When his best friend, and advocate for the homeless, Denman Scott asks him to help stop the demolition of the Lucky Strike—a once majestic hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside that is now home to nearly three hundred of the city's least fortunate residents—Cole Blackwater gets more than he bargained for.Working with Vancouver Sun reporter Nancy Webber and street nurse Juliet Rose, Cole and Denman discover that homeless people in the area have been disappearing without a trace. As they venture into the dark corners of the city's underworld, and into political corruption at City Hall, they find themselves in the middle of a dangerous cabal of city officials, high-ranking cops, condo developers, and crime bosses. Can Cole and his friends unravel the mystery behind the Lucky Strike—before any more of the Eastside's homeless find themselves on the vanishing track?Tackling the real big-city issues of housing shortages, political corruption, and murder, The Vanishing Track is the third Cole Blackwater Mystery and the most compelling yet.About the AuthorStephen Legault is an author, conservation activist, and photographer who lives in Canmore, Alberta. He is the author of four previous books, including the first two installments in the Cole Blackwater mystery series, The Cardinal Divide and The Darkening Archipelago, as well as The End of the Line, the first book in the Durrant Wallace mystery series. Please visit Stephen online at stephenlegault.com or follow him on Twitter at @stephenlegault.

Cole Blackwater's life isn't what it used to be. Once a political superstar within Ottawa's environmental movement, he now runs a nearly defunct conservation strategy consulting firm that distinctly lacks a paying client. His ex-wife loathes him for a scandalous affair that ended their marriage, he feels he's failing his eight-year-old daughter as a father, and he's turning far too often to the bottle to solve his problems. When Peggy McSorlie, head of the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group, seeks his help to stop a mining project planned for Alberta's magnificent Cardinal Divide, Blackwater jumps on the opportunity to earn enough money to pay the rent and buy a few pints at his favourite pub. But when Mike Barnes, head of the mining project, is brutally murdered and a radical member of Eastern Slopes is accused of killing him, Blackwater must first prove the man's innocence in order to save his own business, and the future of the Cardinal Divide.

Silas Pearson is looking for answers. It's been more than three years since his wife, Penelope de Silva, disappeared while working on a conservation project in Utah's red rock wilderness. Law enforcement authorities have given up hope of finding the adventurous Penelope alive. And some suggest that she may not have vanished into the desert at all, but simply left Silas for another man. Silas moves to Moab, where his wife was last seen, with one purpose: finding his wife, dead or alive. His search takes him into a spectacular wilderness of red rock canyons, soaring mesas, and vertical earth, where he must confront his failures as a husband and his guilt over not being there when Penelope needed him most.The Slickrock Paradox is the first book in the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries, a series of books that explores an iconic American landscape through an atypical anti-hero who is deeply flawed, reluctant, and yet familiar.

After evading death while trying to save Alberta's breathtaking Cardinal Divide from the threat of coal mining, Cole Blackwater learns that his good friend and former client Archie Ravenwing is presumed dead in the shadowy depths of British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago. Days before his disappearance, Ravenwing was on the brink of unravelling a corporate conspiracy surrounding an outbreak of sea lice that could decimate the wild salmon population along the BC coastline. While Cole and newspaper reporter Nancy Webber search for answers, Cole is haunted by the dark secret surrounding his own father's mysterious death. For Nancy, whose complicated feelings for Cole have resurfaced, getting to the bottom of his family history becomes both a professional and personal obsession.

Silas Pearson is plagued by nightmares. In them, his wife, Penelope, who has now been missing for four years, shows him where murder victims are buried across the Colorado Plateau. One such dream leads him to the Atlas Mill tailings site, outside Moab, Utah. There, Silas discovers the corpse of anti-uranium-mining activist Jane Vaughn, who went missing from Flagstaff, Arizona, buried in radioactive waste. Trying to connect the murder with the disappearance of his wife, who was friends with Vaughn, Silas travels across the Southwest to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He confronts a host of suspects who wanted Jane Vaughn dead and who believed Penelope, too, was interfering with progress on the plateau. All the while, Silas's nightmares, threaded with snatches of prose from the writings of Edward Abbey, seem to be leading him to some final confrontation—but with what?This is the second book in the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries, all of which are set in the American...

Tragedy strikes during an expedition through Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. At the base of a windswept ridge that forms the border between Canada and the United States, Cole Blackwater finds the body of his business partner and former rival Brian Marriott, a bullet hole in his head. Cole’s long history of violence and his antagonistic past with the deceased put him in the spotlight of the murder investigation.The fourth Cole Blackwater Mystery, The Glacier Gallows is a gritty, fast-paced mystery that will catapult the reader across North America, from Canada’s Parliament Hill to Alberta’s Porcupine Hills to Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Cole, his brother, Walter, and reporter Nancy Webber must race against time to learn who really wanted Brian Marriott dead and why, before Cole himself ends up in the gallows.ReviewPraise for The Vanishing Track:"The soul of The Vanishing Track is in the dialogue: it shapes the raw tension, exposes the layers of greed and cover-up . . . The portrayal is clear; the action sharp and brutal . . .[an] intensely dramatic series." —The Hamilton Spectator "Even though the source material lends itself to preaching and moralizing, Legault wisely sticks to telling a good story. The Vanishing Track made me want to track down the first two Cole Blackwater books and, even better, has me curious about what's next for him and his friends." —National Post Praise for The Slickrock Paradox:"Exciting, dense with literary references, and definitely worth a try . . . Legault's complex new series' start will appeal to conspiracy buffs, outdoors enthusiasts, and literary detectives." —Library JournalAbout the AuthorStephen Legault is a full-time conservation activist, writer, photographer and organizational development consultant. He is the author of Carry Tiger to Mountain: The Tao of Activism and Leadership, which he wrote based on his experience using the Tao Te Ching as a guide to his lifelong work to protect wilderness and wildlife, and Running Toward Stillness, a meditation on Buddhist spiritual practice, running and parenthood. Stephen is also the author of a number of historical and environmentally themed mysteries, including The End of the Line and The Third Riel Conspiracy, featuring Durrant Wallace, a sergeant with the North West Mounted Police in the late 1800s; The Slickrock Paradox, a Red Rock Canyon Mystery set in Utah's Canyonlands region; and The Vanishing Track, the most recent mystery featuring Cole Blackwater, an environmentalist who finds himself solving crimes. He is currently working on new books of photography, essays on spirituality and more mystery novels. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, with his wife, Jenn, and two children, Rio and Silas.

Product DescriptionIt’s the winter of 1884, and five hundred Canadian Pacific Rail workers have halted their push through the Rockies at Holt City, an isolated shantytown in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The men are tired and cold, and patience is as scarce as the rationed food. Then, Deek Penner, a CPR section boss, is brutally murdered at the end of the track. His body is found frozen on the banks of the Bow River.Durrant Wallace, a veteran of the celebrated March West by the North West Mounted Police a decade earlier, is returned to active duty to investigate the murder. Durrant lost his leg in a gun battle with whiskey traders three years previous, and he struggles with being a Mounted Police officer who cannot ride. When Durrant arrives, Holt City is ripe with possible suspects: illegal whiskey smugglers, spies for rival railways, explosives dealers and a mysterious Member of Parliament who insists on getting his meddling fingers into everybody else’s business. Durrant must use his cunning and determination to discover to identify the killer before he finds his next victim and derails the great Canadian national dream in the process. About the AuthorStephen Legault is an author, conservation activist and photographer who lives in Canmore, Alberta. Stephen is the author of three previous books, including the environmentally themed Cole Blackwater Mystery series, which includes the titles The Cardinal Divide and The Darkening Archipelago. Please visit Stephen online at stephenlegault.com or follow him on Twitter @stephenlegault.

It is the spring of 1885 and the Northwest Rebellion has broken out. Amid the chaos of the Battle of Batoche, a grisly act leaves Reuben Wake dead. A Metis man is arrested for the crime, but he claims innocence. When Durrant Wallace, sergeant in the North West Mounted Police, begins his own investigation into the man's possible motives, he learns there were many who wanted Wake dead. What Durrant uncovers is a series of covert conspiracies surrounding Metis leader and prophet Louis Riel. And, during the week-long intermission in Riel's trial, he sets a trap to find Wake's true killer.The Third Riel Conspiracy is the second book in the Durrant Wallace Mysteries, a series of historical murder mysteries set during pivotal events in western Canada's history.

What if everything you believed to be true about your wife's disappearance turned out to be a lie? In the third and final Red Rock Canyon Mystery, Silas Pearson finally unearths the truth.It's been five years since Silas Pearson's wife, Penelope, disappeared, and two since she started appearing in his dreams. He had believed that she was trying to beckon him to her, but when her skeletal remains are found at the bottom of a reservoir, Silas is stricken with grief and struggles to understand the purpose of his dreams. And when Silas learns that Penelope's death was not accidental, but a violent execution, he embarks on a renegade mission across the Colorado Plateau to hunt down the last person who saw his wife alive.The final instalment in the Red Rock Canyon mystery series offers up the missing pieces in the puzzle of Penelope's disappearance, and uncovers the horrible truth about who wanted her dead and why.