her rather than his own brother. If Jimmy didn''t trust Samuel, perhaps Ella shouldn''t either. When even the FBI''s experts are unable to figure out the dead man''s message, Ella realizes that she must use Navajo lore, not cryptography, to decode it. Tantalizing clues link Jimmy''s death to his military service-but what could the medic have seen in Iraq that would make him a target for murder back home?Ella''s personal life seems just as complicated as her case. Her mother, Rose Destea, marries her long-time beau, Herman Cloud, and moves in with him. While Ella is delighted to see her mother happy, she cannot help but worry about making sure her daughter, Dawn, is safe and cared for at all times. Dawn''s father asks for a change in custody arrangements that will reduce Ella to a weekend mother-a much easier fit with her workload but something that will take a terrible toll on her heart.

Few writers have captured the flavor of the American Southwest better than Aimee and David Thurlo, in both mysteries and romantic suspense. Looking Through Darkness is the latest in their Trading Post series.Josephine Buck runs a trading post just off the Navajo Reservation. Widow Leigh Ann Vance is Jo's right-hand-woman, filling the emptiness in her own life. Shortly after her husband, Kurt, was killed, Leigh Ann discovered he had been having a string of affairs. Leigh Ann's trust issues affect her feelings for blind sculptor Melvin Littlewater.Kurt's business partners accuse Leigh Ann of helping Kurt embezzle and the police wonder if Leigh Ann killed him. When she turns to Melvin for help, she finds him fighting his own demons, haunted by memories of a young girl he saw moments before the car crash that cost him his sight. Together, Leigh Ann and Melvin delve into the darkest moments of their pasts, searching for truth and light.

When Never-ending-snake begins, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah is returning from Washington, DC, where she was offered a lucrative job with a private security firm. Taking the job would mean uprooting her daughter, but it might give the young teen opportunities she'd never see on the Reservation.As Ella and her companions deplane, gunfire sends them diving for cover. When the shooting stops, a Navajo war hero has been mortally wounded-but was alternative fuel lobbyist Nelson Lonewolf the intended victim? Or was the gunman aiming for powerful tribal attorney Kevin Tolino? Or for Ella herself? Ella struggles to find the killers while helping the tribe find a way to move forward with the alternative-fuel project and protecting her family-and Kevin, her daughter's father.Never-ending-snake, a tense police procedural, is part of the Ella Clah mystery series.

Blackening Song is the debut of Navajo FBI agent Ella Clah, who returns to the reservation to investigate the murder of her father, a minister. The ritual nature of the killing makes Ella's brother, a medicine man, the prime suspect. Without cooperation from the tribe, the FBI, or the local police, Ella must plumb the depths of the struggle between traditionalist and modernist forces among the Navajo to find her father's murderer.

Not even Navajo witches can stop Ella Clah in Aimee and David Thurlo's Bad Medicine, the third book in this beloved series When the daughter of Senator Yellowhair is killed in a suspicious car accident, the Senator accuses Ella and the tribe's medical examiner, Dr. Carolyn Roanhorse, of falsifying the autopsy results. An outbreak of meningitis leads to more trouble when many of those who are vaccinated against the illness begin dying from a different, unidentified disease. Riots between Indian and white workers at the Navajo-owned mine stretch the resources of the tribal police even thinner.Convinced that solving one mystery means solving them all, Ella plunges into her investigations despite threats from all sides and her suspicions that Navajo witches are somehow involved. Ella Clah has sworn to protect her people from all menaces--spiritual or physical--and she's not going to back off now.

Returning to the Navajo Reservation and solving her father's murder taught former FBI Agent Ella Clah a great deal about herself and her people, the Dineh. She has begun to accept that that there is more to the world than can be explained by FBI training and forensic science. Newly hired as a Special Investigator with the tribal police, Ella investigates the brutal murders of several of the Dineh's "living treasures," Navajos esteemed for their knowledge of the tribe's religious and cultural wisdom. Illusion and ritual duel with police procedures and science as Ella strives to find out who is destroying the heart of the tribe.