Andi Oliver Books in Order

The Andi Oliver novels center on a young woman who does not know her own name. At the start of Biting the Moon, she wakes up alone in a New Mexico bed and breakfast, with only a note saying that her supposed father will be back and a sense that she needs to run.

She flees into the nearby mountains, living in an empty cabin and tending to wild animals caught in illegal traps. There she meets Mary Dark Hope, a teenage girl who has lost her parents and sees in this nameless stranger a kind of replacement sister. Together they give the girl a new name, Andi, and decide to track down the man who abducted her, following thin leads across the West while repeatedly stumbling over cases of animal cruelty.

In Dakota, Andi has become a drifter, moving north through a string of short term jobs. She ends up in a remote North Dakota town dominated by a vast hog confinement operation that feeds nearby slaughterhouses. Going undercover at the farm, she witnesses the everyday brutality of industrial meat production and attracts attention from both hostile managers and someone tied to the gaps in her own history.

Across both books, Grimes threads together three concerns, Andi’s missing past, the ways adults exploit children and animals, and the uneasy freedom of the road. The tone is darker than in the Richard Jury or Emma Graham series, with shootings, stalking, and systemic abuse treated frankly, but the stories still leave room for friendship, makeshift families, and small acts of rescue.

Readers who are drawn to mysteries with strong moral undercurrents, or who are curious about how Grimes writes outside of England, will find the Andi Oliver books a compact, two volume journey through the American West and Midwest, seen through the eyes of a girl who is trying to decide who she wants to be.