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Johnnie Bernhard

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Johnnie Bernhard

Johnnie Bernhard is a traditionally published author of five novels. Her work has received the following literary distinctions: “Best of the University Presses, 100 Books” by the Association of University Presses, Publisher’s Weekly “Books to Read,” novel of the year by Press Women of Texas, and First Place, Fiction by the National Federation of Press Women. Bernhard served as a 2020 TEDx speaker for the Fearless Women Series.

 

Schedule

2:15 pm to 3:00 pm
State Library, Second Floor, Meeting Room
Where the Wild Things Reign: Novels of Suspense, Survival, and Frontier Folklore
Johnnie Bernhard, The Witch of Sonora
Taylor Brown, Wolvers
with moderator Phil Oakley

3:15 pm to 4:00 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

 

The Witch of Sonora

Evil rides the borderlands―and it knows your name.

Haunted by a witch only he can see, Nocona Ketemoczy, a battle-scarred Marine turned border agent, investigates the disappearance of girls in West Texas. The Witch of Sonora by Johnnie Bernhard is a thriller/suspense novel set against flash floods, hidden ranch land, and violence  in the Texas borderlands

As the bodies begin to show signs of ritual killings linked to the Afro-Cuban syncretic religion of Palo Mayombe, Ketemoczy teams up with Hannah Durand, an elderly ranch widow who shelters trafficked girls at Casa de Katia near Rocksprings. A half-starved migrant named Ava arrives with a black cauldron and bones inked down her arm, and the threat grows more dangerous as violence closes in from both human and supernatural forces.

The Witch of Sonora blends crime, supernatural suspense, and spiritual warfare as it wrestles with trauma, rescue, love, and the cost of confronting evil when the victims cannot protect themselves.