Strange things are happening to the black bears of the Upper Peninsula. Grady Service is stumped until a Korean-born professor is murdered by cyanide-laced figs that contain two freeze-dried bear gall bladders. Sexy and suspenseful, Chasing a Blond Moon also introduces a new twist in Grady's personal life: he meets a son he never knew he had. Once again, Grady Service, the hard-boiled conservation officer of this superb series set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has a weird case on his hands. Strange things are happening to the black bear population. Grady Service can't pin the phenomenon on anyone or anything until a Korean-born professor from Michigan Tech is murdered by cyanide-laced figs-and two freeze-dried bear gall bladders are found among the figs. Service is certain that poachers are at work, killing bears to fuel the Asian market for traditional medicines. The animal-parts market is highly organized, and its practitioners are ruthless and dangerous. Grady's nemesis, Michigan's governor, has cut budgets so severely that there are not enough conservation officers to cover the state. Service finds himself filling in for colleagues, chasing illusive poachers who leave little evidence, and wrestling with the usual cast of eccentric and entertaining characters. And there is a new twist in Grady's personal life: he meets a sixteen-year-old son he never knew he had. Sexy, suspenseful, and full of action, perfect dialogue, and unforgettable characters, Chasing a Blond Moon confirms Heywood as one of the finest of his day.

We go back in time twenty-five years to meet Service as a young conservation officer. Still fresh from Vietnam, but on home turf, Service has been tapped for an unusual assignment that threatens to be his last. Full of outrageous characters, Running Dark is the fourth book in the Woods Cop Mystery series and is a wild and is a riveting ride. For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website.

In the sixth title in the successful Woods Cop Mystery series, another suspenseful who-done-it finds Grady Service with an unexpectedly complex, truly rotten, and important case on his hands. This time tainted eggs are showing up in caviar and Service must expose a ring of corruption in state government and perhaps within his own beloved DNR, one that could lead him all the way to the top. Making enemies at every level of the state, Service rousts out the people on the take. Can he get to the source of the contaminated eggs and prove it? Pitting corporate greed against the health of the general public isn't something Service takes lightly. He doesn't rest until there has been full exposure in a case that takes him from the wilds of the Upper Peninsula to the jungles of the state capital, into the maw of the Ukrainian mafia in New York City and onto distant beaches of Central America. For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website, www.josephheywood.com.

Strange things are happening to the black bears of the Upper Peninsula. Grady Service is stumped until a Korean-born professor is murdered by cyanide-laced figs that contain two freeze-dried bear gall bladders. Sexy and suspenseful, Chasing a Blond Moon also introduces a new twist in Grady's personal life: he meets a son he never knew he had. Once again, Grady Service, the hard-boiled conservation officer of this superb series set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has a weird case on his hands. Strange things are happening to the black bear population. Grady Service can't pin the phenomenon on anyone or anything until a Korean-born professor from Michigan Tech is murdered by cyanide-laced figs-and two freeze-dried bear gall bladders are found among the figs. Service is certain that poachers are at work, killing bears to fuel the Asian market for traditional medicines. The animal-parts market is highly organized, and its practitioners are ruthless and dangerous. Grady's nemesis, Michigan's governor, has cut budgets so severely that there are not enough conservation officers to cover the state. Service finds himself filling in for colleagues, chasing illusive poachers who leave little evidence, and wrestling with the usual cast of eccentric and entertaining characters. And there is a new twist in Grady's personal life: he meets a sixteen-year-old son he never knew he had. Sexy, suspenseful, and full of action, perfect dialogue, and unforgettable characters, Chasing a Blond Moon confirms Heywood as one of the finest of his day.

We last saw our hero in Mountains of the Misbegotten and Heywood delivers an even more thrilling mystery. Lute Bapcat and Pinkhus Zakov had been partners in the far northern counties of Michigan's Upper Peninsula for years when in early 1917, Zakov suddenly disappeared. A year later, Bapcat and Jordy (now 18) get a summons to Marquette, by former President Teddy Roosevelt. (Bapcat had served as a Roughrider with Roosevelt back in the day.) Roosevelt tells them that Zakov was sent to Russia by the U.S. government to find Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who abdicated and disappeared. Zakov went into Russia in April 1917 and had been feared dead, until an urgent message comes through a Swedish diplomat: Zakov wants Bapcat and Jordy sent to Russia to assist him. In the midst of the flu epidemic, a strange, Russian-born American marine major named Dodge is assigned to lead them into and across Russia until they locate Zakov. They dive deep into the heart of the Russian Fatherland as the Revolution of 1917 turns into a full out Civil War, with a level of chaos, random violence, and blood-letting far beyond Bapcat's imagination.

