When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One survivor of the grizzly's rampage tells a bizarre story, but just as Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems, he is brought home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife is severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers --- and the shooter. The search for the would-be assassin becomes personal when Joe's best friend, Nate Romanowski --- just as he's adjusting to the arrival of his first child --- falls under suspicion for the crime.

Former sheriff’s investigator Cassie Dewell is asked by a friend to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young woman from an influential family. Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out by the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. The Kleinsassers have ruled this part of Montana for decades, and the Iron Cross Ranch is their stronghold. They want to see Blake Kleinsasser, the black sheep of the family, put away forever for the assault. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against a family whose roots are tangled and deadly --- as well as the ghosts of her own past that threaten to bring her down.

Joe Pickett has come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife --- and it belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose son is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy. When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack has arrived. Their target seems to be the mystery man and everyone --- including Joe, Nate and others --- who is associated with him.

A prominent female British executive never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British Embassy is pressing hard. Joe Pickett knows that happens sometimes. But no sign of her months after she vanished? That suggests something else. At the same time, Joe's friend Nate Romanowski has asked him to intervene with the feds on behalf of falconers who can no longer hunt with eagles, even though their permits are in order. Who is blocking the falconers and why? The more Joe investigates both cases, the more someone wants him to go away. Is it because of the missing woman or because he's become Nate's advocate? Or are they somehow connected?

For three years, Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on the hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King, whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff's department, Cassie has lured him and his truck to a depot. But her plan goes horribly wrong, and consequently she loses her job. At the same time, Kyle Westergaard, a troubled kid whom Cassie has taken under her wing, has disappeared after telling people that he’s going off on a long-planned adventure. Kyle's grandmother begs Cassie to find him, and Cassie agrees --- all the while hunting the truck driver.

The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he’d always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning. He’s not wondering any longer. Joe knows they’re coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.

Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite professional special operators. They’re not there to threaten him, but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in Wyoming’s Red Desert, and in return they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear. But they are not what they seem, as Nate’s friend Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just may be something that takes them all down --- including Nate and Joe.

In the small town of Grimstad, North Dakota, resides 12-year-old Kyle Westergaard, who wants to get out of town, take care of his mother and give them a better life. While delivering newspapers, he witnesses a car accident and takes a mysterious bundle from the scene. Now in possession of a lot of money and packets of white powder, Kyle wonders if his luck has changed. As detective Cassie Dewell is propelled on a collision course with a murderous enemy, she finds that the key to it all might come in the most unlikely form: an undersized boy on a bike who keeps showing up where he doesn't belong.

Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more --- Joe’s 18-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway --- it is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it, but Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible. What he doesn’t know is the kind of danger he’s about to encounter.

SHOTS FIRED is a collection of 10 riveting stories, three never before published. In “One-Car Bridge,” Joe Pickett goes up against a landowner with disastrous results, and in “Shots Fired,” his investigation into a radio call nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does. In “Le Sauvage Noble,” the stranger is a Lakota in Paris who enjoys playing the “noble savage” for the French women --- until he meets Sophie and discovers what “savage” really means.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, and especially the persistent rumors that his wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for.

Two sisters set out across a remote stretch of Montana road, and it is the last time anyone hears from them again. Cody Hoyt, who has just lost his job as police investigator, begins the drive south to the girls’ last known location. Meanwhile, his former rookie partner, Cassie Dewell, discovers that Gracie and Danielle Sullivan aren’t the first girls who have disappeared in this area. This majestic landscape is the hunting ground for a killer whose viciousness is outmatched only by his intelligence.

Butch Roberson, a hardworking, upright local business owner, is accused of murdering two EPA employees. As the manhunt organized itself, Joe heard about the tract of land Butch and his wife had bought to build their retirement home on, until the EPA declared it a wetland. It was an awful story. But was it the whole story? The more Joe looks into it, the more he finds himself in the middle of a war he never expected and never wanted.

Lyle and Juan are thugs who take Paul Parker hostage. Once a fine lawyer, Parker’s enthusiasm has slipped with age, and criminals like Lyle are part of the reason for his disillusionment. Years after they last saw each other in court, Lyle is convinced that Parker owes him something. At gunpoint, Lyle and Juan make Parker lead them to the old Angler ranch, to open up a hidden library whose volumes hold the secret to forgotten riches, and the strangest war profiteering scheme to ever come out of the Great Plains.

In 1995, Nate Romanowski was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it --- by striking at Nate's friends to draw him out.

Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a wilderness trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park --- a pack trip that includes his son --- Cody is desperate to get on their trail and stop the killer.

When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in-law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do --- especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin.