Must-Read Books by Indigenous Authors

A young man is haunted by a mythological specter bent on stealing everything he loves in this unsettling horror from the author of Indian Burial Ground and Sisters of the Lost Nation.

A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work today, and the director of the Oscar®-nominated documentary, Sugarcane, We Survived the Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence. A soulful, formally daring, and indelible work from an important new voice.

A fiery second collection of poetry from the acclaimed Indigenous New Zealand writer that U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls, “One of the most startling and original poets of her generation.”

Uncover the stories behind the foods that have linked the natural environments, traditions, and histories of Indigenous peoples across North America for millennia through more than 100 ancestral and modern recipes from three-time James Beard Award-winning Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman.

A sweeping and deeply personal account of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.

A poignant and heart-wrenching coming-of-age story that follows the friendships, hopes, fears, and struggles of a group of Native high school students from Winnipeg, Manitoba’s North End, illuminating what it’s like to grow up in the heart of an Indigenous city.

When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family’s secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic. Carson Faust captivates in this chilling literary debut that confronts the specter of colonization and the generational scars it leaves on Native American families.

Sometimes I feel that I wasn’t born at all, rather sculpted and formed by the storms of my grandmother’s life. From the award-winning and bestselling author of Five Little Indians comes a powerful family saga following three generations of Cree women and the storytelling tradition that connects them to each other.

From the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Never Whistle at Night, a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across Chicago to a momentous meeting, inspired by the cult classic The Warriors.

An illuminating novel about the importance of reclaiming the past, based on the author’s family history.

Daniel H. Wilson’s Hole in the Sky is a riveting thriller in the most creative tradition of extraterrestrial fiction. Drawing on Wilson’s unique background as both a threat forecaster for the United States Air Force and a Cherokee Nation citizen, this propulsive novel asks probing questions about nonhuman intelligence, the Western mindset, and humans’ understanding of reality.

From Indigenous chef Nephi Craig, a searing personal and cultural reckoning that demonstrates the power of food to heal intergenerational wounds. Interweaving personal reflection with illuminating cultural insight, Our Knives Will Save Us offers a vision of hope: One where food is decolonized and cooking is a pathway to healing for all of us.

A man lunges in front of a car. An elderly woman silently drowns herself. A corpse sits up in its coffin and speaks. On this reservation, not all is what it seems, in this new spine-chilling mythological horror from the author of Sisters of the Lost Nation.

A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes.

Given up for adoption as an infant, Ruby is raised by a white couple who understand little of her Indigenous heritage. This is the great mystery that hovers over Ruby’s life — who her people are and how to reconcile what is missing. As the novel spans time and multiple points of view, we meet the people connected to Ruby: Her birth parents and grandparents; her adoptive parents; the men and women Ruby has been romantically involved with; a beloved uncle; and Ruby’s children. Taken together, these characters form a kaleidoscope of stories, giving Ruby’s life dignity and meaning.

From bestselling author katherena vermette comes a heartrending story of two Michif sisters who must face their past trauma when their mother is called out for false claims to Indigenous identity. In prose so powerful it could strike a match, real ones is written with the same signature wit and heart on display in The Break, The Strangers, and The Circle. An energetic, probing and ultimately hopeful story, real ones pays homage to the long-fought, hard-won battles of Michif (Métis) people to regain ownership of their identity and the right to say who is and isn’t Métis.

Mackenzie, a young Cree woman, continues to have dreams that return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: A weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite. But when the waking world starts closing in, too, she returns to her rural hometown in Alberta, finding her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. And still, her dreams intensify, ultimately forcing her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community, and the land they call home.

Discover this visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women … one of them her sister. And learn more from Vanessa Lillie on the true stories behind this novel.

At rock bottom following her daughter’s death, ex-Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation where he was raised, but the tribe needs a new marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home.

The bestselling Indigenous dark fiction anthology returns with a new selection of even more daring and sinister stories. Featuring stories of unspeakable yet satisfying terror, from twisted psychological tales to gore-filled monster hunts, this new selection of stories will sate your darkest appetites and leave you slavering for more. Never Whistle at Night, Part II: Back for Blood is a further celebration of Indigenous survival and the enduring tradition of transforming adversity into art.

A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana’s vast emptiness.

Fed up and burnt-out, a woman leaves the city to take on the challenge of owning a sunflower farm but finds that her biggest trial is facing her first love in this charming second-chance romance by USA Today bestselling author Danica Nava.

Toni Jensen grew up around guns.  And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten. In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America.

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout bestseller There There — Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Red Feather’s shooting in There There. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage.

From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you’ve ever read.