Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother's legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave's mind. He's lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end. While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory's boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area. Dave's search for his mother's killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother's son. PURPLE CANE ROAD has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surpises from start to finish. From the Hardcover edition.

The Holland boys are back in town.  Billy Bob and Hackberry Holland are two hard-nosed Texas lawmen who just happen to be cousins. This boxed set includes In the Moon of Red Ponies, a Billy Bob Holland classic, and Rain Gods, where Hackberry Holland makes his full-length debut, plus a sneak peek at its sequel, Feast Day of Fools. New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. In the Moon of Red Ponies Former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has hardly settled his family and his business in their new home in Montana when trouble finds him once again. His first client in Missoula is Johnny American Horse, a young Native American activist charged with the murder of two mysterious men who seem to have recently tried to kill Johnny themselves, or at least scare him off his political causes. As Billy Bob investigates, he discovers a web of intrigue surrounding the case and its players—Johnny's girlfriend Amber Finley; Darrel McComb, a Missoula police detective who’s obsessed with Amber; and Seth Masterson, an enigmatic federal agent—and a greater danger that threatens himself and his whole family. Rain Gods Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border hoping to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave, soon makes it clear he won't escape so easily. The key to the case seems to lie with Pete Flores, a damaged young Iraq veteran, and his girlfriend Vikki Gaddis, who have disappeared. For Hack and Deputy Sheriff Pam Tibbs to untangle the threads of this grisly case, they’ll have to find Pete and Vikki before the FBI, Border Patrol, and a host of cold-blooded killers—including the enigmatic Preacher Jack Collins—catch up to them… Feast Day of Fools (excerpt)** Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife, and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his much younger deputy, Hackberry Holland feeds off of the deeds of evil men to keep his own demons at bay. And when a local drunk named Danny Boy Lorca comes to town dead sober, telling gruesome tales of torture and murder and begging to be locked in the drunk tank, it becomes clear that the desert holds all the evil Hack can handle. It seems the ruthless serial killer Preacher Jack Collins is alive and well in the harsh Texas wilderness—alongside illegal aliens, federal agents, and a mysterious Chinese woman whose steely demeanor and aristocratic beauty remind Hack of his deceased wife, and who may or may not be drawing him into a deadly trap.

A mesmerising novel set in the Louisiana heartland from award-winning author James Lee Burke.

Vintage James Lee Burke: The first novel introducing the memorable Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, coming of age against the backdrop of the civil rights era in a sultry border town. In hot and sultry Texas, Hack, an attorney and Korean War POW, is being pushed by his wife, his brother, and his so-called friends in the oil business to run for political office. But Hack would prefer to drink, look after his beloved horses, and represent the occasional long-shot pro bono case at his law firm. When Hack attempts to overturn a conviction for an old army buddy, he finds himself embroiled in the seamy underbelly of the Texas patronage system—and in the earliest beginnings of the United Farm Workers movement, led by a beautiful woman who speaks to his heart in a way no one else has. As Hack begins to bring justice to the underserved, he finds both a new love and a new purpose. With his skillful blend of engaging plotlines, compelling characters, and graceful prose, James Lee Burke demonstrates the shimmering clarity of vision that has made him beloved by suspense fans all over the globe.

The Fontenot family has lived as sharecroppers on Bertrand land for as long as anyone in New Iberia, Louisiana, can remember. So why are they now being forced from their homes? And what does the murder of Della Landry--the girlfriend of New Orleans fixer Sonny Boy Marsallus--have to do with it? Marsallus's secrets seem tied to those of the Fontenots. But can Detective Dave Robicheaux make sense of it all before there is more bloodshed? In James Lee Burke's intense and powerful new bestseller, Robicheux digs deep into the bad blood and dirty secrets of Louisiana's past--while having to confront a rag-tag alliance of local mobsters and hired assassin.

Iry Paret's done his time -- two years for manslaughter in Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary. Now the war vet and blues singer is headed to Montana, where he hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. In prison, Iry tinkered with a song -- "The Lost Get-Back Boogie" -- that never came out quite right. Now, the Riordan family's problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. And Iry must get the tune right at last, or pay a fateful price.

“America’s best novelist” James Lee Burke returns with another New York Times bestselling entry in the Dave Robicheaux thriller series (The Denver Post). Set against the events of the Gulf Coast oil spill, rife with “the menaces of greed and violence and man-made horror” (The Christian Science Monitor), Creole Belle finds Dave Robicheaux languishing in a New Orleans recovery unit since surviving a bayou shoot-out. The detective’s body is healing; it’s his morphine-addled mind that conjures spectral visions of Tee Jolie Melton, a young woman who in reality has gone missing. An iPod with an old blues song left by his bedside turns Robicheaux into a man obsessed…And as oil companies assign blame after an epic disaster threatens the Gulf’s very existence, Robicheaux unearths connections between tragedies both global and personal—and faces down forces that can corrupt and destroy the best of men.