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Nevada Barr

Author of Track of the Cat

45+ Works 22,315 Members 745 Reviews 66 Favorited

About the Author

Nevada Barr was born on March 1, 1952. She is the author of a series of mysteries involving national parks. She draws on her own experience as a National Park Service ranger to thrill readers with the majesty of nature. Anna Pigeon, the heroine of such novels as A Superior Death and Endangered show more Species, is a rough-and-tough ranger who left the wilds of New York for the great outdoors, and is modeled after Barr. Barr began writing in 1978, garnering national attention with the publication in 1993 of Track of the Cat, which won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for Best First Mystery Novel. Her novels are known for breathtaking descriptions of nature, diverse settings, and a no-nonsense heroine. She also provides frequently unflattering portrayals of the National Park Service. Her works include 13 1/2, Winterstudy, Borderline, Burn, The Rope and Destroyer Angel. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Signing books at the 2006 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Madison, Wisconsin / Photo by Oldbeeg

Series

Works by Nevada Barr

Track of the Cat (1993) 1,803 copies
A Superior Death (1994) 1,379 copies
Ill Wind (1995) 1,264 copies
Blind Descent (1998) 1,261 copies
Hard Truth (2005) 1,227 copies
Deep South (2000) 1,216 copies
Blood Lure (2001) 1,212 copies
Firestorm (2008) 1,211 copies
High Country (2004) 1,209 copies
Winter Study (2004) 1,178 copies
Hunting Season (2004) 1,172 copies
Flashback (2003) 1,172 copies
Endangered Species (1997) 1,149 copies
Liberty Falling (1999) 1,108 copies
Borderline (2009) 943 copies

Associated Works

Naked Came the Phoenix: A Serial Novel (2001) — Contributor — 305 copies
Women on the Case (1996) — Contributor — 209 copies
Deadly Housewives (2006) — Contributor — 84 copies
The Big Book of Female Detectives (2018) — Contributor — 79 copies
The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut (2015) — Foreword, some editions — 49 copies
New Orleans Noir 2: The Classics (2016) — Contributor — 37 copies
AZ Murder Goes Artful (2000) — Contributor — 10 copies

Tagged

adult (58) Anna Pigeon (1,093) Anna Pigeon series (121) audio (181) audiobook (102) Barr (56) California (62) Colorado (85) crime (223) crime fiction (107) ebook (189) fiction (1,693) hardcover (62) Kindle (68) Mississippi (76) murder (180) mysteries (114) mystery (4,306) mystery series (55) national park (150) National Park Service (65) National Parks (690) nature (73) Nevada Barr (113) New Orleans (85) novel (79) paperback (75) park ranger (401) Rangers (63) read (367) series (373) short stories (58) signed (59) suspense (162) Texas (104) thriller (152) to-read (560) USA (92) wolves (59) women (84)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Barr, Nevada
Birthdate
1952-03-01
Gender
female
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Yerington, Nevada, USA
Places of residence
San Francisco, California, USA
Yerington, Nevada, USA (birth)
New York, New York, USA
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Johnstonville, California, USA
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Education
University of California, Irvine (MA)
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (BA)
Occupations
park ranger
actor
mystery writer
Awards and honors
Agatha Award (1993)
Anthony Award (1994)
Barry Award (2001)
Robin W. Winks Award (2011)
Agent
Dominick Abel (Dominick Abel Agency)
Short biography
Nevada Barr is a mystery fiction author, known for her "Anna Pigeon" series of mysteries, set in National Parks in the United States. She grew up in Johnsonville, California. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.

Members

Reviews

13 1/2 by Nevada Barr.,

In 1971, 11-year-old Dylan is convicted of murdering everyone in his family with a hatchet except his older brother Rich, whom he injured significantly. He is name "Butcher Boy".
Polly runs away from an impossibly abusive home at 15 and heads to New Orleans. As an adult she meets Marshall Marchand and falls in love with him.as does her two daughters. But she soon realizes that Danny, his brother, seems to be over controlling.
Things are not always as they appear.… (more)
 
Flagged
Rini55 | 68 other reviews | Mar 19, 2024 |
Temporarily working as a presuppression firefighter on Cumberland Island, GA, for three weeks, Anna was ready to soak up the sun, breathe the fresh ocean air, and witness the hatching of the endangered baby loggerhead turtles while raking in some much-needed overtime pay. But, after a fatal plane crash on the island, she finds herself investigating a possible murder as an NPS law enforcement officer. Surrounding her is another cast of quirky, semi-strange co-workers who seem to flock to the National Park Ranger positions. The plot in this fifth book in the series—laced with magnificent descriptions of the local wildlife and landscape—is captivating and suspenseful as Anna gets beat up, attacked by ticks and chiggers, then nearly killed while trying to bring down a killer. Good to the last page.… (more)
 
Flagged
PaulaGalvan | 27 other reviews | Mar 16, 2024 |
Still recovering from the nightmare at Isle Royale National Park, Anna is on leave and seeing a psychiatrist. She and her husband go on a float trip down the Rio Grande at Big Bend National Park with a guide and some college students. They find a pregnant woman caught in some vegetation, and while they are unable to save the woman, Anna performs an emergency C-section with her husband's pocket knife. They encounter a starving cow, and one of the college students insists they must rescue the cow. The guide is shot, and the person doing the shooting seems to be targeting their party when a second member is shot. With the river rising and the loss of their raft, they must try to climb (with a baby in arms), but it puts them in danger. They don't know who they can and cannot trust. The book was written sometime after 9/11 made it more difficult for Mexicans to enter the United States. Barbara Rosenblat does a good job narrating the story.… (more)
½
 
Flagged
thornton37814 | 38 other reviews | Mar 14, 2024 |
Not one of her best, but since I was at Mesa Verde last month, I could envision the places she was describing.KIRKUS REVIEWAs historians and contractors slug it out over replacing the ancient waterlines in Mesa Verde National Park, noncombatant park ranger Anna Pigeon battles a demon of her own: her growing attraction to Stacy Meyers, a law-enforcement temp unhappily married (what did he and Rose Meyers ever see in each other, anyway?) and burdened with a special-needs stepchild. Soon enough, though, there are more immediate problems: contractor Ted Greeley's hiring of Tom Silva, estranged husband of park superintendent's secretary Patsy Silva, who immediately feels she's being harassed by her obsessive ex; a midnight sabotage attempt on Greeley's excavation equipment; a nip-and-tuck airlift of an asthmatic girl who collapses in the Cliff Palace; Stacy's strangely dissociated behavior during the rescue; and finally the eerie discovery of Stacy's corpse, neatly laid out on the fire-pit floor of the Cliff Palace without a mark to indicate how he died. Whodunit, and why, and how? Not as intense or as ingenious as A Superior Death (1994), and this time Anna's struggles with alcoholism and the continuing grief of widowhood eclipse the more routine intrigues of the plot. But the supporting characters have stubborn lives of their own -- you never get the sense that they've spent their whole lives waiting to be suspects in a murder case -- and Barr's sense of place is as wondrous as ever.… (more)
 
Flagged
bentstoker | 35 other reviews | Jan 26, 2024 |

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Statistics

Works
45
Also by
11
Members
22,315
Popularity
#952
Rating
½ 3.6
Reviews
745
ISBNs
528
Languages
7
Favorited
66

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