Nevada Barr (born March 1,1952, Yerington, Nevada) is a mystery fiction author, known for her "Anna Pigeon" series of mysteries, set in National Parks in the United States.
She was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnsonville, California . She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger.
She published her first novel, Bittersweet, in 1984. Bittersweet is a bleak historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.
While she worked as a ranger in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, she created the Anna Pigeon character and started the Anna Pigeon series. The Anna Pigeon character is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues.
The Anna Pigeon mystery series includes: