Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bearskin | 2018 | James A. McLaughlin | Buy |
| 2 | Panther Gap | 2023 | James A. McLaughlin | Buy |
James A. McLaughlin has published two novels so far, and both are literary thrillers set in wild American settings. Bearskin (2018) takes place on a nature preserve in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, where a caretaker with a hidden past discovers that poachers are killing bears for the black market gallbladder trade. The book builds slowly, layering details about the forest, the wildlife, and Moore’s daily routines before the violence closes in. It won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Panther Gap (2023) moves the setting west to a large mountain ranch in Colorado. The story centers on a family whose patriarch has died and left behind a complicated legacy involving a significant fortune and a set of dangerous secrets. McLaughlin brings the same attention to terrain and animal behavior that made Bearskin distinctive, but Panther Gap has a wider scope, with more characters and a plot that reaches into the worlds of finance and organized crime. Both novels are driven by the tension between people who want to live quietly in remote places and the forces that refuse to let them.