CONTENTS
Author Bio
Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
Also by Craig Johnson
Title Page
About the Book
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY:
Walt Longmire Christmas Stories
Ministerial Aid
Slick-Tongued Devil
Toys for Tots
Unbalanced
EXTRA!
Chapter 1 from The Cold Dish
The First Novel in the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
PENGUIN BOOKS
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY
Walt Longmire Christmas Stories
CRAIG JOHNSON is the author of eight novels in the Walt Longmire mystery series, which has garnered popular and critical acclaim. The Cold Dish was a Dilys Award finalist and the French edition won Le Prix du Polar Nouvel Observateur/BibliObs. Death Without Company, the Wyoming State Historical Association’s Book of the Year, won France’s Le Prix 813. Another Man’s Moccasins was the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award winner and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers’ Association Book of the Year, and The Dark Horse, the fifth in the series, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Junkyard Dogs won the Watson Award for a mystery novel with the best sidekick, and Hell Is Empty was a New York Times best seller and was named Library Journal’s Best Mystery of the Year. All are available from Penguin. The eighth novel in the series, As the Crow Flies, was a New York Times best seller as well and an Indie Next List pick and will be available in paperback in May 2013. Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire novels have now been adapted for television in the hit series Longmire on A&E. His next novel, A Serpent’s Tooth, will be available from Viking in May 2013. Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.
Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
“Like the greatest crime novelists, Johnson is a student of human nature. Walt Longmire is strong but fallible, a man whose devil-may-care stoicism masks a heightened sensitivity to the horrors he’s witnessed. Unlike traditional genre novelists who obsess mainly over every hairpin plot turn, Johnson’s books are also preoccupied with the mystery of his characters’ psyches.” —Los Angeles Times
“Johnson knows the territory, both fictive and geographical, and tells us about it in prose that crackles.” —Robert B. Parker
“The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence.” —The New York Times
“[Walt Longmire] is an easy man to like. . . . Johnson evokes the rugged landscape with reverential prose, lending a heady atmosphere to his story.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Stepping into Walt’s world is like slipping on a favorite pair of slippers, and it’s where those slippers lead that provides a thrill. Johnson pens a series that should become a ‘must’ read, so curl up, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride.” —The Denver Post
“A winning piece of work . . . There’s a convincing feel to the whole package: a sense that you’re viewing this territory through the eyes of someone who knows it as adoring lover and skeptical onlooker at the same time.” —The Washington Post
“Johnson’s pacing is tight and his dialogue snaps.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Truly great. Reading Craig Johnson is a treat. . . . [He] tells great stories, casts wonderful characters and writes in a style that compels the reader forward.” —Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Also by CRAIG JOHNSON
The Cold Dish
Death Without Company
Kindness Goes Unpunished
Another Man’s Moccasins
The Dark Horse
Hell Is Empty
As the Crow Flies
FORTHCOMING FROM VIKING
A Serpent’s Tooth
CRAIG JOHNSON
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY
WALT LONGMIRE CHRISTMAS STORIES
A PENGUIN SPECIAL
PENGUIN BOOKS
ABOUT THE BOOK
It’s holiday season in Absaroka County and Sheriff Walt Longmire gets personal in this delightful collection of four short stories from New York Times–bestselling author Craig Johnson.
Readers glimpse a softer side of Sheriff Walt Longmire as he grapples with the death of his wife, Martha, and his sometimes turbulent but ever-loving relationship with his daughter, Cady. In these four stories—“Ministerial Aid,” “Slick-Tongued Devil,” “Toys for Tots,” and “Unbalanced” (three of which have been sent to Johnson’s fans over the years in the author’s “Post-it” e-mails)—Walt is alternately at his best and his worst. He helps a somewhat delusional elderly victim of domestic abuse while sporting a bathrobe and a mean hangover on New Year’s Day. He’s sidelined by grief when his wife’s obituary reappears in the paper and there’s an unexpected knock on his door two days before Christmas. He strives to help even those who don’t want it when he picks up a young female hitchhiker, and he’s forced into some last-minute Christmas shopping by the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time, during which he might just end up saving a young Navy chaplain’s Christmas.
Full of Longmire’s dry wit and good heart, Christmas in Absaroka County is a holiday must-have for every Longmire and Craig Johnson fan.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2012
Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2012
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-101-62371-8 (ePub)
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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