Crime Stories & Horror by Indigenous Authors
We’ve lined up five of our favorite crime fiction and horror novels written by indigenous authors. These books weave rich cultural context with startlingly beautiful writing.
They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.
Bereaved parents of teenager Ray-Ray who was killed in a police shooting fifteen years ago use the annual Cherokee National Holiday bonfire to talk about him… and they feel a slow blurring of the boundary between normal life and the spirit world. They foster a child, too, who sends them into different, distracted stages of grief, and which leads them into the Darkening Land, between the living and the dead. This book pulls on Indigenous folklore for a rare crime fiction novel hinging on the supernatural.
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What to Read Next
Mary Kay McBrayer is the author of America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster. You can find her short works at Oxford American, Narratively, Mental Floss, and FANGORIA, among other publications. She co-hosts Everything Trying to Kill You, the comedy podcast that analyzes your favorite horror movies from the perspectives of women of color. Follow Mary Kay McBrayer on Instagram and Twitter, or check out her author site here.