Book 1

White Sky, Black Ice

by Stan Jones

Published 1 May 1999
The first Nathan Active mystery

Born to a poor Inupiat girl in Chukchi, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, State Trooper Nathan Active was adopted and raised by a white family in Anchorage. Now, an unwelcome job reassignment has returned him to the stark, beautiful landscape of poverty-stricken Chukchi. Two suspicious suicides in the span of a week and rumors of trouble in the village and at the local copper mine lead Active to believe there is a killer at large. As a nalauqmiiyaaq, or someone regarded by the community as “halfwhite,” he must fight for every clue before the killer strikes again.

Book 2

Shaman Pass

by Stan Jones

Published 1 July 2003
“In a robust sequel to White Sky, Black Ice, this Alaska state trooper is still burdened by his urban upbringing and his aversion to ice and snow . . . Active maintains his awe of the vast Alaskan tundra, a forbidding region that Jones renders in all its bone-chilling beauty.” The New York Times Book Review

State Trooper Nathan Active was born in the Inupiat village of Chukchi, where he is now stationed, but he was adopted and raised in Anchorage. Now he must investigate the murder of a tribal leader who was stabbed to death with an antique harpoon that was recently returned to the community under the Indian Graves Act.

Book 3

Frozen Sun

by Stan Jones

Published 1 September 2008
The third entry to the Nathan Active series.

State Trooper Nathan Active has long been caught between identities. Born an Inupiat Eskimo but raised in Anchorage by adoptive white parents, he had little knowledge of his heritage before being assigned to the remote Alaskan town of Chukchi. He only realizes how deeply settled into the local rhythm he is when Grace Palmer, a local beauty queen, goes missing. Active mounts a search that will lead him halfway across Alaska—and give him plenty of time to discover he is in love with Grace. Closing in on the answers, however, he discovers evidence that points to an agonizing conundrum: she is either dead, or she is a cold-blooded killer.

Book 4

Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

Published 1 January 2009
The fourth Nathan Active mystery

Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active must figure out what connects a dead hunter on a remote Arctic lake with a year-old fatal plane crash in the Brooks Range and an arson at the Chukchi Recreation Center. That fire killed eight people, including the police chief and the town’s basketball star. Active’s investigation leads him to a lucrative polar-bear poaching operation and a brother and sister with an intense bond from a village famous for twins, polar bears, and schizophrenia.

Book 5

Tundra Kill

by Stan Jones

Published 1 February 2016
"Nathan Active, top cop in a stretch of Alaskan tundra larger than fifteen of the United States, must figure out what connects Alaska's gorgeous female governor to a dog musher run down and killed by a snowmobile. Nathan's career is on the line as he's plunged into the bizarre family dynamics and outsize political ambitions of the most dangerous woman he ever met." --

Book 6

The Big Empty

by Stan Jones and Patricia Watts

Published 11 December 2018
Police Chief Nathan Active investigates a plane crash out in Alaska’s Big Empty—and what he finds there casts suspicion of murder on several locals in his small town of Chukchi.

Evie Kavoonah, a young mother-to-be, and her fiancé, Dr. Todd Brenner, are on a flight over the Brooks Range when their bush plane runs out of gas and hits a ridge, instantly killing them both. Chukchi police chief Nathan Active doubts he’ll find anything amiss when his close friend, Cowboy Decker, asks him to look into the possibility of foul play. Evie was like a daughter to Cowboy, who trained her to fly, and he insists there’s no way his protégée made a fatal mistake that day. Nathan reluctantly plays along and discovers that Cowboy’s instincts are correct—the malfunction that led to the crash was carefully planned, and several people in the village have motives for targeting the pair.

Meanwhile, Nathan’s wife, Gracie, is pregnant, but so scarred by memories of domestic abuse that she isn’t sure she should have the baby. Nathan must support her and their adopted daughter, Nita, while managing an increasingly complex and dangerous murder case.