The Owl of Death Row

Editions:ebook, Hardcover, Paperback

Richard Harjo’s job is to counsel death row inmates in Oklahoma’s notorious McAlester Prison. That usually consists of convincing them heaven is a sort of afterlife work release program, and God is the most gullible parole officer ever. All they’ve got to do to qualify is have faith as they walk quietly to the execution chamber.

No wonder Richard has lost faith in all things supernatural.

Everything changes when he meets a Choctaw murderer named Holabi Minco. Native guards say the inmate is a witch… and they might be right. He keeps a popsicle stick calendar in his cell that tells when people are going to die and does so more accurately than the DOC roster. Minco befriends Richard and sends him on a series of extralegal missions to give him insight into the lives of the other death row inmates. The chaplain crosses paths with a pole dancer, white supremacists, and a secret town full of outlaws that isn’t on any official map. What’s always been a humdrum, hypocritical life is suddenly an adventure. When Holabi Minco’s beautiful daughter, Kinta, enters the picture, Richard is hooked. He quickly finds himself drawn into a complicated plot to break her father out of prison. It involves a slice of something called Dead’n’berried pie, a shoot out on the prison parking lot, and a disappearing act that looks too much like magic. Who could possibly resist?

Published: May 23, 2023

Publisher: Rogue River

Genres:

Mystery, Thriller

Tags:

crime fiction, native American, thriller books, thriller books to read

About the Author

John T. Biggs

Everything John T. Biggs writes is so full of Oklahoma that once you read it, you'll never get the red dirt stains washed out of your mind. The tribes play a significant role. No authentic discussion of the state is possible without them. Traditional Native American legends are reworked and set in the modern era, the way oral historians always intended. One of John's stories, "Boy Witch" took grand prize in the 80th annual Writer's Digest Competition in 2011. Another won third prize in the 2011 Lorian Hemingway short story contest. Eighty of his short stories have been published in one form or another, along with several of his novels.

Other Books By John T. Biggs

Stand-Alone Books

Series: Clementine

Clementine

Ghost Radio

The Palimpsest

Vaquero Padre

The Epic Journey of Eusebio Francisco Kino
In the heart of the 17th century, a young Jesuit’s brush with death sparked a vow that would change the course of history.
When eighteen-year-old Eusebio Francisco Kino recovered from a grave illness, he credited his healing to Saint Francis Xavier—and promised to follow his patron’s path to the missions of China. But God had other plans.
Ordained and sent west to New Spain, Padre Kino would spend the next three decades carving a legacy across the untamed northern frontier. From the rugged coast of California to the desert lands of Pimería Alta, he brought not only the word of God, but the tools for survival—introducing cattle ranching and wheat cultivation to native communities. As peacemaker and protector, he stood between the Spanish crown and the people he served, navigating colonial politics, Apache resistance, and the harsh terrain of the Southwest.
A brilliant mathematician, cartographer, and explorer, Kino’s maps redrew the boundaries of the continent, proving that California was not an island, but firmly connected to the land he so loved.
Vaquero Padre brings to vivid life the remarkable journey of a man of faith, science, and unshakable purpose—told as he himself might have shared it.

Cold Powder Vengeance

Black powder burns hot. Revenge doesn’t.
In 1875, Judiah Stone wants nothing more than to bury the war and live in peace, farming his homestead in the Dakota Territory with his beautiful wife. But when a gang of killers sheds her blood and leaves him for dead, peace dies with her.
Most men would wait on the law. Not this one.
Armed with a Henry rifle and a fire in his gut, he rides west—tracking the men to Deadwood, where greed and blood soak the Black Hills. Sioux warriors, brutal storms, and a cold-eyed shootist all try to end him along the way.
But the truth isn’t what it seems. The real killer is closer than he ever imagined—and in a courtroom where justice is bought, he brings his own sentence.
Cold Powder Vengeance is a brutal tale of frontier retribution, where the only sure things are a six-gun and the grave.

Comancheria

You can’t outrun a curse. You ride through it.
Texas Ranger Buck Dallas was meant to die. Cursed by the Comanche witch doctor, Twisted Root, he falls with the sun and claws out of the dirt at dawn—half man, half memory, bound to a promise he can’t forget.
With fellow Ranger Lane Newsome at his side, Buck rides a haunted trail across a hollow frontier—one stripped of mercy, scarred by blood, and hunted by things older than men. Their mission: find a missing girl named River and deliver a pregnant woman to a hidden spring that may be salvation… or something far worse.
As the riders press deeper into Comancheria, they’re joined by mystics, mercenaries, and broken souls—each with something to lose, and none guaranteed to survive. Between the bullets and the curses, between the land and the dead, redemption may be the only thing worth dying for.
From New York Times bestselling author Reavis Z. Wortham, Comancheria is a gritty, unrelenting vision of the West—dark, mythic, and rising from the grave.

Roan & Weatherford