"[An] excellent debut… filled with murder, betrayal, and a terrific sense of place." – C J Box Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive--his own father. Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before--and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty. Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack's brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack's mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret. The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer--which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.The Poacher's Son is a sterling debut of literary suspense. Taut and engrossing, it represents the first in a series featuring Mike Bowditch.

Game Warden Mike Bowditch must chase down a cunning and dangerous fugitive in the North Maine Woods in this nail-biter of a thriller from Edgar Award-nominated author Paul Doiron, Pitch Dark.Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can't believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie's dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.For Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond's secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area―including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady. Josie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and...

In this riveting new novel from Edgar finalist Paul Doiron, Bowditch joins a desperate search for two missing hikers as Maine wildlife officials deal with a frightening rash of coyote attacks. When two female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness-the most remote stretch along the entire Appalachian Trail-Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the desperate search to find them. Hope turns to despair after two unidentified corpses are discovered-their bones picked clean by coyotes. Do the bodies belong to the missing hikers? And were they killed by the increasingly aggressive wild dogs? Soon, all of Maine is gripped with the fear of killer coyotes. But Bowditch has his doubts. His new girlfriend, wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens, insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding in the offbeat community of hikers, hippies, and woodsmen at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness. When Stacey herself...

Enjoy “Backtrack”—an original, brand new, short story from Edgar Award finalist Paul Doiron, author of the bestselling Mike Bowditch series. When a visiting hunter goes missing in the middle of a snowstorm, a young Charley Stevens (later the mentor to game warden Mike Bowditch) sets off to rescue him—but begins to suspect the man may not want to be found.

"Excellent . . . Thoughtful plotting and strong characters raise this above the crime novel pack." —Publishers weeklyIn the aftermath of a family tragedy, Mike Bowditch has left the Maine Warden Service and is working as a fishing guide in the North Woods. But when his mentor Sgt. Kathy Frost is forced to kill a troubled war veteran in an apparent case of "suicide by cop," he begins having second thoughts about his decision. Now Kathy finds herself the target of a government inquiry and outrage from the dead soldier's platoon mates. Soon she finds herself in the sights of a sniper, as well. When the sergeant is shot outside her farmhouse, Mike joins the hunt to find the mysterious man responsible. To do so, the ex-warden must plunge into his friend's secret past—even as a beautiful woman from Mike's own past returns, throwing into jeopardy his tentative romance with wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens. As Kathy Frost lies on the brink...

Anthony- and Edgar-award nominated author Paul Doiron delivers another "masterpiece of high-octane narrative" (Booklist) with his newest harrowing thriller about the hunt for a murderer at the height of a major snowstormMaine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile,transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadianborder. When a blizzard descends on the coast, Bowditch iscalled to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving and halffrozenman has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lostin the storm. But what starts as a rescue mission in the wildernesssoon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is anotorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it washis own friend who killed him. Bowditch isn't so sure, but hisvow not to interfere in the case is tested when he finds himselfpowerfully attracted to a beautiful woman with a dark past anda troubled young...

In this thrilling entry in Edgar Award finalist Paul Doiron's bestselling series, a deadly attack on one of Maine's last wild wolves leads Game Warden Mike Bowditch to an even bigger criminal conspiracy.While on vacation, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch receives a strange summons from Billy Cronk, one of his oldest friends and a man he had to reluctantly put behind bars for murder. Billy wants him to investigate a new female prison guard with a mysterious past, and Mike feels honor-bound to help his friend. But when the guard becomes the victim in a brutal attack at the prison, he realizes there may be a darker cover-up at play—and that Billy and his family might be at risk.Then Mike receives a second call for help, this time from a distant mountain valley where Shadow, a wolf-hybrid he once cared for, has been found shot by an arrow and clinging to life. He searches for the identity of the bowman, but his investigation is blocked at every...

In Paul Doiron's Windowmaker, When a mysterious woman in distress appears outside his home, Mike Bowditch has no clue she is about to blow his world apart. Amber Langstrom is beautiful, damaged, and hiding a secret with a link to his past.. She claims her son Adam is a wrongfully convicted sex offender who has vanished from a brutal work camp in the high timber around the Widowmaker Ski Resort. She also claims that Adam Langstrom is the illegitimate son of Jack Bowditch, Mike's dead and diabolical father. He is the half-brother Mike never knew he had.After trying so hard to put his troubled past behind him, Mike is reluctant to revisit the wild country of his childhood and again confront his father's history of violence. But Amber's desperation and his own need to know the truth make it hard for him to refuse her pleas for help.In search of answers, Bowditch travels through a mountainous wilderness to a place hidden from the rest of the world, where the...

