New Releases by James Lee Burke

In the latest installment in his famous Detective Dave Robicheaux series, New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke brings Dave’s partner and friend Clete Purcel to the forefront for the first time as Clete and Dave attempt to stop ruthless smugglers of a dangerous new drug Clete Purcel – private investigator, ex-member of the New Orleans Police Department, and war veteran with a hard shell and just a few soft spots – is Dave Robicheaux’s longtime friend and partner in detective work. But he has a troubled past. When Clete leaves his car at the local car wash, only to return to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade from Mexican cartels to Louisiana, it feels personal – his grandniece died of a fentanyl overdose, and his fists curl when he thinks of the dealers who sold it. Just as Clete starts to trail the culprits, Clara Bow, a woman with a dark past hires Clete as a detective to investigate her scheming, slippery ex-husband, and a string of brutal deaths all link back to a heavily tattooed man who seems to lurk around every corner. Clete is experiencing shockingly lifelike hallucinations and questioning Clara’s ulterior motives when he and Dave start to hear rumors of a dangerous substance with potentially catastrophic effects. The thugs who destroyed his car might have been pawns in a scheme far darker than they could’ve imagined. Gripping, violent, yet interlaced with Clete’s humor and consistent drive to protect those he loves, Clete brings a fresh perspective to a truly iconic series. James Lee Burke proves yet again that he is the “heavyweight champ” and “great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed” (Michael Connelly).

A dynamic, gripping collection of short stories from “America’s best novelist” (Denver Post), the New York Times bestselling James Lee Burke Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of American fiction, featuring a never-before-published novella. These eight stories move from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons, and trailer parks across the South, weaving together love, friendship, violence, survival, and revenge. As an atmosphere of suspicion pervades their Louisiana town, a boy and his father watch a German submarine sink an oil tanker. A girl is beaten up outside a bar as her university-professor father navigates new love and threats from a group of neo-Nazis. A pair of undercover union organizers are hired to break colts for a Hollywood actor, whose “Western hero” façade hides darkness. An oil rig worker witnesses a horrific attack on a local village while on a job in South America and seeks justice through one final act of bravery. With his nuanced characters, complex prose, and ability to write shocking violence in the most evocative settings, James Lee Burke’s singular skills are on display in this superb anthology. Harbor Lights unfolds in stories that crackle and reverberate as unexpected heroes emerge.

EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR From New York Times-bestselling author James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters – enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers – are caught in the maelstrom In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief. James Lee Burke, whose “evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder” (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders the rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flags on the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended, and love enduring through it all.

New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke brings readers a captivating tale of justice, love, brutality, and mysticism set in the turbulent 1960s. The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs. Jumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Joanne McDuffy, an articulate and fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne’s involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult. When a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power—and evil. Followed by a mysterious shrouded figure who might not be human, Aaron will have to face down all these foes to save the life of the woman he loves and his own. The latest installment in James Lee Burke’s masterful Holland family saga, Another Kind of Eden is both riveting and one of Burke’s most ambitious works to date. It dismantles the myths of both the twentieth-century American West and the peace-and-love decade, excavating the beauty and idealism of the era to show the menace and chaos that lay simmering just beneath the surface.

In his most autobiographical novel to date, James Lee Burke continues the epic Holland family saga with a writer grieving the death of his daughter while battling earthly and supernatural outlaws. Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron’s only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted Horse, a no-nonsense woman who harbors some powerful secrets in her cellar. Despite the air of mystery surrounding her, Ruby is the only one Aaron can trust. That is, until the ghost of Fannie Mae shows up, guiding her father through a tangled web of the present and past and helping him vanquish his foes from both this world and the next. Drawn from James Lee Burke’s own life experiences, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood is a devastating exploration of the nature of good and evil and a deeply moving story about the power of love and family.

When Dixon, a criminal who Billy Bob Holland helped send to prison, is released on a technicality, Holland finds his loved ones endangered by the vengeful killer.

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland heads to Montana to help his old friend Doc Voss battle a local mining company whose operations are devastating the community, unaware that one of his opponents is recent parolee Wyatt Dixon, a man with a deadly plan for Holland.

After finding himself caught up in one of Louisiana’s oldest and bloodiest family rivalries, Detective Dave Robicheaux must battle the most terrifying adversary he has ever encountered: a time-traveling superhuman assassin. The Shondell and Balangie families are longtime enemies in the New Iberia criminal underworld and show each other no mercy. Yet their youngest heirs, Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie, rock and roll-musician teenagers with magical voices, have fallen in love and run away after Isolde was given as a sex slave to Johnny’s uncle. As he seeks to uncover why, Detective Dave Robicheaux gets too close to both Isolde’s mother and the mistress of her father, a venomous New Orleans mafioso whose jealousy has no bounds. In retribution, he hires a mysterious assassin to go after Robicheaux and his longtime partner, Clete Purcel. This hitman is unlike any the “Bobbsey Twins from Homicide” have ever faced. He has the ability to induce horrifying hallucinations and travels on a menacing ghost ship that materializes without warning. In order to defeat him and rescue Johnny and Isolde, Robicheaux will have to overcome the demons that have tormented him throughout his adult life—alcoholism, specters from combat in Vietnam, and painful memories of women to whom he opened his heart only to see killed. A Private Cathedral, James Lee Burke’s fortieth book, is his most powerful tale, one that will captivate readers—mixing crime, romance, mythology, horror, and science fiction to produce a thrilling story about the all-consuming, all-conquering power of love.

The critically acclaimed novel from New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, featuring Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland in an epic tale that is equal parts thriller, Western, and literary masterpiece. James Lee Burke returns to the Texas border town of his bestseller Rain Gods, where a serial killer presumed dead is very much alive…and where sheriff Hackberry Holland, now a widower, fights for survival—his own, and of the citizens he’s sworn to protect. When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert, Hackberry’s investigation leads him to Anton Ling, a mysterious Chinese woman known for sheltering illegals. Ling denies any knowledge of the attack, but something in her aristocratic beauty seduces Hack into overlooking that she is as dangerous as the men she harbors. And when soulless Preacher Jack Collins reemerges, the cold-blooded killer may prove invaluable to Hackberry. This time, he and the Preacher have a common enemy.

Intervening when he sees the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Aaron Holland Broussard inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob in his Korean War-era Texas community.

James Lee Burke has been hailed as a “national treasure” (Tampa Bay Times), and in his ninth Dave Robicheaux thriller, it’s easy to see why. This taut, twisted tale of corruption in the Louisiana bayou truly brands Burke as “America’s best novelist” (Denver Post). Aaron Crown comes from a long line of shady Cajun characters, and rumors of Klan ties swirl around his family—so his arrest for the murder of a black civil rights leader would seem to be an open and shut case. But when the man who worked hardest to put Crown away ascends to the governor’s mansion, detective Dave Robicheaux begins to suspect that Aaron may be innocent of the crime. Soon key figures in high places start pressuring Dave to drop his investigation…but that only makes him more determined to uncover the truth at any cost.

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland must confront the past in order to save his illegitimate son from a murder conviction in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller from beloved New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke. Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer, former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, is convinced of Lucas’s innocence—but proving it means unearthing the truth from the seething mass of deceit and corruption that spreads like wildfire in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Billy Bob’s relationship with Lucas’s family is not an easy one. Years back he was a close friend of Mrs. Smothers—too close, according to her husband. But when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighboring cell in the local lock-up, he himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death, and Billy Bob incurs enemies far more dangerous than any he faced as a Ranger. With the same electric language and hard-edged style that brought James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels to the forefront of American crime fiction, Cimarron Rose explodes with a harsh, evocative setting and unforgettable characters.

From the New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes another brilliant Dave Robicheaux novel featuring the Louisiana detective in a race to solve a murder before more blood is shed. The Fontenot family has lived as sharecroppers on Bertrand land for as long as anyone can remember. So why are they now being forced from their homes? And what does the murder of Della Landry—the girlfriend of New Orleans fixer Sonny Boy Marsallus—have to do with it? Marsallus’s secrets seem tied to those of the Fontenots. But can Detective Dave Robicheaux make sense of it all before more bodies drop? In James Lee Burke’s intense and powerful crime novel, Robicheaux digs deep into the bad blood and dirty secrets of Louisiana’s past—while confronting a ragtag alliance of local mobsters and a hired assassin. In the suspenseful series that continues to be both a critical and popular success, Burning Angel will keep you glued to the pages until the u00adu00adu00adbreathtaking finale.

