Walker Papers

Series · 21

books · 2005-2025

By Mercedes Lackey, C.E. Murphy, Tanith Lee

Books in series

Urban Shaman

2005

Joanne Walker has three days to learn to use her shamanic powers and save the world from the unleashed Wild Hunt. No worries. No pressure. Never mind the lack of sleep, the perplexing new talent for healing from fatal wounds, or the cryptic, talking coyote who appears in her dreams. And if all that's not bad enough, in the three years Joanne's been a cop, she's never seen a dead body—but she's just come across her second in three days. It's been a bitch of a week. And it isn't over yet.

#1.1

A Garrison Report

Magic Hath An Element

2011

A short story from the Walker series. The first chapters of URBAN SHAMAN, as seen through Gary’s eyes instead of Joanne’s Written as flavor text for part of a Kickstarter campaign, this is the first couple chapters of URBAN SHAMAN from Gary’s point of view. (The link goes to the first chapter from the point of view of the Walker Papers’ narrator/main character Joanne Walker :)). Enjoy!

#1.5

Banshee Cries

2005

The last thing reluctant shaman Joanne Walker wants is to be assigned to a case of ritual murders. It’d be creepy enough all on its own, but her boss, already trusting her magic more than Jo does herself, suspects there’s more to it than just a serial killer. As Joanne is pulled more deeply into the bloody mire, she begins to realize this is a murderer with a deadline—the changing winter moon seems to be key to the power they’re building. But Joanne's not the only one entangled in the increasingly dangerous magic raised by the killer: she has a protector, someone who has already given up their life to keep Joanne safe…and who may be the only person able to stand between Joanne and a dark power far greater than she’s ready to handle…. From anthology Winter Moon

#1.5

Winter Moon

2005

In an isolated land where the lure of the "Moontide" leads to shipwrecks, a woman is torn between obeying her father or her king. Struggling under the curse of a dead comrade, Clirando, a warrior priestess unready to face the powers trapped within her, must face "The Heart of the Moon" to reveal what has been hidden. In "Banshee Cries," ritual murders under a full moon lead Jo Walker to confront a Harbinger of Death

Thunderbird Falls

2006

It's the end of the world… Again. For all the bodies she's encountering, you'd think beat cop Joanne Walker works in Homicide. But no, Joanne's a reluctant shaman who last saved mankind three months ago—surely she deserves more of a break! Yet, incredibly, "Armageddon, Take Two" is mere days away. There's not a minute to waste. Yet when her spirit guide inexplicably disappears, Joanne needs help from other sources. Especially after she accidentally unleashes Lower World demons on Seattle. Damn. With the mother of all showdowns gathering force, it's the worst possible moment for Joanne to realize she should have learned more about controlling her powers. Or to discover she's being lied to…

Coyote Dreams

2007

Much of the city can't wake up. And more are dozing off each day. Instead of powerful forces storming Seattle, a more insidious invasion is happening. Most of Joanne Walker's fellow cops are down with the blue flu—or rather the blue sleep. Yet there's no physical cause anyone can point to—and it keeps spreading. It has to be magical, Joanne figures. But what's up with the crazy dreams that hit her every time she closes her eyes? Are they being sent by Coyote, her still-missing spirit guide? The messages just aren't clear. Somehow Joanne has to wake up her sleeping friends while protecting those still awake, figure out her inner-spirit dream life and, yeah, come to terms with these other dreams she's having about her boss....

#3.5

Rabbit Tricks

2025

Short story connected to Walker Papers.

Walking Dead

2009

For once, Joanne Walker's not out to save the world. She's come to terms with the host of shamanic powers she's been given, her job as a police detective has been relatively calm, and she's got a love life for the first time in memory. Not bad for a woman who started out the year mostly dead. But it's Halloween, and the undead have just crashed Joanne's party. Now, with her mentor Coyote still missing, she has to figure out how to break the spell that has let the ghosts, zombies and even the Wild Hunt come back. Unfortunately, there's no shamanic handbook explaining how to deal with the walking dead. And if they have anything to say about it—which they do—no one's getting out of there alive.

Demon Hunts

2010

Seattle police detective Joanne Walker started the year mostly dead, and she's ending it trying not to be consumed by evil. Literally. She's proven she can handle the gods and the walking dead. But a cannibalistic serial killer? That's more than even she bargained for. What's worse, the brutal demon can only be tracked one way. If Joanne is to stop its campaign of terror, she'll have to hunt it where it the Lower World, a shamanistic plane of magic and spirits. Trouble is, Joanne's skills are no match for the dangers she's about to face—and her on-the-job training could prove fatal to the people she's sworn to protect….

Spirit Dances

2011

For Seattle detective Joanne Walker, spring is about new beginnings. She's mastered her shamanic abilities (mostly), survived a cannibalistic serial killer (barely) and now she's facing the biggest challenge of her career—attending a dance concert with her sexy boss, Captain Michael Morrison. But when the performance—billed as transformative—actually changes her into a coyote, she and Morrison have bigger things to deal with.And there's more. Homeless people are disappearing, a mystical murder puts Joanne way out of her jurisdiction and with the full moon coming on, it's looking like the killer is a creature that can't possibly exist. But Jo could probably handle all of that, if one ordinary homicide hadn't pushed her to the very edge....

#6.1

Forgotten but by a Few

2025

The first "No Dominion" campaign short story. Part of the proof-of-fiction-committed for the The Rose & Bay Crowdfunding Award. So if you're not a Kickstarter patron, say thanks to the generosity of those patrons as you read this story! "Forgotten But By A Few" takes place the same weekend as SPIRIT DANCES, but contains no spoilers. Of course, you've already read SPIRIT DANCES anyway, so that shouldn't matter, right? :)

Raven Calls

2012

Something wicked this way comes… Suddenly, being bitten by a werewolf is the least of Joanne Walker’s problems. Her personal life in turmoil, her job as a cop over, she’s been called to Ireland by the magic within her. And though Joanne’s skills have grown by leaps and bounds, Ireland’s magic is old and very powerful… In fact, this is a case of unfinished business. Because the woman Joanne has come to Ireland to rescue is the woman who sacrificed everything for Joanne—the woman who died a year ago. Now, through a slip in time, she’s in thrall to a dark power and Joanne must battle darkness, time and the gods themselves to save her.

#7.5

No Dominion

2012

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt. But now he must leave Joanne’s side to face a battle only he can win. Because as their long battle against a dark magic-user races toward its climax, it becomes clear that it was not illness that took Annie’s life, but their enemy’s long and deadly touch. Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have NO DOMINION. A Walker Papers Collection.

#7.6

Easy Pickings

2012

Two heroines. Two magics. One world. There’s nowhere in America like the Big Easy. Just ask Jane Yellowrock, shapeshifting vampire killer, whose hunting grounds run the length and breadth of the Bayou. Just ask Joanne Walker, whose shamanic magic has drawn her to the heart of American Weird. But it’s not Joanne’s world, and it isn’t Jane’s either. In a New Orleans where Katrina never hit and supposedly-dead vampires stalk the streets, Jane and Jo have to find and defeat the magic that brought them there–or they just might find themselves… EASY PICKINGS fan fiction by the authors themselves!

Mountain Echoes

2013

You can never go home again. Joanne Walker has survived an encounter with the Master at great personal cost, but now her father is missing - stolen from the timeline. She must finally return to North Carolina to find him - and to meet Aidan, the son she left behind long ago. That would be enough for any shaman to face, but Joanne's beloved Appalachians are being torn apart by an evil reaching forward from the distant past. Anything that gets in its way becomes tainted - or worse. And Aidan has gotten in the way. Only by calling on every aspect of her shamanic powers can Joanne pull the past apart and weave a better future. It will take everything she has - and more. Unless she can turn back time...