Every fall in northern Michigan brings a spate of dogman sightings. A radio DJ's invention, the dogman was created as an attention-getting joke. But millions of Michiganders believe in angels and vampires, werewolves, Bigfoot . . . and the dogman. Late summer, the horribly mutilated bodies of two Native American girls are found in a tent in a remote campground in the Huron Mountains. Grady Service, who wants nothing more than to return to patrolling his beloved Mosquito Wilderness, is called into the case. Strange animal tracks are found, mayhem ensues, a bloody trail of victims begins to accumulate, and the governor, in a political panic, and on her way out of office, orders Grady to hunt down and eliminate the killer--on her office's dime. Grady Service does not believe in Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, or dogmen, and the "monster" hunt that unfolds in Killing a Cold One builds to a violent finish in some of the Upper Peninsula's harshest and deadliest terrain. Joseph Heywood's legendary woods cop is called upon to use all of his investigative skills to sort fantasy from reality in order to do what the governor wants.

In the sequel to Red Jacket, former Rough Rider turned Michigan game warden Lute Bapcat sets out to find a deputy warden who has disappeared from Ontonagon County, one of the Michigan Upper Peninsula's most lawless places. Merely hours into his search, Bapcat is shot by assailants unknown. After a miraculous rescue and recovery aided by mysterious caretakers, Bapcat uncovers a plan by powerful locals to capture and sell bears to zoos around the country, an act akin to theft in Bapcat's mind. The game warden's determination to break the scheme ratchets up when it seems his missing colleague may have authored the idea and employed the help of an outlaw called Red Hair, who had been raised in the same orphanage with Bapcat. Red Hair's gang of thugs have long terrorized the region. Bapcat must use all of his woodcraft to brave the Trap Hills and Porcupine Mountains to face the criminals at the old Nonesuch Mine. Zakov the Russian-Bapcat's eccentric game warden partner-is brought in to help with the hunt, which causes Bapcat to reevaluate his personal values. In classic Heywood style, an extraordinary band of Upper Peninsula characters collects around intrepid woods cops.

Joseph Heywood ratchets up the suspense in yet another WOODS COP MYSTERY! Upper Michigan Conservation Officer Grady Service has a case on his hands that doesn't make sense. A series of protests and bombings by animal rights activists appears to have culminated in a double murder at a wolf lab, which releases into the wild an extraordinarily rare animal: a blue wolf. To the Ojibwa a blue wolf represents good luck, unless it is captured or killed-and then it is an omen of Armageddon. Service suspects that the murders aren't what they seem to be when the FBI takes over the investigation and reaches far beyond its jurisdiction. Meanwhile, an elusive poaching ring sets its sights on wolves. Once again, Service must defend his hallowed Mosquito Wilderness in a race against time when it becomes clear that its final target is the blue wolf. Full of memorable characters and steeped in the lives of woods cops, Blue Wolf in Green Fire is also a masterpiece of suspense. This second book in the Woods Cop series is a fully satisfying journey into the natural world and beyond, into the terrifying extremes of human nature. For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit www.josephheywood.com

One legendary insect--enormous, white, and exceedingly rare--attracts trout of such size that they couldn't possibly exist in the world as we know it. But in Heywood's classic novel, such things can and do exist.
Protagonist Bowie Rhodes, UPI reporter and expert fly fisherman, had learned of the snowfly early in his childhood. It hatches every seven to ten years, never on the same river twice, bringing to rise trout so huge they would have to have lived forty years or more; trout so wily that they never allow themselves to be caught--or even seen; trout so hungry for this fly that they will risk exposure to rise for the hatch. The snowfly is the sacred quest of the most obsessed trout hunters, existing--it seems--only in myth and in a lost manuscript.
Rhodes's reporting brings him to such sites as the jungles of Vietnam, the labyrinth of Brezhnev's Soviet Union, and a poisoned Canadian wasteland of uranium mines. His hunt for the manuscript, meanwhile, takes him deep into his own heart of darkness.
Richly imaginative and sensual, the world of "The Snowfly" has more mystery lurking beneath the surface waters than our own. Or does it?

In the seventh installment in the acclaimed Woods Cop Mystery series, another suspenseful crime noir finds Grady Service, a detective in the Upper Peninsula for Michigan's Department of Natural Resources, back in action. The discovery of skeletal remains sheds troubling light on an eighty-year-old cold case involving racism, gold, and murder. Combine that with a present-day ecoterrorist whose guerrilla tactics-including a gruesome trap called a "wolf tree"-make Rambo look like a cub scout; a thriving crystal meth industry; and Service's particular brand of grizzled, sexually tense, and action-packed police work. Death lurks behind every tree, under every rock, and within every raging river in the most action-packed Woods Cop Mystery yet.

In a brilliant debut to a thrilling series, Grady Service gets news that his nemesis, the head of an incestuous clan of poachers, is to be released from prison. But something even more sinister is afoot in the Mosquito Wilderness. Service must call upon his every reserve to track, stalk, and capture the "ice hunter." For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website.

Late spring, 2007. Michigan in economic freefall, state budgets being slashed, politics reduced to nastiness, state jobs being erased, and personnel furloughed without pay. Grady Service, detective for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the Upper Peninsula, watches as his colleagues leave the department one by one. Upon being asked by an old friend to look into unspecified problems his son is facing on the shores of Lake Superior, Service has no idea how complicated his life is about to become. All he knows is that the situation involves something his friend calls "bleeding sand"-and that his new partner, Conservation Officer Donna "Jingo" Sedge, is the oddest young officer he's ever met. The story moves at breakneck speed as Service, nearing three decades as a Woods Cop, finds that expectations seem to be changing on all fronts, personal and professional, and he is not certain he can live up to them.

Meet Grady Service: former Marine, now conservation officer, and the greatest fear of any errant hunter. In Ice Hunter-the first in the Woods Cop Mystery series set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and celebrated for its intricate plots and unforgettable characters-Service must call upon his every reserve to track, stalk, and capture the ice hunter.

In the eleventh Woods Cop Mystery, Conservation Officer Grady Service is on unpaid suspension until spring, but-stubborn as ever-continues to patrol the Mosquito Wilderness, along with his complicated past. Service is off-duty through July 4 following a season in which Service and his unofficial partner (lifelong poacher Limpy Allerdyce) cleaned up on deer-law violators and poachers, closing more big cases in two weeks than most officers solve in their careers. His reward? He is summoned to Lansing, told he is on unpaid suspension, his badge, firearms, and truck taken. The rationale for the action is fuzzy, a questioning of his using a lifelong lawbreaker as partner. For the first time, Service has no duties and feels like he has been beached unfairly. But voluntarily on patrol, he begins to sense political shenanigans -an old foe lurking somewhere in the shadows. He could retire, but decides to fight, and enlists help from Allerdyce and fellow game warden and Vietnam Veteran Luticious Treebone. Clues accumulate: It seems someone wants to illegally commercialize the Mosquito. Grady realizes if he doesn't stop it, the wilderness will be destroyed. The tight story unfolds like a poker game, with one side bluffing and raising, while the other side keeps calling and keeping the game on until there is a final showdown.

Autumn 1960. Nikita Khrushchev is politically adept, visionary, and locked in a fight with the Politburo and a battle with Mao and the Chinese. His country and his political future are in trouble because he has opened doors to the West and espoused the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. Meanwhile, the arms race is crushing the Soviet economy and there is unrest throughout the Communist empire. Changes are imperative. The army must be reduced, money redirected to a consumer economy, and the US neutralized. But the old boars of the Red Army will not be easily displaced; its leaders are intent on saving their country from Khrushchev. A cabal of senior Red Army patriots are led by a man who the world thinks is Khrushchev's unswerving toady. The game is treason, and the tools are Albania's mad-dog leaders, for whom assassination is second nature. What begins subtly soon turns brittle. A rocket technician disappears before a major accident at the Soviet Space Center. In Belgrade a psychotic CIA agent escapes an ambush, vows revenge, and disappears. Khrushchev turns to the Special Operations Group, the elite hunting team featured in the author's prequel, THE BERKUT. In Washington the Bay of Pigs invasion is in the final planning stages, and its timing is tied to the missing CIA agent. He must be found. Two teams, one from Russia and one from the United States, begin a desperate hunt that leads them on an inward spiral toward each other and to a lethal showdown at the 1961 summit in Vienna. There they find themselves in an uneasy alliance as they race to find the American renegade and the Albanian death team, both groups pawns in a global chess game. With a vast canvas of disparate characters and events, The Domino Conspiracy is a coruscating tour de force. Breathtakingly suspenseful, it lays open the myths of the Soviet monolith and reveals the delicate seeds of glasnost and perestroika, movements that were not to flower until three decades later. Readers know how the Soviet story ended; now they will see how it all began.

