Each volume can be read on its own, but understanding character development and backstories provides a richer experience. I recommend following the official sequence from Erica's tentative initial visit to Auntie Em until her intrepid sleuthing that sets the Chief of Police Scott Bell's teeth on edge.

It's In Her Blood

Murder In The Wrong House

Finding Mandy

A witty, cozy Lake Country Mystery with a sharp tongue, dark corners, and a sleuth who notices everything except her own emotional evasions.

Erica Grace has spent eleven years avoiding Trinity Point, Grace Manor, her family’s mystery-obsessed legacy, and every amateur sleuth who ever mistook murder for a hobby. She was a star athlete turned successful Manhattan book critic, thank you very much, and she does not read mysteries. On principle.

Then her mother’s illness pulls her back to the old graystone memory on the lake, where her brilliant Auntie Em still treats detective work as a family inheritance and every room looks as if it is waiting for a body.

Erica intends to stay only long enough to be dutiful. Instead, a corporate payroll theft is turning into something colder, sharper, and deadlier. Auntie Em is delighted to have a case, and Erica will have to follow the clues through small-town gossip, dysfunctional suspects, polished lies, and one very inconvenient truth.

She may have been born for this.

Trinity Point’s leading business person (and husband to a Hollywood hottie)‌ is going down for murder! Why would he kill a notorious computer hacker and stuff him in the home freezer? The police say it was blackmail gone wrong. Erica thinks that is way to convenient.

On the passing of her estranged mother, Erica thought she was coming back to Trinity Point to wrap up some family business and pay a visit to the one member of the family she stayed in touch with, ‌Auntie Em.

After being recruited by the accused murderer’s celebrity spouse, actress Martha Moore, Erica reluctantly agrees to help her mystery-loving Auntie Em start her own investigation into the murder.

The story has gone viral. The media swoons, the local police are in a panic, and Trinity Point is in an uproar.

The stakes are high, danger is afoot, and Erica Grace and Auntie Em have to be at their creative best to piece together what really happened.

And we all want to know: will boat captain Logan Wood steal Erica's closely guarded heart?

Erica Grace agreed to accompany Logan Wood to a prestigious annual dinner cruise aboard The Maverick, the yacht Logan captains and occasionally rents out.

The event was hosted by the formidable socialite Adelaide Wellington, whom Auntie Em calls a fraud and a psychopath. Again, demonstrating that truth telling is one of Auntie Em’s defining characteristics.

Attending is Anton Revis, the famed Trinity Point native turned globe-trotting food critic, television personality, and host of the number one foodie show on the planet, In Search of the Perfect Dinner with Anton Revis. The meal would be prepared by restaurateur Piper Booth, owner of The Lucky Catch and Erica Grace's best friend.

To the shock of the kitchen staff, an obviously unstable sous-chef, Carla Jensen, claimed to have a bottle of cyanide and openly stated that she wanted to poison Anton Revis, whom she blamed for her brother’s suicide. Throughout the evening, Erica keeps Carla in sight.

Anton Revis collapsed during dessert and died. Erica insists Carla never had the opportunity to poison Revis. But to Erica's horror, that puts the focus on Piper, whom the police claim had motive and opportunity.

Much to her delight, and horror to Chief Bell, Auntie Em takes on the case. Murder, no less.

Things get worse for Piper because of a copy of a mysterious letter found in Revis’ things, claiming financial misconduct and health-code issues at The Lucky Catch. All this would be made public unless Piper signs over controlling ownership to an unnamed partner.

Piper insists she never got the letter. The police don’t believe her. She is held on suspicion of murder.

But Auntie Em wonders:

• Where is the bottle of poison Carla brought on board?

• Why did Adelaide Wellington keep her deep financial dealings with Anton Revis hidden?

• If Anton intended to ruin Piper, why did he spend the night singing her praises?

• Carla was caught meeting secretly with another chef whom Anton Revis had ruined. What was that about?

• The police only have a copy of the letter to Piper. What happened to the original?

• Poisoning a dessert was easy. But only one dessert contained poison. How did the killer get the one poisoned dessert placed in front of Anton, and only Anton?

There is a lot to consider. Join Erica and Auntie Em as they do a deep dive through the mind-bending evidence and eventually point to who committed the Murder on the Maverick.