Shaman Rises

2014

Joanne Walker has two choices: Defeat the enemy…or lose her soul trying For over a year, Joanne has been fighting the Master—the world's most abiding evil entity. She's sacrificed family, friendships, even watched potential futures fade away…and now the Master is bringing the final battle to Joanne's beloved Seattle. Lives will be lost as the repercussions of all Joanne's final transformation into her full Shamanic abilities come to her doorstep. Before the end, she'll mourn, rejoice—and surrender everything for the hope of the world's survival. She'll be a warrior and a healer. Because she is finally a Shaman Rising. "The twists and turns will have readers shaking their heads while devouring the next page." —USA TODAY on Raven Calls

#9.1

Band-Aids and Bog-Men

2013

From No Dominion anthology “Band-Aids and Bog-Men” takes place about a month after SHAMAN RISES, the 9th and final book of the Walker Papers, but contains no spoilers for that book.

#9.2

Ghost Rider

2020

It’s one thing for freshly-minted shaman Joanne Walker’s past to come back to haunt her…but when it comes back with a vendetta aimed at her beloved 1969 Mustang, Petite, all bets are off. But with the help of a couple of really tall, really cute FBI agents who definitely aren’t who they say they are, Joanne might solve this mystery before it hurts somebody else’s Baby….

#9.2

Slaying the Dragon

2016

Walker Papers short story set 5 years after Shaman Rising.

#21

Twenty Years Later

2012

The protagonist is Ashley, the little girl from #ThunderbirdFalls, 20 years “I had a grenade launcher. I wasn’t supposed to, of course. Nobody was, especially since the country-wide crackdown after the election riots when I was seventeen.” The story was written in 2012 and was a deliberate (given the Walker Papers timeline) reference to the 2016 elections, and I kept the line even though it made my editor say it seemed like the future of Jo’s world had gotten very dark. Yeah, well. Jo’s world got the magic back, and we got the Minority Vote President, so I’m not sure hers is as dark as ours.

#22

Urban Shaman - Thunderbird Falls - Coyote Dreams

2009

Authors

Mercedes Lackey

Author · 226 books

Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music. "I'm a storyteller; that's what I see as 'my job'. My stories come out of my characters; how those characters would react to the given situation. Maybe that's why I get letters from readers as young as thirteen and as old as sixty-odd. One of the reasons I write song lyrics is because I see songs as a kind of 'story pill' — they reduce a story to the barest essentials or encapsulate a particular crucial moment in time. I frequently will write a lyric when I am attempting to get to the heart of a crucial scene; I find that when I have done so, the scene has become absolutely clear in my mind, and I can write exactly what I wanted to say. Another reason is because of the kind of novels I am writing: that is, fantasy, set in an other-world semi-medieval atmosphere. Music is very important to medieval peoples; bards are the chief newsbringers. When I write the 'folk music' of these peoples, I am enriching my whole world, whether I actually use the song in the text or not. "I began writing out of boredom; I continue out of addiction. I can't 'not' write, and as a result I have no social life! I began writing fantasy because I love it, but I try to construct my fantasy worlds with all the care of a 'high-tech' science fiction writer. I apply the principle of TANSTAAFL ['There ain't no such thing as free lunch', credited to Robert Heinlein) to magic, for instance; in my worlds, magic is paid for, and the cost to the magician is frequently a high one. I try to keep my world as solid and real as possible; people deal with stubborn pumps, bugs in the porridge, and love-lives that refuse to become untangled, right along with invading armies and evil magicians. And I try to make all of my characters, even the 'evil magicians,' something more than flat stereotypes. Even evil magicians get up in the night and look for cookies, sometimes. "I suppose that in everything I write I try to expound the creed I gave my character Diana Tregarde in Burning Water: "There's no such thing as 'one, true way'; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good—they're the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race." Also writes as Misty Lackey Author's website

C.E. Murphy

Author · 50 books

C.E. Murphy is a writer of fantasy novels and short stories. She also writes "action-adventure romance" novels under the pseudonym Cate Dermody, which was her grandmother's maiden name.

Tanith Lee

Author · 138 books

Tanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7." Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress. Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971. Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing. Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror. Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s. Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.