"Excellent . . . Thoughtful plotting and strong characters raise this above the crime novel pack." —***Publishers weekly ***In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Mike Bowditch has left the Maine Warden Service and is working as a fishing guide in the North Woods. But when his mentor Sgt. Kathy Frost is forced to kill a troubled war veteran in an apparent case of "suicide by cop," he begins having second thoughts about his decision. Now Kathy finds herself the target of a government inquiry and outrage from the dead soldier's platoon mates. Soon she finds herself in the sights of a sniper, as well. When the sergeant is shot outside her farmhouse, Mike joins the hunt to find the mysterious man responsible. To do so, the ex-warden must plunge into his friend's secret past—even as a beautiful woman from Mike's own past returns, throwing into jeopardy his tentative romance with wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens.  As Kathy Frost lies on the brink of death and a dangerous shooter stalks the blueberry barrens of central Maine, Bowditch is forced to confront the choices he has made and determine, once and for all, the kind of man he truly is, in The Bone Orchard by Paul Doiron. About the AuthorBestselling author PAUL DOIRON is the editor in chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine. A native of Maine, he attended Yale University and holds an MFA from Emerson College. His first book, The Poacher's Son, is the winner of the Barry award, the Strand award for best first novel, and a finalist for the Edgar and Anthony awards. Paul is a Registered Maine Guide and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist.

Rabid: A Mike Bowditch Short Mystery by Paul Doiron In this original short story in the Mike Bowditch mystery series, Mike is drawn into the story of a gruesome case from his mentor Charley Steven’s past. Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch accompanies his old friend and mentor, retired bush pilot Charley Stevens, as he pays a visit to a mysterious woman, the widow of a Vietnam vet, living in isolation in the Maine wilderness. Many years earlier, she had called Charley, then a young game warden himself, for help. She claimed that her badly bleeding husband had been attacked by a rabid bat. But in the succeeding days, despite her husband's increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior, his wife resisted Charley's attempts to help, arousing his suspicions that more was going on than met the eye. Was the husband the victim of rabies, or was he suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? The situation finally erupted into horrific violence, leaving everyone involved deeply scarred. In the devastating finale to RABID, Charley reveals to Mike how he uncovered the awful truth about what actually happened in their home so many years before.

A supposed hunting accident becomes a dangerously complicated murder investigation in Stay Hidden, the intricately-plotted new thriller from Paul Doiron featuring Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch. A woman has been shot to death by a deer hunter on an island off the coast of Maine. To newly promoted Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch, the case seems open and shut. But as soon as he arrives on remote Maquoit Island he discovers mysteries piling up one on top of the other. The hunter now claims he didn’t fire the fatal shot and the evidence proves he’s telling the truth. Bowditch begins to suspect the secretive community might be covering up the identity of whoever killed the woman, known as Ariel Evans. The controversial author was supposedly writing a book about the island's notorious hermit. So why are there no notes in her rented cottage? The biggest blow comes the next day when the weekly ferry arrives and off steps the dead woman herself. Ariel Evans is alive, well, and determined to solve her own “murder” even if it upsets Mike Bowditch’s investigation and makes them both targets of an elusive killer who will do anything to conceal his crimes.

Rabid: A Mike Bowditch Short Mystery by Paul Doiron In this original short story in the Mike Bowditch mystery series, Mike is drawn into the story of a gruesome case from his mentor Charley Steven’s past. Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch accompanies his old friend and mentor, retired bush pilot Charley Stevens, as he pays a visit to a mysterious woman, the widow of a Vietnam vet, living in isolation in the Maine wilderness. Many years earlier, she had called Charley, then a young game warden himself, for help. She claimed that her badly bleeding husband had been attacked by a rabid bat. But in the succeeding days, despite her husband's increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior, his wife resisted Charley's attempts to help, arousing his suspicions that more was going on than met the eye. Was the husband the victim of rabies, or was he suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? The situation finally erupted into horrific violence, leaving everyone involved deeply scarred. In the devastating finale to RABID, Charley reveals to Mike how he uncovered the awful truth about what actually happened in their home so many years before.

Massacre Pond is Edgar finalist Paul Doiron's superb new novel featuring Game Warden Mike Bowditch and a beautiful, enigmatic woman whose mission to save the Maine wilderness may have incited a murderOn an unseasonably hot October morning, Bowditch is called to the scene of a bizarre crime: the corpses of seven moose have been found senselessly butchered on the estate of Elizabeth Morse, a wealthy animal rights activist who is buying up huge parcels of timberland to create a new national park.What at first seems like mindless slaughter—retribution by locals for the job losses Morse's plan is already causing in the region—becomes far more sinister when a shocking murder is discovered and Mike's investigation becomes a hunt to find a ruthless killer. In order to solve the controversial case, Bowditch risks losing everything he holds dear: his best friends, his career as a law enforcement officer, and the love of his life.The...

“Breathless pacing, dark humor, wildlife, and vivid characters.” —*Boston Globe* In this original short story in the Mike Bowditch mystery series, legendary Maine woodsman and bush pilot Charley Stevens tries to convince young Mike Bowditch of the dangers awaiting rookie game wardens. INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE EXTENDED EXCERPT FROM PAUL DOIRON'S KNIFE CREEK! “Nobody knows the woods of Maine like the rugged individuals who eke out a living by hunting, fishing and cutting timber. And nobody knows the region’s inhabitants like Mike Bowditch, the young game warden in Paul Doiron’s manly mysteries.” —*New York Times Book Review* **“Paul Doiron is shaping up as the Tony Hillerman of the east. . . . presenting central characters who are brave and brainy but all too human and fallible. . . . [Doiron’s] storytelling is controlled and always enthralling. Just like Tony Hillerman’s.” —Toronto Star** **