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Craig Johnson

Biography

Craig Johnson

Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series “Longmire.” He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella SPIRIT OF STEAMBOAT was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 26.

Books by Craig Johnson

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

What if you woke up lying in the middle of the street in the infamous town of Fort Pratt, Montana, where 30 young Native boys perished in a tragic 1896 boarding-school fire? What if every person you encountered in that endless night was dead? What if you were covered in blood and missing a bullet from the gun holstered on your hip? What if there was something out there in the yellowed skies, along with the deceased and the smell of ash and dust, something the Northern Cheyenne refer to as the Éveohtsé-heómėse, the Wandering Without, the Taker of Souls? What if the only way you know who you are is because your name is printed in the leather sweatband of your cowboy hat. And what if it says your name is Walt Longmire…but you don’t remember him?

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

Deep in the heart of the Wyoming countryside, Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Absaroka County, is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. This crime brings up issues that go back to Walt’s grandfather’s time in Wyoming, as the revelations he learns about his grandfather come back to offer clues and motives for Walt’s investigation.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

When Lolo Long's niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya "Longshot" Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl's plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer's Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

Recovering from his harrowing experiences in Mexico, Sheriff Walt Longmire returns to Absaroka County, Wyoming, to try once again to maintain justice in a place with grudges that go back generations. When a shepherd is found dead, Longmire suspects it could be suicide. But the shepherd's connection to the Extepares, a powerful family of Basque ranchers with a history of violence, leads the sheriff into an intricate investigation of a possible murder. And when a young boy with ties to the Extepare clan arrives in town, the stakes grow even higher. Even more complicating, a renegade wolf has been haunting the Bighorn Mountains, and the townspeople are out for blood. With both a wolf and a killer on the loose, Longmire follows a twisting trail of evidence, leading to dark and shocking conclusions.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

Winter is creeping closer, but for Sheriff Walt Longmire, this one is looking to be harsh in a way to which he is wholly unaccustomed. He has found himself in the remotest parts of the northern Mexican desert, a lawless place where no horse or car can travel, where no one speaks his language or trusts an outsider, far from his friends and his home turf back in Wyoming. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Tomas Bidarte, the head of one of the most vicious drug cartels in Mexico, has kidnapped Walt's beloved daughter, Cady. The American government is of limited help and the Mexican one even less so. Armed with his trusty Colt .45 and a father's intuition, Walt must head into the 110-degree heat of the desert, one man against an army.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

A younger sheriff confronts Walt Longmire with a photograph of 25 armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket. The young Walt was ill-prepared for the machinations of 24 veteran sheriffs, let alone the cavalcade of curious characters who accompanied them. The photograph --- along with an upcoming parole hearing for one of the most dangerous men Walt has encountered in a lifetime of law enforcement --- hurtles the sheriff into a head-on collision of past and present, placing him and everyone he cares about squarely on the tracks of runaway revenge.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends up in critical condition. When Sheriff Walt Longmire and his good friend Henry Standing Bear are called to Hulett, Wyoming to investigate, things start getting complicated. As competing biker gangs; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; a military-grade vehicle donated to the tiny local police force by a wealthy entrepreneur; and Lola, the real-life femme fatale and namesake for Henry's '59 Thunderbird (and, by extension, Walt's granddaughter) come into play, it rapidly becomes clear that there is more to get to the bottom of at this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally than a bike accident.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

When Wyoming highway patrolman Rosey Wayman is transferred to the beautiful and imposing landscape of the Wind River Canyon, an area the troopers refer to as no-man's-land because of the lack of radio communication, she starts receiving “officer needs assistance” calls. The problem? They're coming from Bobby Womack, a legendary Arapaho patrolman who met a fiery death in the canyon almost a half-century ago. With an investigation that spans this world and the next, Sheriff Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear take on a case that pits them against a legend: The Highwayman.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum --- until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny’s family, the tribe and the federal government. Walt is determined to find out who would benefit from Danny’s death.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Short Stories

Ten years ago, Craig Johnson wrote his first short story, “Old Indian Trick.” This was one of the earliest appearances of the sheriff who would go on to star in Johnson’s novels and the television series “Longmire.”Each Christmas Eve thereafter, Johnson sent out a new short story featuring an episode in Walt’s life that doesn’t appear in the novels. Over the years, many have asked why they can’t buy the stories in book form. WAIT FOR SIGNS finally gives Longmire fans a chance to own these beloved stories in a single volume.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery

Detective Gerald Holman is dead, and Lucian Connally wants to know what drove him to take his own life. With the clock ticking on the birth of his first grandchild, Sheriff Walt Longmire learns that the by-the-book detective might have suppressed evidence concerning three missing women. Digging deeper, Walt uncovers an incriminating secret so dark that it threatens to claim other lives even before the sheriff can serve justice --- Wyoming style.

written by Craig Johnson, narrated by George Guidall - Fiction, Mystery

Detective Gerald Holman is dead, and Lucian Connally wants to know what drove him to take his own life. With the clock ticking on the birth of his first grandchild, Sheriff Walt Longmire learns that the by-the-book detective might have suppressed evidence concerning three missing women. Digging deeper, Walt uncovers an incriminating secret so dark that it threatens to claim other lives even before the sheriff can serve justice --- Wyoming style.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Holiday, Mystery

Sheriff Walt Longmire is reading A CHRISTMAS CAROL in his office on December 24th when he’s interrupted by a mysterious young woman with more than a few questions about his predecessor, Lucian Connally. Lucian swears he’s never laid eyes on the woman before. Disappointed, she whispers “Steamboat” and begins a story that takes them all back to Christmas Eve 1988, when three people died in a terrible crash and a young girl had the slimmest chance of survival.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery, Western

A Mormon “lost boy,” Cord Lynear is searching for his missing mother, but clues are scarce. Walt Longmire and his companions, feisty deputy Victoria Moretti and longtime friend Henry Standing Bear, embark on a high plains scavenger hunt in hopes of reuniting mother and son. The trail leads them to an interstate polygamy group that’s presiding over a stockpile of weapons and harboring a vicious vendetta.

by Craig Johnson - Fiction, Mystery, Western

Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire's daughter, Cady, is getting married to the brother of his undersheriff, Victoria Moretti. When he sets out to find a new site for the nuptials on the Cheyenne Reservation, the scouting expedition ends in horror as he witnesses a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior’s majestic cliffs.