Books Written by First Nation & Native American Authors
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2023
The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all...
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2026
A young indigenous woman and her dragon fight for the independence of their homeland in this epic sequel to the bestselling and multi-award-winning To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. Anequs has...
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's
- Publication Year: 2026
Renowned author Nikki Grimes and debut picture book writer Stacy Wells (Choctaw) lend their resonant voices to award-winning artist E. B. Lewis’s (Lenni Lenape) rich watercolors in this story of...
- American Literature, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Fiction, Folklore Fiction, Horror Fiction, Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2023
In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of...
- Fiction, Short Stories
- Publication Year: 2026
It was as though I was chosen—marked out by the python’s kiss for wisdom or maybe sorrow. Or perhaps, I think now, a sense of the ridiculous in extremes of...
- Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery, Suspense Thriller, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
When a Native teenager vanishes from her small town—a place with dark ties to an elite historical society—archaeologist Syd Walker is called to investigate…from bestselling author Vanessa Lillie. In the...
- Fiction, Horror Fiction, Mystery, Suspense Thriller, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2024
A classic slasher story with a twist from Stephen Graham Jones, the master of modern horror and bestselling author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, The Only Good Indians, and the...
- Coming of Age, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror Fiction, Mystery, Paranormal Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2017
A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy, whose family lives on the fringe of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and...
- Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery
- Publication Year: 2012
This terrifying tale of humanity’s desperate stand against a robot uprising is the most entertaining sci-fi thriller in years. Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our...
- Dystopian, Fiction, Horror Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery
- Publication Year: 2017
A startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as...
- Teen Fantasy, Teen Mysteries & Detective, Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2024
Shane works with her mother and their ghost dogs, tracking down missing persons even when their families can’t afford to pay. Their own family was displaced from their traditional home...
- Teen Fantasy, Teen Mysteries & Detective, Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2020
A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin’s ghost and vows to unmask the murderer. Elatsoe―Ellie for short―lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge...
- Mystery, Science Fiction, Suspense Thriller, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
A Native American first contact story and gripping thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse. On the Great Plains of Oklahoma, in the heart of the Cherokee...
- Fiction, Short Stories, Teen Friendship Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers and edited by bestselling Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of interconnected stories serves up laughter, love, Native pride,...
- by Joseph Lee
- Demographic Studies, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, a sweeping, personal exploration of Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world. Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic...
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2025
From award-winning Driftpile Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, a dazzling exploration of love, anguish, queerness, and Indigenous resistance in the 21st century. Queer Indigenous poet Billy-Ray Belcourt offers up a powerful...
- Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran...
- Coming of Age, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2020
It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny....
- by Kim Sigafus
- 8-12 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book
- Publication Year: 2023
In the fall of 1850, Faye and her family begin a long, difficult journey with thousands of other Ojibwe people to receive money the U.S. government owes them. But why...
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book
- Publication Year: 2020
From author Carole Lindstrom and illustrator Michaela Goade comes a New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Medal winning picture book that honors Indigenous-led movements across the world. Powerfully written and...
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book
- Publication Year: 2025
Discover the history of the endangered Ojibwe horse and the daring intervention of the Lac La Croix First Nation in this celebration of community, tradition, courage, and hope. It’s a...
- History, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Julian Brave NoiseCat’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, NoiseCat and his non-Native...
- by Joy Harjo
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book, Preschool
- Publication Year: 2023
US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s iconic poem “Remember,” illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade, invites young readers to pause and reflect on the wonder of the world around them, and...
- by Joy Harjo
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book, Preschool
- Publication Year: 2025
From United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and Pura Belpré Award–winning illustrator Adriana Garcia: a luminous benediction for a girl’s journey through life, and a celebration of our connections to...
- by Danica Nava
- Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2024
A Chickasaw woman who can’t catch a break serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more in this rom-com by critically acclaimed author Danica Nava. Ember Lee...
- by Danica Nava
- Fiction, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2025
A Muscogee pop star and a cowboy who couldn’t be more different come together to strike a deal in this new romantic comedy by Danica Nava. Pop singer Avery Fox...
This engaging story about native lands invites kids to trace history and explore their communities. Before my family lived in this house, a different family did, and before them, another...
- Children's
- Publication Year: 2024
From master Hopi woodcarver Mavasta Honyouti, the story of his grandfather’s experience at a residential boarding school and how he returned home to pass their traditions down to future generations....
- 4-6 Years, 6-8 Years, Children's, Children's Picture Book, Preschool
- Publication Year: 2024
A Cherokee girl introduces her younger brother to their family’s traditions — begrudgingly! — in this picture book written by Walter Award-winner Andrea L. Rogers and featuring gorgeous collage illustrations...
- Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2024
In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on...
- by Morgan Talty
- Family Life, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2024
From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, comes a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one...
- History, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2023
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. The most enduring feature of U.S. history is...
- Fiction, Horror Fiction, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under...
- American Literature, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2006
Rodeo cowboy Joe Willie Wolfchild, riding an explosive bull called See Four and moments away from becoming World Champion, suffers a devastating accident. His parents and grandparents use all their...
- Memoir, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2008
One Native Life is a look back down the road Richard Wagamese has traveled — from childhood abuse to adult alcoholism — in reclaiming his identity. It’s about what he...
- by Thomas King
- Graphic Novels, Middle School
- Publication Year: 2021
From celebrated Indigenous author Thomas King and award-winning Métis artist Natasha Donovan comes a powerful graphic novel about a family caught between nations. Borders is a masterfully told story of...
