Allyson K Abbott Books in Order

Allyson K. Abbott is one of the pen names used by Wisconsin writer Beth Amos. Under this name, she created the Mack's Bar Mystery series, centered on Milwaukee bar owner Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton. Mack has synesthesia, a neurological condition that makes her experience sensory information in unusual ways, and that gives her an unexpected edge when trouble lands close to home.

Amos came to fiction through a lifelong love of books. Her family moved often because of her father's work, and she has said that reading became a steady companion when she was frequently the new kid. She started by keeping a diary, moved on to short stories and school assignments, and sent out her first short story at seventeen. It came back with a rejection letter.

She kept writing anyway.

Nursing became her day job, while fiction filled whatever spare time she could find. She raised her son, built a career, and collected a great many rejections before selling her first novel, Cold White Fury, to HarperCollins at age forty. That book began a run of paranormal suspense novels, followed by Eyes of Night and Second Sight, stories that bring medical questions, danger, and the unexplained into the same room.

For a time, Amos also worked as a book reviewer and medical writer. Eventually, she stepped away from freelance nonfiction because she wanted to put more energy into the fiction she enjoyed writing most. Her medical background stayed with her, though. Hospitals, trauma, science, death investigations, and the hard choices people make under pressure all turn up in her work.

In 2008, she signed with new representation and sold the manuscript that became Working Stiff. Published under another pen name, Annelise Ryan, it introduced Mattie Winston, a nurse who becomes a deputy coroner in a small Wisconsin town. The series grew to twelve books, with a two-book spinoff, and let Amos pair crime puzzles with workplace humor and the practical details of medical work.

Then came a different sort of mystery.

The Mack's Bar books launched in 2013 with Murder on the Rocks. As Allyson K. Abbott, Amos shifted the focus to Mack Dalton, a bar owner whose unusual perceptions draw her into police investigations. The books keep the cases close to the regulars, staff, neighbors, and detectives who orbit Mack's Bar. They also leave room for cocktails, complicated friendships, and Mack's uneasy connection with Detective Duncan Albright.

Amos has continued to use more than one name because her stories travel in different directions. Her Beth Amos novels lean into paranormal suspense. Her Annelise Ryan books mix medical mysteries and humor. Her more recent Monster Hunter Mysteries follow cryptozoologist Morgan Carter and her dog, Newt, through Wisconsin cases involving creatures that may or may not be real.

She is now retired from nursing. She still writes from Wisconsin, where the landscapes and small-town connections that shaped her working life continue to find their way into the stories.