David Thurlo

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.

Ben Stuart and his dad had had problems, but military service changed Ben for the better and put the two men back in each other's lives. Tom's sudden death ends any possibility of a true reconciliation...and leaves Ben fuming at being disinherited. Suspecting that Jo had an affair with his father, Ben is determined to get control of the trading post. Jo's hataalii training shows her that Ben is wounded in both body and soul, and she becomes determined to help him. As Jo and Ben move toward a deeper understanding of each other, they learn that Tom Stuart was murdered and that the trading post at the center of their lives holds many secrets.

A construction crew found the first body. The cops found three more on both sides of the border of the Navajo Reservation.Because some of the bodies were buried outside the rez, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah and her team must work a delicate joint investigation with the New Mexico police. Identifying the dead isn't easy some had been buried for years and the cases are stone cold. Then one of the bodies turns out to be that of a missing man who was believed to have embezzled funds from his construction firm...and suspicions focus on the man's partner.With no obvious links between any of the corpses and the anniversary of their deaths fast approaching, Ella feels frustrated. Unless she and her team can find what connects these victims, someone else may soon be killed. Ella's ability to concentrate is battered by worries about her teenage daughter, who has been skipping school, and her mother, who is cooking up a storm, a sure sign that trouble is brewing in the household."Black Thunder," an Ella Clah novel, is a police procedural mystery that should appeal to all readers but especially fans of Tony Hillerman and J. A. Jance."

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."

Ella Clah has found her place on the Navajo Reservation, in her tribe, her clan, and her family. She has seen the Din at their worst--and at their best--as they balance the modern era with the traditional Navajo way of life.The Navajo are building a nuclear power plant on the Reservation. Though the tribe voted for the plant, there are those who believe that nuclear power is inherently dangerous--and particularly so for the Navajo, due to past uranium mining operations that contaminated land and water and sickened many Navajo workers and their families. A group of activists is determined to do whatever is necessary to stop the plant--assault, sabotage, domestic terrorism. When a fellow Navajo Police officer is injured in an attack aimed at Ella's boyfriend, Ella vows to do whatever it takes to find the terrorists and bring them to justice.

Sister Agatha of the Our Lady of Hope monastery in Bernalillo, New Mexico has become reknowned and occasionally infamous for her crime solving skills. Now she must bring her skills to bear on her most important case yet her friend and ally Sheriff Tom Green is a suspect in the brutal murder of his rival in the upcoming election."

Ella Clah is no longer an unsure young woman recently returned to the Navajo Reservation from a stint with the FBI; she has found her place in her tribe, her clan, and her family. She has seen the Din at their worst--and at their best--as they balance the modern era with the traditional Navajo way of life.Ervin Benally, son-in-law of the powerful Navajo businesswoman and politician Abigail Yellowhair, plans to bring satellite telephone service to the Rez. When Benally is attacked and another man is killed, Yellowhair orders Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah assigned to the case. Ella is determined to find out who is behind the attacks, which include elements of Navajo witchcraft.Coyote's Wife, which introduces a new source of tension in Ella's personal life, will satisfy both the returning reader and those new to this series.

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.

A stand-alone spin-off from the Ella Clah series, Plant Them Deep features Ella's mother, Rose Destea, in a mystery only a traditionalist Navajo could solve Medicine men and members of the Plant Watchers society report that sacred healing plants are disappearing from the Rez. In an effort to locate and protect the rare plants, the tribal council asks Rose for help. She faces strong opposition both from healers reluctant to reveal their secret herb-gathering spots and from people who think the Rez should be cultivated with genetically-engineered plants instead of native species. Rose is shocked to discover that many plants appear to have been stolen, perhaps for the lucrative market for alternative and natural medications. Soon after her notes and maps are stolen, a Navajo man is found dead near a gathering site. Rose is convinced that he was murdered by the plant thief. Rose has picked up a trick or two from Ella Clah, her police officer daughter; she begins an independent investigation that soon has her up to her neck in trouble.

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.

Black"ening 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.