Patricia Watts

With the help of a demented Alaska Native elder, Chukchi police chief Nathan Active hunts for the killer who left a woman's expertly dismembered body in the ice cellar of an abandoned Inupiat Eskimo fish camp. The investigation pulls Active into a dark tangle of love and jealousy, even as he struggles to recover from the PTSD that has haunted him since being wounded in a shootout in an earlier case.The case starts when Tommie Leokuk's husband brings her to Active's office to show him what she found in her latest midnight ramble around the Arctic hamlet of Chukchi. From the pouch of her traditional atiqluk, she pulls a human jawbone with a single molar still in place.Tommie's dementia means she can't explain where she found it. As her husband explains, "She lost her brain few years ago."At first, Chief Active doesn't know whether she's found a murder victim or an old grave opened by erosion or scavengers.He soon discovers it's very much a murder case, one of the most tangled he's seen. The victim had two lovers, one male, one female. Both become suspects as the investigation proceeds.At the same time, Active grapples with PTSD from being shot in a prior case. When he starts to wonder how his gun would taste, he realizes it's time to see Chukchi's tribal healer, Nelda Qivits, who believes anything can be cured by a cup of bitter sourdock tea in her little cabin on a back street of Chukchi.______________________Ghost Light is the seventh installment in the critically acclaimed Nathan Active series: "Painterly descriptions of Alaska's natural beauty and the lives of the native people are fascinating." - USA Today"An enchanting series" - People"You can feel the bite of the west wind that comes screaming across the Alaska tundra and sense the isolation of the Inupiat Eskimos who live in this desolate part of the world." - New York Times Review of Books

With the help of a demented Alaska Native elder, Chukchi police chief Nathan Active hunts for the killer who left a woman's expertly dismembered body in the ice cellar of an abandoned Inupiat Eskimo fish camp. The investigation pulls Active into a dark tangle of love and jealousy, even as he struggles to recover from the PTSD that has haunted him since being wounded in a shootout in an earlier case."Ghost Light" is the seventh installment in the critically acclaimed Nathan Active series: "Painterly descriptions of ALaska's natural beauty and the lives of the native people are fascinating." - USA Today. " "An enchanting series" - People. "You can feel the bite of the west wind that comes screaming across the Alaska tundra and sense the isolation of the Inupiat Eskimos who live in this desolate part of the world." - New York Times Review of Books

In Patricia Watts' new novel, The Frayer, we watch an uncannily seductive Louisiana bayou man as he goes about "fraying" the inhabitants of a prosperous apartment building in Fairbanks, Alaska, and destroying the building itself. Angelo Fallon's eerie powers are both physical and psychological. Physically, he can make chunks of plaster fall from walls, and massive chandeliers break loose from ceilings. And he can seduce, apparently, just about anyone he chooses to seduce. Big Blue, the building itself, narrates the story of Angelo's machinations: tiny cracks start appearing in Blue's walls as soon as the villain walks in. But Blue, who can read the thoughts of most of his inhabitants, sees only a wave of black when he searches inside Angelo's mind. Within a few pages, Angelo Fallon has caused Corrine, the building's owner, to break a leg.Psychologically, Angelo is a master at sowing discord. He knows the weaknesses and hidden needs of the individuals he has decided to destroy, and he skillfully insinuates himself into their lives. So, having made Corrine vulnerable, he becomes her caretaker, then her controller. He creates mistrust, using loaded questions and pretended concern to turn her against her friend Jasmina, the coffee shop owner who teaches belly dancing on Blue's ground floor. He widens the rift by seducing both women, then further isolates Corrine by turning his bluesy saxophone-playing charm on her closeted gay friend Lonnie. (The seduction scenes are steamy.)Big Blue senses the cracks growing, the mold forming as Angelo plays his frayer games. He watches, frets, and tries to intervene. But can he do more than wring his non-existent hands? Can his sixty years of caring, and the deeper instincts of Angelo's flawed victims, save him--or them?Patricia Watts' surreal premise quickly pulls readers into a novel which blends horror and heroism, eros and architecture. Her long career as an investigative journalist in Fairbanks is evident in the skill with which she creates and motivates her characters, the detailed care with which she describes her scene, the suspense she builds, the inevitable deceptions and self-deceptions she slowly uncovers.

Twenty years after covering the murder of the girlfriend of Josh Harrison, a local basketball star in Fairbanks, Alaska, a story that ended when he committed suicide, Julia Silver returns to town. As she grapples with her guilt over her role in Josh's death, another problem emerges: a homicidal stalker.