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
Urban Shaman
“A swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist,
magic, danger—Urban Shaman has them in spades.”
—Jim Butcher, bestselling author of The Dresden Files series
Thunderbird Falls
“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels
and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff
should enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.”
—Library Journal
Coyote Dreams
“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling,
interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes
will captivate new and old readers alike.”
—RT Book Reviews
Walking Dead
“Murphy’s fourth Walker Papers offering is another gripping,
well-written tale of what must be the world’s most reluctant—
and stubborn—shaman.”
—RT Book Reviews
Demon Hunts
“Murphy carefully crafts her scenes and I felt every gust of wind
through the crispy frosted trees…. I am heartily looking forward
to further volumes.”
—The Discriminating Fangirl
Spirit Dances
“An original and addictive urban fantasy!”
—Romancing the Dark Side
Raven Calls
“The twists and turns will have readers shaking their heads
while devouring the next page.”
—USA TODAY
Mountain Echoes
“Shaman Joanne Walker can’t seem to catch a break in the
penultimate chapter of Murphy’s outstanding and long-running series.… Her past and present collide in this emotionally charged novel
that illustrates Joanne’s unique evolution.”
—RT Book Reviews on Mountain Echoes
Also available from C.E. Murphy and Mira LUNA
The Walker Papers
URBAN SHAMAN
WINTER MOON
“Banshee Cries”
THUNDERBIRD FALLS
COYOTE DREAMS
WALKING DEAD
DEMON HUNTS
SPIRIT DANCES
RAVEN CALLS
MOUNTAIN ECHOES
The Negotiator
HEART OF STONE
HOUSE OF CARDS
HANDS OF FLAME
Shaman Rises
C.E. Murphy
…honestly, this one’s for me.
Back in Y2K when I wrote Urban Shaman, I thought the Walker Papers would be a seven-book series. They grew to nine with the sale of the first “trilogy”—people kept referring to Urban Shaman, Thunderbird Falls and Coyote Dreams that way—and very quickly I began to see the story structure as three trilogies, with Joanne going through certain steps of growing up in each of those trilogies.
I did not, frankly, ever expect it to span a total of eleven books, if you include Winter Moon’s “Banshee Cries” as a book (and I do!), or the independent collection of Walker Paper stories, No Dominion, as part of the series (and I certainly do!).
Eleven books is a lot, and while I know there are a fair number of dedicated readers who reread the whole series when a new book comes out, I thought I might offer up a quick, rather wildly inaccurate in detail but reasonably spot-on in spirit, recap for you. A jaunt—with all due apologies to a couple of boys—down the road so far:
Urban Shaman: Former police mechanic and now beat cop Joanne Walker is dragged into a world she doesn’t want to know exists when a coyote spirit gives her the choice between death or life as a shaman, after she’s skewered by Cernunnos, god of the Wild Hunt. She chooses life (look, nobody said it was a good choice, just a choice) and races to save a young woman named Suzanne Quinley from becoming a pawn in a game between Cernunnos and his son Herne.
Winter Moon—“Banshee Cries”: Joanne’s boss and love inter—no, no, no, he’s just the boss—pulls Jo on to a case of ritual murders, already trusting her magic more than she does. But Joanne’s not the only one on the case—her mother is back from the dead to protect Joanne from the banshee she hunts and from the banshee’s master, whose dark magic is more than Joanne is ready to handle.
Thunderbird Falls: Despite two mystical adventures, Joanne’s still got her head stuck firmly in the sand—if she ignores her shamanic powers, maybe they’ll go away. They don’t, of course, but there are ramifications to her ignorance: her beloved cab-driving friend Gary Muldoon is witched into having a heart attack; relative innocent Colin Johannsen and behind-the-scenes manipulator Faye Kirkland die trying to bring Joanne’s increasingly dangerous enemy, the Master, onto the earthly physical plane; and Seattle’s landscape is rearranged, creating a new waterfall on Lake Washington. It is not Joanne’s finest hour.
Coyote Dreams: No longer able to pretend her shamanic powers haven’t changed her life, Joanne finally steps up. But since her spirit guide, Coyote, hasn’t been responding since he saved her ass in Thunderbird, Jo’s totally on her own when a Navajo maker god begins putting Seattle’s police force to sleep. To her humiliation, her suspicions of Morrison’s new girlfriend, Barbara Bragg, are (not wrongly) attributed to jealousy. Even when Barbara and her twin brother, Mark, prove to be the god’s avatars, Joanne’s not so much vindicated as horrified, because god-induced visions make it clear that Coyote wasn’t a spirit guide at all, but another shaman, who died to save her. In the end, though, she’s accepted that shamanism is her future, and to reader outrage everywhere, she’s carefully turned down Morrison’s relationship proposal in favor of becoming a detective on