Paging Joe Pickett: The Guide To C.J. Box’s Books

Bestselling American author C.J. Box is known for his gripping mystery and thriller novels with a Western flare, particularly the Joe Pickett series. Born and raised in Wyoming, Box brings an authentic Western voice to his storytelling, weaving together elements of crime, outdoor adventure, and political intrigue. The Joe Pickett series follows the life of a dedicated Wyoming game warden who finds himself entangled in dangerous investigations that test his morals, courage, and survival skills. First introduced in Open Season (2001), Pickett is a family man with an unshakable sense of justice, often clashing with corrupt officials, poachers, and powerful adversaries. With vivid landscapes, compelling characters, and fast-paced plots, the series has captivated readers and earned numerous awards, cementing Box as a master of modern Western crime fiction.

The Latest News From The World of C.J. Box

C.J. Box On Writing, Wyoming, And His Next Joe Pickett Novel

The C&I Q&A: Michael Dorman and Julianna Guill of Joe Pickett

Joe Pickett’s Next Chapter

Every Book, Every Crime

With 25 books and counting, Joe Pickett has proven his salt a time or two as a seasoned game warden in the Mountain West. But as most fans could tell you, he is just getting started. Here is every book in C.J. Box's Joe Pickett novel series. Follow the links to order your own copy.

BATTLE MOUNTAIN (2025)

The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow, to prepare for vengeance.

When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany.

As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly-cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge…at Battle Mountain.

THREE-INCH TEETH (2024)

A rogue grizzly bear has gone on a rampage—killing, among others, the potential fiancée of Joe’s daughter. At the same time, Dallas Cates, who Joe helped lock up years ago, is released from prison with a list of six names tattooed on his skin. He wants revenge on the people who sent him away: the people he blames for the deaths of his entire family and the loss of his reputation and property.

Using the grizzly attacks as cover, Cates sets out to methodically check off his list. The problem is, both Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett are on it.

STORM WATCH (2023)

When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. First, he finds the professor’s vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then Joe finds the professor’s frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents, extremists, and Governor Colter Allen.

Nate Romanowski is rebuilding his falconry company—and financing this through crypto mining with the assistance of Geronimo Jones. He’s then approached by a shadowy group of local militant activists that is gaining in power and influence, and demanding that Wyoming join other western states and secede from the union—by force, if necessary. They ask Nate to throw in with them, but he’s wary. Should he trust them, or is he being set up?

As a storm of peril gathers around them, Joe and Nate confront it in different ways—and maybe, for the first time, on opposite sides.

SHADOWS REEL (2022)

A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered.  At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why?

She learns that during World War II, several Wyoming soldiers were in the group that fought to Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat in the Alps—and one of them took the Fuhrer’s personal photo album. Did another take this one and keep it all these years?  When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls?

Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for the man who stole his falcons and attacked his wife. Using a network of fellow falconers, Nate tracks the man from one city to another. Even as he grasps the true threat his quarry presents, Nate swoops in for the kill—and a stunning final showdown.

DARK SKY (2021)

When the governor of Wyoming gives Joe Pickett the thankless task of taking a tech baron on an elk hunting trip, Joe reluctantly treks into the wilderness with his high-profile charge. But as they venture into the woods, a man-hunter is hot on their heels, driven by a desire for revenge. Finding himself without a weapon, a horse, or a way to communicate, Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his companion.

Meanwhile, Joe's closest friend, Nate Romanowski, and his own daughter Sheridan learn of the threat to Joe's life and follow him into the woods. In a stunning final showdown, the three of them come up against the worst that nature--and man--have to offer.

LONG RANGE (2020)

When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One survivor of the grizzly's rampage tells a bizarre story, but just as Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems, he is brought home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife is severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers--and the shooter.

The search for the would-be assassin becomes personal when Joe's best friend, Nate Romanowski --just as he's adjusting to the arrival of his first child--falls under suspicion for the crime. It's a race against the clock as Joe tries to clear Nate's name and identify the real shooter, all while deciphering the grizzly encounter. Beset by threats both man-made and natural, the two men must go to great lengths to keep their loved ones safe.