A treasure chest of stories for Joseph Heywood fans, featuring the women game-warden colleagues of his mystery series star Grady Service. With Heywood's trademark ability to capture the eccentric characters of the Michigan wilderness, his wonderful ear for dialogue, and his vivid descriptions of hunting, fishing, and outdoorsmanship, these stories will delight Heywood fans and entice any reader who loves stories about the great outdoors or law-and-order. The game wardens in these stories not only have to contend with poachers, drug smugglers, and violent criminals, but they must also confront the challenges of being women in a wilderness law enforcement fraternity traditionally dominated by men.

A lost classic by beloved novelist Joseph Heywood that helped put the writer on the map, THE BERKUT begins at dusk as SS Colonel Gunter Brumm parachutes silently through the sulphuric haze in the smoldering ruins of Berlin, past the Soviet troops that encircle the skeleton that the city has become in April 1945. With the precision and skill that has marked his brilliant military career, Brumm has completed the first stage of a simple yet seemingly impossible mission: to evade the Allied forces swarming over Europe and to smuggle "Herr Wolf," the greatest war criminal of the twentieth century, to safety. Less than twenty-four hours later a special Russian team snakes its way into Berlin's city limits, headed for the Reich Chancellery. It is led by Vasily Petrov, "the Berkut"-named after the Russian eagles trained to hunt wolves, a man handpicked by Stalin himself for his ability to track down his quarry and driven by the knowledge that failure means certain death. THE BERKUT is a classic story of pursuit, of hunters and the hunted, that pits two elite teams against each other-both of them brave, resourceful, of great physical prowess and so fully motivated that only the winners will survive. Scores of other characters populate this engrossing thriller: priests, deserters, partisans, Nazis on the run, Swiss guides, Austrian refugees-as well as a larger-than-life OSS operative who is the only person among the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops in Europe who realizes that Herr Wolf is not only alive but on the verge of escaping justice. Joseph Heywood's novel is a story of enormous conviction and urgency, made even more compelling for being based on facts that have yet to be proven fiction.

"Hard Ground" is a treasure chest of stories for lovers of the outdoors, fans of smart crime fiction, and, of course, the legions of Joseph Heywood fans. Featuring the game-warden colleagues of Woods Cop star Grady Service, the tales in this collection follow the men and women patrolling Michigan's wilds as they encounter everything from poachers determined to defend their kills with deadly resistance to drug pushers selling their wares at an Elvis Convention camping retreat. There are search-and-rescue operations, a rookie game warden's first day on the job, and much, much more. With Heywood's trademark ability to capture the eccentric characters of the Upper Peninsula, his wonderful ear for dialogue, and his vivid descriptions of hunting, fishing, and outdoorsmanship, these twenty-plus stories will delight Heywood fans and entice any reader who loves stories about the great outdoors or law-and-order. As an added bonus, one story features Woods Cop protagonist Grady Service early in his career, while another story stars Heywood's new series protagonist Lute Bapcat.

A string of protests by animal-rights activists appear to have culminated in a double murder at a wolf lab, which releases into the wild a rare animal: a blue wolf. To the Ojibwa a blue wolf means luck; but if captured or killed, Armageddon. Grady Service is in a race against time as an elusive poachers' ring chooses its final target: the blue wolf. For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit www.josephheywood.com

From the author of the Woods Cop Mystery series comes a new collection of stories about life in the Upper Peninsula. Heywood offers a glimpse into the world his best loved characters came from, like Grady Service, Limpy Allerdyce, and Luticious Treebone. From the early 1900s to present day, Heywood shows the roots of Yoopers and how their influence has spread across the peninsula. Meet 'Didit Dave' and his sudden and unexpected promotion to police chief, a dead man who doesn't make it to heaven but instead an old bar in Kate's Bay, and several military veterans who had engaged in each major US conflict and managed to return home. This collection wouldn't be complete without a couple classic Heywood mysteries featuring a new detective duo: Tribal police chief John Clash and Houghton County Sheriff Nayar Sekhar. One thing is for certain, the characters in this collection could only come from one place. For Yoopers who are far and away (and some who are not so far away), one thing is true for them all: They all want to return above the bridge ASAP. Heywood's collection of stories shares why.