The Tell-Tale Shot

She wanted to help a hurting teen find her stolen dog; unfortunately, the dog came attached to murder. And the only one telling the truth is the dog, and she can’t talk.

Fred Gott went searching for the man who stole his daughter’s beloved dog; he finds Sparky Zarsdick dead instead. Afraid the police will pin the murder on him, Fred turns to Erica Grace and her razor-sharp Auntie Em for help.

But this case is anything but simple. A trail of dog-nappers, blackmail, and family secrets leads straight into a lucrative criminal enterprise expanding into organized dog-theft. With loyal Piper Booth digging up gossip, steady Logan Wood chasing down dangerous leads, and Auntie Em calmly untangling clues from her office in Grace Manor, Erica soon discovers that nearly everyone is claiming Mandy belongs to them.

Then, just when a promising witness comes forth to expose the liars, he is silenced permanently before he can talk.

If Erica cannot uncover Mandy's actual home , the killer may get away with more than murder—and leave innocent people to pay the price.

The Solomon sisters, Elle, Avery, and Sally, were cheated out of their multi-million dollar inheritance, so they say.

Family patriarch Bronson Solomon is dead, a hunting accident, and the sisters refuse to accept that Bronson left the family’s fortune to his mistress, Natali Rake. The sisters are family and want what they are entitled to.

Enter Erica Grace, a reluctant sleuth who sees everything except her own emotional evasions, and her mystery savant Auntie Em, who has read and improved the plots of every mystery book ever written. The Solomon sisters want to hire Erica and Em to investigate the legitimacy of the will while avoiding public scandal. But scandal quickly becomes inevitable when the police change the hunting accident to first-degree murder … with a crossbow bolt to the chest, no less. Auntie Em cannot resist and takes the case.

Applying her seasoned hand, Auntie Em finds tiny cracks in the legitimacy of the new will, leading to a big crack. Erica suspects that Bronson’s murder and the phony will is an attempt to cover up broader, deeper, more sinister crimes.

The police say it is a conspiracy when Jerald Patrick, the attorney who drew up the will, is seen meeting with Natali Rake. By the end of the day, Jerald is found dead. Natali denies she knew about the will and hates being seen as a gold digger.

Erica and Auntie Em continue their deep dive into the Solomon financial history, and the guilty party feels the heat but is brilliant at covering his/her tracks.

The mystery unfolds, and the killer realizes that after years of getting away with massive financial crimes, Erica and Auntie Em are about to reveal a cover-up involving a phony will, financial fraud, a digital alibi, evidence destroyed, multiple murders, and topped off with a clumsy frame attempt involving a maple latte (... oat milk, extra pump, no foam …).

“A witty contemporary cozy-noir detective fiction with an eccentric sleuthing partnership” - Review

Murder on the Maverick

A murder-mystery convention at Grace Manor becomes the real thing when an actor playing Edgar Allan Poe is shot by a hidden rifle—apparently fired from the keynote speaker’s missing phone.

The stone monstrosity on the shores of Lake Trinity, called Grace Manor, has survived generations of Graces, family scandals, bad plumbing, and more than one encounter with the police. Erica Grace would prefer not to test its endurance unnecessarily. Her aunt, Emily “Auntie Em” Wilkinson, has other ideas.

The regional Poe Society is asking to hold its annual convention in the ballroom of Grace Manor; Erica immediately objects. A house full of Edgar Allan Poe scholars, collectors, dealers, and theatrical enthusiasts strikes her as exactly the sort of gathering likely to end badly. Auntie Em, a self-taught mystery scholar, is intrigued, however, particularly because celebrated Poe authority Dr. Ambrose Vale will attend with a recently discovered first edition that has created a sensation in literary circles.

When the book’s authenticity is challenged, certain people behave suspiciously.

Erica asks questions and finds the stakes are high. Among them are substantial money commitments, fraud, theft, jealousy, reputations, betrayal, blackmail, and public humiliation.

The book is proven fake, assembled from a mixture of authentic old materials and later additions.

An actor, who might be part of the fraud, hired to play Edgar Allan Poe in a dramatic presentation, is shot dead during the play with a gun and a shooter that nobody saw.

Challenged by an intelligent killer with a brilliant, far-reaching plan, Erica and Auntie Em must outthink the killer and turn the plan back on itself.

Maple Latte Murder