WOLF PACK (2019)

The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back, after his last adventure in The Disappeared. The bad news is that he's come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife--and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose son is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy.

When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack has arrived. Their target seems to be the mystery man and everyone--including Joe, Nate, and others--who is associated with him.

Teaming up with a female game warden to confront these assassins, Joe finds himself in the most violent and dangerous predicament he's ever faced.

THE DISAPPEARED (2018)

Wyoming’s new governor isn’t sure what to make of Joe Pickett, but he has a job for him that is extremely delicate. A prominent British businesswoman never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British Embassy is pressing hard.

Pickett knows that happens sometimes – these ranches are stocked with handsome young cowboys, and “ranch romances” aren’t uncommon. But no sign of her months after she vanished? That suggests something else.

At the same time, his friend Nate Romanowski has asked Joe to intervene with the feds on behalf of an issue passionately felt by falconers, but inexplicably being blocked. It seems like a matter of lesser importance to Joe right now, but the more he digs into both cases, the more someone is trying to stop him. Is it because of the missing woman or the falconers? Or are they somehow connected?

The answers, when they come, will be even worse than Joe could even have imagined.

VICIOUS CIRCLE (2017)

The plane circled in the dark. Joe Pickett could just make out down below a figure in the snow and timber, and then three other figures closing in. There was nothing he could do about it. And Joe knew that he might be their next target.

The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he’d always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning. He’s not wondering any longer. Joe knows they’re coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare . . . and wait for them to make the first move.

OFF THE GRID (2016)

The Red Desert of Wyoming is a bleak, beautiful, punishing place for anybody, but never more dangerous than it is now for Joe Pickett, Nate Romanowski, and the one who should never have been there: Joe’s daughter Sheridan.

But now the stakes are higher than ever.

Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly confronted by a small team of elite professional special operators. They’re not here to threaten him, but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in the Red Desert, and in return, they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear.

But they are not what they seem, as Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just may be something that takes them all down, including Nate and Joe. And if there is other collateral damage? That’s just the fortunes of war.

ENDANGERED (2015)

She was gone. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more—Joe’s eighteen-year-old daughter, April, has run off with him.

And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway—alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it—says she ran away from him, too—and there’s evidence that points to another man. But Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible. What he doesn’t know is the kind of danger he’s about to encounter. Cates is bad enough, but Cates’s family is like none Joe has ever met before.

Joe’s going to find out the truth, even if it kills him. But this time, it just might.

STONE COLD (2014)

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people.

Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The other is new—but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesn’t frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.

BREAKING POINT (2013)

Joe Pickett always liked Butch Roberson—a hardworking local business-owner whose daughter is friends with his own. Little does he know that when Butch says he is heading into the mountains to scout elk, he is actually going on the run.

Two EPA employees have been murdered, and all signs point to Butch as the killer. Soon, Joe hears of the land Butch and his wife had bought to retire on—until they are told the EPA declared it a wetland—and the penalties they charged Butch until the family was torn apart by debt. Finally, it seems, the man just cracked.

FORCE OF NATURE (2012)

In 1995, Nate was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it—by striking at Nate's friends to draw him out. The entire Pickett family will be a target, and the only way to fight back is outside the law. Nate knows he can do it, but he isn't sure about his straight-arrow friend-and all their lives could depend on it.

COLD WIND (2011)

When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in-law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do—especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck. Whichever way this goes...it's not going to be good.

NOWHERE TO RUN (2010)

It's Joe Pickett's last week as a temporary game warden in the mountain town of Baggs, Wyoming, but his conscience won't let him leave without checking out the strange reports coming from the wilderness: camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. What awaits him is like something out of an old campfire tale, except this story is all too real-and all too deadly.

BELOW ZERO (2009)

Six years ago, Joe Pickett's foster daughter, April, was murdered. Now, someone is leaving phone messages claiming to be the dead girl. As his family struggles with the disturbing event, he discovers that the calls have been placed from locations where serious environmental crimes have occurred. And as the phone calls grow closer, so does the danger.

BLOOD TRAIL (2008)

Game wardens have found a man dead at a mountain camp-strung up, gutted, and flayed as if he were the elk he'd been hunting. Is the murder the work of a deranged anti-hunting activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta? Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is the man to track the murderer and stop him before someone declares open season on humans.

FREE FIRE (2007)

Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history. Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a back-country corner of Yellowstone National Park—a “free-fire” zone with no residents or jurisdiction. In this remote fifty-square-mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder. Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about to discover his motive—one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden.

IN PLAIN SIGHT (2006)

Ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett has vanished under suspicious circumstances during a bitter struggle between her sons for control of her million-dollar empire. Joe Pickett is convinced one of them must have done her in, and when he becomes the victim of a series of wicked and increasing violent pranks, Joe wonders if what's happening has less to do with Opal's disappearance than with the darkest chapters of his own past. Whoever is after him has a vicious debt to collect, and wants Joe to pay...and pay dearly.

OUT OF RANGE (2005)

Game warden Joe Pickett returns in a twisting, action-packed tale of greed, power, and murder.

Joe Pickett is attempting to enjoy-all right, survive-his mother-in-law's wedding to a local big-shot rancher when he receives some disturbing news: Will Jensen, a fellow Wyoming game warden and a good friend, has killed himself. And Joe's been picked to temporarily run Jensen's Teton district.

Jackson, Wyoming, is a far cry from Joe's hometown of Saddlestring—it's the epicenter for many environmental extremists and an elite playground for the rich and powerful—and Joe quickly finds himself in over his head. Yet despite the pressures of his new job, he can't get his friend's suicide out of his mind. By all accounts, Will had changed in the last few months, becoming violent and unpredictable.

The closer Joe comes to the truth about Will's death, the more his own life spirals out of control-and he realizes that if he's not careful, he may end up as Jackson's next victim.

TROPHY HUNT (2004)

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.

Days later, after the discovery of a small herd of mutilated cattle, Joe realizes this something much more terrifying than he could have imagined. Local authorities are quick to label the attacks the work of a grizzly bear, but Joe knows otherwise. The cuts on the moose and the cattle were too clean, too precise, to have been made by jagged teeth. Are the animals only practice for a killer about to move on to another, more challenging prey?

Soon afterward, Joe's worst fears are confirmed. The bodies of two men are found within hours of each other, in separate locations, their wounds eerily similar to those found on the moose and cattle. There's a vicious killer, a modern-day Jack the Ripper, on the loose in Saddlestring—and it appears his rampage is just beginning.

WINTERKILL (2003)

It's hours away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging 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. Lamar's murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. Somewhere in the dense timber, a killer draws back his bowstring—with Joe as his prey. Joe's pursuit of the killer through the rugged mountain that surrounds the snow-packed town of Saddle-string takes a horrifying turn when his beloved foster daughter is kidnapped. Now it's personal, and Joe will stop at nothing to get her back. Steeped in the sharp cliffs and the brutal wilderness of the Wyoming landscape, Winterkill is a masterful performance, darkly compelling and utterly unforgettable. With prose that 'tears forward like a brushfire' (People), C.J. Box places all the elements of a classic mystery in a setting where the dangerous beauty of one of America's last frontiers play accomplice to the darkest of human motives.

SAVAGE RUN (2002)

C.J. Box's debut novel, Open Season, with its memorable hero, thrilling plot, and vivid settings, was hailed by critics as "suspenseful" (New York Daily News), "fascinating" (USA Today), and "heartfelt" (The Washington Post Book World), "a high-countryPresumed Innocent that moves like greased lighting" (Kirkus Reviews). Now Box returns with a gripping and suspenseful new mystery, as dramatic and brutal as its Wyoming setting.

When a massive explosion occurs deep within the forests of Twelve Sleep County and a colorful environmental activist appears to have perished in the blast, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is called to the scene to help investigate. The case is wrapped up quickly, explained as an environmental publicity stunt gone wrong, but Joe isn't convinced. He soon discovers clues that suggest a deadly conspiracy–one that will test his courage, his survival skills, and his determination to “do the right thing” despite all costs.

Set against the rugged Wyoming landscape, Savage Run is a highly textured novel—and an exciting confirmation of the talents of a writer hailed by Tony Hillerman as "a great storyteller."

OPEN SEASON (2001)

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. Even after the "outfitter murders," as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.

As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.