The 10th installment of the beloved Woods Cop Mystery series! The traditional firearm deer season in Michigan lasts two weeks, a time in which the most hunters are afield during the year and the time when most things happen. Game wardens cannot count on having any life but work during this period, and in this case Grady Service, who takes longtime violator and archrival Limpy Allerdyce on as his partner for deer season runs into the most bizarre string of big cases involving deer that he has ever encountered. Buckular Dystrophy is the term coined by Conservation Officers to describe the condition whereby people cannot help killing deer, not for sport or food, but for other reasons - an addiction of sorts, and unlike other addictions, one not medically organized, but just as real.

A serial killer is knocking off America's best conservation officers-and Service learns he is next on the list. The FBI brings him on the case, but Service is also out for blood. The killer has murdered his girlfriend, Maridly Nantz, and his son, Walter. Service must navigate the terrain of his own grief as well as the killer's twisted mind. The fifth book in the Woods Cop Mystery series. For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website.

In the sequel to "Red Jacket," former Rough Rider turned Michigan game warden Lute Bapcat sets out to find a deputy warden who has disappeared from Ontonagon County, one of the Michigan Upper Peninsula's most lawless places. Merely hours into his search, Bapcat is shot by assailants unknown. After a miraculous rescue and recovery aided by mysterious caretakers, Bapcat uncovers a plan by powerful locals to capture and sell bears to zoos around the country, an act akin to theft in Bapcat's mind. The game warden's determination to break the scheme ratchets up when it seems his missing colleague may have authored the idea and employed the help of an outlaw called Red Hair, who had been raised in the same orphanage with Bapcat. Red Hair's gang of thugs have long terrorized the region. Bapcat must use all of his woodcraft to brave the Trap Hills and Porcupine Mountains to face the criminals at the old Nonesuch Mine. Zakov the Russian--Bapcat's eccentric game warden partner--is brought in to help with the hunt, which causes Bapcat to reevaluate his personal values. In classic Heywood style, an extraordinary band of Upper Peninsula characters collects around intrepid woods cops.

Joseph Heywood ratchets up the suspense in yet another
WOODS COP MYSTERY Grady Service, the hardboiled conservation officer of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is back with a vengeance and facing the most difficult case of his career. In Strike Dog--the fifth book in this superb series--a serial killer is knocking off the best conservation officers in each state. The killings are ritualistic and the victims are mutilated in a manner with roots in Viking warfare. Service learns he is next on the list. The FBI brings him on the case, both to protect him and because of his incredible tracking abilities. But Service needs no protection. He's out for blood himself. The killer has murdered his girlfriend, Nantz, and his son, Walter. Alone, and devastated, Service must navigate the terrain of his own grief as well as the twisted mind of the serial killer. In this brilliant psychological drama with nail-biting suspense, the hunted becomes the hunter. Service must draw on all he has learned in the jungles of Vietnam and the Upper Peninsula's woods to stalk the killer. Will his foe succeed in achieving his twisted glory of a perfect record? Or will Service be able to outwit him and enact his own grim revenge?

The Snowfly is a spellbinding novel of suspense, international intrigue, and fly fishing. The holy grail that burns at its core is the snowfly, a legendary insect - enormous, white, and exceedingly rare - that attracts trout of such size that they couldn't possibly exist in the world as we know it. But in The Snowfly, such things can and do exist.Bowie Rhodes is a UPI reporter and a fly fisherman of extraordinary talent. He learns of the myth of the snowfly early in his childhood. Legend has it that the giant snowfly hatches every seven to ten years, never on the same river twice. It brings to rise only trout that strain the imagination: trout that are so huge they would have to have lived forty years or more, trout so wily that they never allow themselves to be caught, or even seen, trout so hungry for this fly that they will risk exposure to rise for the hatch. The snowfly is the sacred quest of only the most obsessed trout hunters, and has been seen by no living man or woman, existing only in myth and in a lost manuscript. Rhodes's reporting brings him to the extremes of humanity - in the jungles of Vietnam, in the labyrinth of Brezhnev's Soviet Union, in a poisoned Canadian wasteland of uranium mines. His hunt for the manuscript takes him deep into his own heart of darkness.The Snowfly is a richly imaginative and sensual novel. The world Heywood creates is broader, more wild, with more mystery lurking beneath the surface waters than our own. Or is it? The Snowfly makes it all seem gloriously possible.