Detective Dave Robicheaux travels to the mountains of Montana to help his best friend and unearths a larger plot that threatens them both. Oil speculator Weldon Sonnier is the patriarch of a troubled family intimately bound to the CIA, the Mob, and the Klan. Now, the murder of a cop and a bizarre assassination attempt pull Detective Dave Robicheaux into the Sonniers’ hellish world of madness, murder, and incest. But Robicheaux has devils of his own—and they may just destroy the tormented investigator and the two people he holds most dear.

The sixth in the New York Times bestselling Dave Robicheaux series delivers a heart-pounding bayou manhunt—and features “one of the coolest, earthiest heroes in thrillerdom” (Entertainment Weekly). When Hollywood invades New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic, restless specters waiting in the shadows for Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux are reawakened—ghosts of a history best left undisturbed. Hunting a serial killer preying on the lawless young, Robicheaux comes face-to-face with the elusive guardians of his darkest torments—who hold the key to his ultimate salvation or a final, fatal downfall.

While in a New Orleans recovery unit, detective Dave Robicheaux meets a Creole girl whose subsequent disappearance prompts his search for the girl''s sister against a backdrop of a bayou-threatening oil well rupture in the Gulf of Mexico.

In this Edgar Award-winning thriller, former Louisiana homicide cop Dave Robicheaux is trying to start a new life after the murder of his wife — but he can''t escape his past forever. Dave Robicheaux was once a Louisiana homicide cop. Now he''s trying to start a new life, opening up a fishing business and caring for his adopted girl, Alafair. Compared to Louisiana, Robicheaux thought Montana would be safe — until two Native American activists suddenly go missing. When Robicheaux begins investigating, he is led into the dark world of the Mafia and oil companies. At the same time, someone from his past comes back to haunt him. Someone who was responsible for Robicheaux''s flight from New Orleans — someone who brutally murdered his wife — and now is after young Alafair... Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Black Cherry Blues spans from the mystical streets of New Orleans to the endless mountains of Montana, and ranks among James Lee Burke''s finest work — an enduring classic, darkly beautiful and thrilling.

A cajun cop infiltrates the mob...but is he too close? A Morning for Flamingos is a classic Dave Robicheaux Louisiana mystery by New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke. Clutching the shards, of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force. His partner is dead -- slain during a condemned prisoner''s bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded and reawakened the ghost of his haunted, violent past. Following the trail of the escaped convicts, Robicheaux is soon drawn back to New Orleans. But this time, the stakes are even higher. He''s working for the DEA undercover in an attempt to incriminate Tony Cardo, a clinically insane drug lord. But all Robicheaux''s really got is revenge on the mind. And he''ll only be satisfied when the killers who upended his life have been brought to justice.

“One of the best novels of the year from one of the very best writers at work today.”—Rocky Mountain News The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn’t crucify Megan Flynn’s father. They just didn’t catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails. Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalist, has come back to the bayou, looking for cop Dave Robicheaux. It was Dave who found the body of labor leader Jack Flynn. The sight changed the boy, shaped him as a man. And after forty years, Robicheaux is still haunted by the bizarre unsolved slaying. Now Megan’s return has stirred up the ghosts of the long-buried past, igniting a storm of violence that will rip apart lives of blacks and whites in this bayou country. And for a good cop with bad memories, hard desire, and chilling nightmares, the time has come to uncover the truth.

Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother’s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave’s mind. He’s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end. While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory’s boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area. Dave’s search for his mother’s killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother’s son. Purple Cane Road has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surprises from start to finish.

James Lee Burke’s second Robicheaux novel takes the detective out of New Orleans and into the bayou as he seeks a quieter life. Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective’s badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana’s bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life—and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he’s known since childhood; Rocque’s hungry Cajun wife; and a Federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all...

From New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, Detective Dave Robicheaux becomes entangled in a mystery that connects a series of grisly murders with an ex-convict turned bestselling author, a notorious local pimp, and the man currently dating Robicheaux’s daughter. On the trail of a killer responsible for the deaths of seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis parish, Detective Dave Robicheaux and his best friend Clete Purcel can’t seem to stay away from Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp whose name constantly resurfaces in their investigation, and whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating in front of numerous witnesses at the hands of Clete Purcel, the case takes a nasty turn, and solving the mystery of the Jefferson Davis deaths becomes more important than ever. Adding to Robicheaux’s troubles is the matter of his adopted daughter, Alafair, on hiatus from Stanford Law for a semester and home in New Iberia to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard, celebrated novelist and scion of a once-prominent Louisiana family whose fortunes are slowly sinking into the bayous. In Robicheaux’s mind, Abelard’s association with a sleazy ex-convict turned bestselling author named Robert Weingart puts him at the center of some very shady business, and Robicheaux fears he’s taking Alafair down with him. But at the same time he fears for Alafair’s well-being—and possibly her life—she’s becoming more distant toward him, convinced his concerns are just the paranoia of an overprotective father. To protect his daughter and clear his best friend’s name, Robicheaux will need every ounce of guts, wit, and investigative chops he can muster. From the creator of “one of America’s best mystery series” (Library Journal, starred review), James Lee Burke’s The Glass Rainbow is a “superlative” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) bayou thriller.

One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of a dozen short stories set in James Lee Burke’s most beloved milieu, the Deep South. “America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South—the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke''s heart and soul beat—the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast—in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.

Starting a new life as the sheriff of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas, Hackberry Holland is drawn into a murder investigation when nine dead prostitutes are dug up in the desert, forcing him to focus on something other than his own dem

Trouble follows Dave Robicheaux. James Lee Burke''s new novel, Swan Peak, finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcell have retreated to stay at an old friend''s ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from the harsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina. But the serenity is soon shattered when two college students are found brutally murdered in the hills behind where the Robicheauxs and Purcell are staying. They quickly find themselves involved in a twisted and dangerous mystery involving a wealthy, vicious oil tycoon, his deformed brother and beautiful wife, a sexually deviant minister, an escaped con and former country music star, and a vigilante Texas gunbull out for blood. At the center of the storm is Clete, who cannot shake the feeling that he is being haunted by the ghosts from his past -- namely Sally Dio, the mob boss he''d sabotaged and killed years before. In this expertly drawn, gripping story, Burke deftly weaves intricate, engaging plotlines and original, compelling characters with his uniquely graceful prose. He transcends genre yet again in the latest thrilling addition to his New York Times bestselling series.

Follows the adventures of detective Dave Robicheaux, who struggles with alcoholism and rage while fighting to protect lives in Katrina-devastated New Orleans.

New Orleans detective Dave Robicheaux finds his peaceful life shattered by the appearance of a woman who is passing stolen money and the suicide of another woman who may be the daughter of Dave''s long-time friend.

INCLUDES THE STORY “WINTER LIGHT,” THE BASIS FOR THE FILM GOD’S COUNTRY STARRING THANDIWE NEWTONu200b One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of ten short stories centered around the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi during and after Katrina. In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke elegantly marries his flair for gripping storytelling with his lyrical writing style and complex, fascinating character portraits. The backdrop of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is a versatile setting for Burke’s stories, which cover the scope of the human experience—from love and sex to domestic abuse to war, death, and friendship.

Before The Lost Get-Back Boogie appeared to wide acclaim in 1986, James Lee Burke had been out of print in cloth for thirteen years and his fifth novel had received a record 111 rejection letters. "LSU Press put me back in the game and turned my career around," Burke says. The novels and stories Burke had written during those years of rejection eventually became the stuff of the Dave Robicheaux series, which has earned him two Edgar Awards.Reviews of The Lost Get-Back Boogie now seem prescient. "This is the book that Burke was born to write—and you''re grateful he did," wrote syndicated reviewer Nancy Pate. "It''s the sort of novel that could win Burke a wider readership," said the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. And from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The Lost Get-Back Boogie was my introduction to Burke, and it is a cherished one. Burke demonstrates a rare ability to write an extraordinarily propulsive tale that borders on genre fiction without ever being less than literature." The novel''s title is also the name of the song that Iry Paret—a honky-tonk musician, Korean vet, and ex-con—wants to write to hold his memories of a "more uncomplicated time," before the war, before prison. The book opens the day thirty-year-old Iry leaves Louisiana''s Angola state penitentiary, after serving two years for manslaughter, and follows him to Montana, where he hopes to stay cool and out of trouble by working hard on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. Iry finds the fresh start he seeks, joins a weekend band, and even falls in love. But the Riordan family''s problems deal Iry a new sort of trouble with some ultimately tragic consequences. The Lost Get-Back Boogie is a novel about loyalty and friendship, betrayal and loss. It is about essentially good people and their attempts to define the value of their lives and to find their place in a changing, complicated world. And it is the work of James Lee Burke at the top of his form.