Joe Pickett

There’s nothing unusual about the sound of a gunshot in Twelve Sleep. In remotest Wyoming, where elk roam the pine forests and cougars prowl the mountains, everyone owns a gun. But when Joe Pickett hears two sharp cracks ring out months before hunting season, it’s his job to investigate. As game warden, dad-of-two Joe is not only badly paid and poorly housed, he’s deeply unpopular. So when the source of the shots – a well-known poacher – gets off scot-free, the locals are delighted. And then the poacher turns up dead in the Picketts’ back yard.

Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in.

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is called to a bizarre crime scene deep within the forests of Twelve Sleep County. Famous eco-activist Stewie Woods has been killed in an explosion, along with his new bride and ten head of cattle. The case is wrapped up far too quickly: an environmental publicity stunt gone wrong. But what is the millionaire rancher who owned the cattle hiding? And why is Joe’s wife Marybeth receiving mysterious phone calls from someone claiming to be Stewie Woods?

An Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Award winner, C. J. Box delivers the second pulse-pounding installment in his critically acclaimed series. While investigating a string of bizarre murders, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is forced to flee across treacherous terrain with a deadly tracker on his trail.

In the third adventure in C. J. Box’s engrossing series, Joe Pickett finds himself at the center of a confrontation between a special investigative team and a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. With the help of a mysterious stranger, Joe lays his life on the line to protect an innocent girl before a wave of violence surges over the Bighorn Mountains.

It’s an hour away from darkness, a bitter winter storm is raging, and Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is deep in the forest near Battle Mountain: shotgun in his left hand, his truck’s steering wheel handcuffed to his right – and Lamar Gardiner’s arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him. Joe knows that Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm mean he should get off the mountain. But he also knows this episode is far from over.

It’s an idyllic late-summer day in Saddlestring, Wyoming, and game warden Joe Pickett is fly-fishing with his two daughters when he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a moose. Whatever or whoever attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal’s face has been sliced away, the skin peeled back from the flesh. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes is an isolated incident.

It's an idyllic late-summer day in Saddlestring, Wyoming, and game warden Joe Pickett is fly-fishing with his two daughters when he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a moose. Whatever - or whoever - attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal's face has been sliced away, the skin peeled back from the flesh. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes in an isolated incident.

C. J. Box's best-selling Joe Pickett novels have earned him a spot on every serious suspense fan's shortlist of favorites. The tightly constructed Out of Range brings game warden Joe to a new, remote beat in Wyoming's vast countryside to investigate the suspicious death of the previous warden.

A good friend and fellow game warden of Joe Pickett's has killed himself, and Joe's been chosen to temporarily run his district. But Jackson, Wyoming, is a far cry from Joe's hometown of Saddlestring, and it doesn't help that Joe feels compelled to investigate the circumstances surrounding his friend's suicide. The closer Joe comes to the truth, the more his own life spirals out of control - and he realizes that if he isn't careful, he may be Jackson's next victim...

When local ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett vanishes under suspicious circumstances, Joe Pickett grows convinced that her family are responsible. In her absence, two of her sons, Hank and Arlen, battle for control of their mother's multi-million-dollar empire. The whole town is so caught up in the infighting that they seem to have forgotten that Opal is still missing.

C. J. Box has won a host of awards, including the Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry. In Plain Sight sees game warden Joe Pickett's life take a turn for the worse after millionaire Opal Scarlett goes missing. As Pickett discovers more and more disturbing truths, it becomes clear that someone wants the dogged game warden to keep his nose out of the investigation.

Joe Pickett, having recently been fired from his job as a Wyoming game warden, is working on his father-in-law’s ranch when he receives a call. Governor Rulon - a devious but down-home politico - has a special request. Clay McCann, a lawyer who slaughtered four campers in cold blood in a far-off corner of Yellowstone National Park, had immediately turned himself in at the nearest park ranger station - except that the crimes were committed in a thin sliver of land with zero residents and overlapping jurisdiction, the so-called free-fire zone.

Best-selling author C. J. Box—an Anthony and Macavity Award winner—earned starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist for this exceptional mystery. Taking advantage of a legal loophole, a lawyer kills four people in Yellowstone National Park and walks away a free man. As the public outcry intensifies, the governor hires former game warden Joe Pickett to conduct a private investigation.

It’s elk season in the Rockies, but this year one hunter is stalking a different kind of prey. When the call comes in on the radio, Joe Pickett can hardly believe his ears: game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains - strung up, gutted, skinned, and beheaded, as if he were the elk he’d been pursuing. Governor Rulon is forced to end hunting season early for the first time in state history - outraging hunters and potentially crippling the state’s income from the loss of hunting license revenue.

Former game warden Pickett is now a special agent reporting directly to the governor. With someone targeting elk hunters, Pickett must head off a potentially deadly showdown when a flamboyant anti-hunting activist rolls in to town.

'Tell Sherry April called.' That simple phone message shakes Joe Pickett’s oldest daughter Sheridan and the rest of the family to the core. To Joe, it doesn’t seem even remotely possible that April could have survived the massacre six years before. He was there, and he was unable to save her. But Sheridan starts to believe there’s a chance that April is still alive, and her suspicions are confirmed when the person sending texts to her cell phone is able to recall family incidents only April could know.

New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box's Below Zero is the 10th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. The telephone calls from her stepdaughter April send chills down the spine of Joe's daughter Sherry. Wasn't April murdered six years ago in a bloody massacre? Wondering how this youthful caller knows details only April could know, Sherry becomes confused while Joe grows suspicious. Is the caller April - or are Joe and his family victims of a cruel hoax?

Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who simply vanished one day. Joe doesn't mind admitting that the farther he rides, the more he wishes he could just turn around and go home.