Virgil Wounded Horse is a man living tentatively between two worlds. On the one hand, he feels an obligation to his Lakota upbringing. On the other, the tragic deaths of his mother and sister have caused him to drift away from this heritage. But when his 14-year-old nephew, Nathan, nearly dies after a heroin overdose, Virgil’s loyalties are put to the test. A recovering alcoholic, Virgil vows to protect his family and his tribe as best he can by seeking out those bringing the drugs into his community and exacting his revenge.

The police are no help on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, so it falls to men like Virgil to mete out the tribe’s own brand of justice when necessary. When the trail leads off reservation, however, and into the purview of the FBI, Virgil’s hands are tied. The only way around it may be by allowing the Feds to use Nathan as a confidential informant in a pair of drug buys, or else Virgil may see his nephew imprisoned in an adult institution for distribution of narcotics.

Virgil’s quest for justice is further complicated when he is reunited with his former girlfriend, Marie, who still embraces much of their heritage. The daughter of Ben Short Bear, who is running for tribal president, she is torn by the opportunity to attend medical school off campus, which could mean leaving the reservation and Virgil behind.

On the surface, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut novel, Winter Counts, is somewhat typical for its genre: Bad guys disrupt the status quo when they muscle into the community, pushing bad drugs on an unsuspecting and highly susceptible teen population, until a vigilante or detective pushes back. The difference here is the setting on the Lakota reservation, the clash of policies between the U.S. government and Native American life, and the internal conflicts of the novel’s main characters.

Weiden, who is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, elevates an otherwise routine crime novel with Native American culture and traditions, political differences and organized crime. His well-rendered, emotionally charged characters do the rest.

The Girls Weekend opens with an invitation. International bestselling young adult writer Sadie MacTavish is gathering her college friends for a weekend getaway in the Pacific Northwest to celebrate their friendship and her cousin Amy’s pregnancy. The reunited Fearless Five prepare for a perfect weekend organized by their perfect friend, complete with wine, kayaking and plenty of rehashing of past adventures (as well as grievances).

But the weekend takes a sour turn when their host abruptly goes missing, leaving behind a massive bloodstain, a messy house and a missing statue. None of the friends remember the night before, but all know the truth: With tensions high, any of them could be responsible for Sadie’s apparent murder. The only problem is that none of them knows who.

Jody Gehrman’s latest thriller is a locked-room mystery in which no one even knows how the room got locked in the first place. The women—possibly including the killer—dont’t know who’s responsible for Sadie’s disappearance, to the point that they think they might have all been drugged. Paranoia and claustrophobia prevail as our narrator, English professor June Moody, tries to uncover what happened to her perfect and perfectly infuriating friend. Gehrman slowly and skillfully doles out one bit of recovered memory at a time as June gets closer to the truth, and as the innocence of each character is questioned in turn.

With intimate character studies and breathtaking suspense, The Girls Weekend deals with old relationships turned brittle with age, inviting the reader to an idyllic haven and then abruptly shattering the calm.

The FBI and the supernatural are familiar bedfellows in pop culture. For starters, there’s Fox and Mulder in “The X-Files.” Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child gave us Agent Pendergast. Now there’s the welcome addition of FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke and occult investigator John Silence in The Hollow Ones, the new novel from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

Odessa is thrust into a bizarre mystery after she and her partner, Walt Leppo, chase down a random spree killer to a New Jersey home. But after killing the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, Leppo suddenly tries to kill the man’s 9-year-old child, and Odessa is forced to fire on and kill Leppo. In a decidedly twisted turn, Odessa “sees” something she can’t explain leaving his body.

Remanded to desk duty while the Bureau investigates her shooting of Leppo, Odessa is, somewhat conveniently, tasked with cleaning out the desk of retired agent Earl Solomon, who is dying. Solomon urges Odessa to contact John Silence, a man he’s worked with before, to assist her in the case.

Silence—who is based on one of Lovecraft disciple Algernon Blackwood’s characters by the same name—is an enigmatic and mysterious man who seemingly knows everything about Odessa and the threat she is pursuing, which he refers to as a Hollow One, a body-hopping entity addicted to the thrill of experiencing death.

The authors ferry us back and forth in time. Silence is hundreds of years old, thanks to an ancient curse, and is responsible for setting the Hollow One loose in the world. It’s a bit complicated, but suffice it to say there’s a good bit of world building behind the strange goings-on, which all leads up to a modern-day, high-stakes pursuit by Odessa and Silence to capture the entity before it can do more harm.

Hogan and del Toro previously collaborated on the Strain trilogy, a popular series turned short-lived TV show, and The Hollow Ones has TV series written all over it. At the very least, it promises to be the first in a new series of literary adventures, and that’s a good thing, as Silence is a fascinating character you’ll want to see again.