- Murder Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2019
The voice in her head says he’s guilty. She knows he’s innocent. Devon Burges is in the throes of a high-risk birth when she learns of her dear friend’s murder....
- Murder Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2020
Suspected of a murder she can’t remember, a troubled woman takes an unusual approach to proving her innocence in this gripping thriller from the bestselling author of Little Voices Vanessa...
- Demographic Studies, Literary Criticism & Theory, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2011
A collection of warm, wise and inspiring stories from the author of One Native Life. In One Story, One Song, Richard Wagamese explores the importance of stories: how they shape...
- Dystopian, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2018
A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful literary voice, Waubgeshig Rice. With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds...
- Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Publication Year: 2022
A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of...
- Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2023
A 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...
- by Velma Wallis
- Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2004
Velma Wallis’s award-winning, bestselling tale about two elderly Native American women who must fend for themselves during a harsh Alaskan winter Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for...
- Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2015
“A novel about the role of stories in our lives, those we tell ourselves about ourselves and those we agree to live by.” —Globe and Mail When Franklin Starlight is...
- Cultural Heritage Fiction, Dystopian, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2024
In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown...
- Demographic Studies, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2019
The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism. Through the unique...
- Demographic Studies, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2016
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans. In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about...
- by Tommy Orange
- American Literature, Cultural Heritage Fiction, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2024
Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three...
- Horror Fiction, Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2022
In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest chilling novel that “will...
- Horror Fiction, Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2023
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge...
- Horror Fiction, Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2024
The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror novels picks up four years after Don’t Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to...
- Horror Fiction, Native American Literature, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2021
From USA TODAY bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a “masterpiece” (Locus Magazine) of a novel about revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition. Labeled “one of...
- by Toni Jensen
- Memoir, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2020
A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence. Toni Jensen grew up...
- by Toni Jensen
- American Literature, Cultural Heritage Fiction, Native American Literature, Short Stories
- Publication Year: 2010
For the characters we meet in Toni Jensen’s stories, the past is very much the present. Theirs are American Indian lives off the reservation, lives lived beyond the usual boundaries...
- by Tommy Orange
- American Literature, Cultural Heritage Fiction, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2018
A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not...
- by Natalie Diaz
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2020
Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s...
- Cultural Heritage Fiction, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2020
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota...
- Biographies, Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction, Preschool
- Publication Year: 2018
A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest―this New York Times bestseller and Emma Watson Book Club pick...
- Family Life, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2018
Stella, a young Métis mother, lives with her family by the Break, an isolated strip of land on the edge of their small Canadian town. Glancing out of her window...
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2018
Governor General’s Award–winning Métis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette’s second collection, river woman, explores her relationship to nature — its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place...
- Fiction
- Publication Year: 2021
From the bestselling author of The Break comes a staggering intergenerational saga that explores how connected we are, even when we’re no longer together—even when we’re forced apart. Cedar has...
- Coming of Age, Fiction, Native American Literature
- Publication Year: 2018
Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the...
- by Thomas King
- Essays, History, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2013
In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian–White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across...
- 8-12 Years
- Publication Year: 2023
Welcome to Neverland–where an unforgettable adventure is about to begin . . . Tiger Lily and her community, the Indigenous people of Neverland, possess a unique ability: they can choose...
- Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2021
With four starred reviews, Angeline Boulley’s debut novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, is a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, perfect for...
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2021
Tanaya Winder’s Words Like Love sings the joys, glories, and laments of love. As an accomplished poet, Winder traverses the darkness in a quest to learn more about the most...
- Cultural Heritage Fiction, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2021
In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage,...
- Children's, Children's Picture Book
- Publication Year: 2022
Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade’s first self-authored picture book is a gorgeous celebration of the land she knows well and the powerful wisdom of elders. On an island at the edge...
- Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2007
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves...
- by Patty Krawec
- Publication Year: 2022
We find our way forward by going back. The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds...
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2019
Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony-only, this isn’t fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling...
- by Joy Harjo
- Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2012
A spiritual coming-of-age memoir from a poet praised for her “breathtaking complex witness and world-remaking language” (Adrienne Rich). In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and...
- Cultural Heritage Fiction
- Publication Year: 2022
Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself. North America...
- Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2018
Winner of an American Indian Youth Literature Award New York Times best-selling author Cynthia Leitich Smith turns to realistic fiction with the thoughtful story of a Native teen navigating the...
- Children's, Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2021
A Snake Falls to Earth is a breathtaking work of Indigenous futurism. Darcie Little Badger draws on traditional Lipan Apache storytelling structure to weave another unforgettable tale of monsters, magic,...
- Short Stories
- Publication Year: 2019
Latinas of Indigenous descent living in the American West take center stage in this haunting debut story collection—a powerful meditation on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of...
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2017
Covering Indigenous adventures from Wahpole Island to Northern Saskatchewan to the coast of Vancouver, #IndianLovePoems is a poetry collection that delves into the humour and truths of love and lust...
- by Joy Harjo
- Culture and Heritage, Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2021
Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her poet-warrior road. A musical, kaleidoscopic,...
- Culture and Heritage, Ethnic Studies, History, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2021
An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people, from NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota to Wilma Mankiller,...
- 6-8 Years, 8-12 Years, Children's
- Publication Year: 1999
An essential nine-book series chronicling one hundred years in the life of one Ojibwe family and includes charming interior black-and-white artwork done by the author. She was named Omakakiins, or...
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance
Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands...