Leon Unruh grew up in west-central Kansas, where he earned spending money by taking photos for newspapers, bucking bales and digging graves. He edited and wrote for a handful of newspapers in Kansas, including the Larned Tiller and Toiler, the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Wichita Eagle, as well as for the Austin American-Statesman, the Dallas Morning News and the Anchorage Daily News. He later was the editor of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Unruh is the author of the recent Saltwood and his first novel, Dog of the Afterworld, two thrillers set in Kansas. He is a co-author of Final Destinations: A Travel Guide for Remarkable Cemeteries in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. His short stories have been published in 105 Meadowlark Reader, in Ice Box and on plainchina.org. Unruh now lives in Tucson.
Dog of the Afterworld (book 1 of the Dog of the Afterworld series)
Nikolai Fyodorov, a young Russian assassin in Alaska, is humiliated by a mysterious gunman but is given one chance to redeem himself. He must kill a U.S. senator, and he must go to the hot, windy plains of rural Kansas to do it. He finds a state beset by industrial farming, extreme right-wing politics, and kidnappers who prey on teenage girls. Nikolai confronts the betrayal that led him into the assassin's trade and the price he must pay for his family's past -- and he must escape the temptation of love that draws him toward his own death.
Saltwood (book 2 of the Dog of the Afterworld series)
A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob. He is coerced to complete his former assignment — kill the Senate's last moderate conservative, Harriet Gayfeather of Kansas. He finds himself caught between the twin grindstones of oil money and religious power and becomes oddly aligned with both the senator's deputy and a woman who has made herself regionally famous by promising to kill an unidentified person in Kansas.
Final Destinations: A Travel Guide for Remarkable Cemeteries in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana is the product of a small band of reporters and editors at the Dallas Morning News who shared an interest in funeral traditions in Texas and the four surrounding states.
