Ann Myers Books in Order

If you want Santa Fe, food, and holiday atmosphere: Bread of the Dead → Cinco de Mayhem → Feliz Navidead
If you want a bookish cozy with a senior sleuth: Better Off Read → Read on Arrival → Read or Alive
If you want to try her first published mystery: Bread of the Dead
If you want a quick sense of her range: Bread of the Dead → Better Off Read

Ann Myers grew up around Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, in a rural part of the state where library books opened up a much wider world. She has said that reading took her places long before travel did, and that feeling still shows in her mysteries, which are packed with strong settings, local detail, and people who feel rooted in their communities.

Libraries mattered early.

Before fiction took over, Myers wrote in all kinds of ways. She has mentioned jobs in grant writing, editing, freelance writing, teaching, and even the careful work of lettering tiny names onto hand-drawn street maps. That is a varied apprenticeship, but it helps explain the steady, practical feel of her books. She writes like someone who learned to love both words and the work behind them.

Her path to publication was not especially neat. An early manuscript did not go anywhere, and instead of forcing it, she started over with a new idea, a new setting, and a new cast. That restart led to her first published novel, Bread of the Dead, which arrived in 2015 and introduced chef and reluctant sleuth Rita Lafitte.

Santa Fe changed the picture.

Myers is originally from Pennsylvania, but she has also lived in Louisiana, Japan, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado. After moving west, she fell hard for Santa Fe, its food, its history, and its mix of cultures. She has said that the spark for Bread of the Dead came while she was baking pan de muerto and realized it would make a terrific mystery title. That kind of leap, from kitchen experiment to murder plot, feels very much like her.

That love of place runs through the Santa Fe Cafe books, Bread of the Dead, Cinco de Mayhem, and Feliz Navidead. Readers tend to come for the whodunits, then stay for the holiday atmosphere, New Mexican food, and Rita's juggling act as a working chef, mother, and amateur detective. Myers also gives Rita a wonderful foil in Flori, her older boss, whose curiosity and fearlessness keep pulling the series into motion.

She clearly enjoys smart, stubborn women.

Under the name Nora Page, Myers moved from kitchens to libraries with the Bookmobile Mysteries. Better Off Read, Read on Arrival, and Read or Alive follow Cleo Watkins, a librarian in her seventies who refuses to let her small Georgia community lose its library without a fight. These books lean into overdue books, rare editions, town politics, a roaming bookmobile, and the comforting idea that librarians notice more than people think.

The shift makes sense when you hear Myers talk about libraries. She has described growing up in the country with limited travel and not much television, and she credits library books with broadening her world. Cleo's devotion to books, public service, and quiet stubbornness feels rooted in that experience. Myers has also linked the character to memories of her grandmother and to the library in her hometown.

Today Myers lives in Colorado with her husband and an extra-large housecat, and Santa Fe still feels like home to her too. Cooking, crafts, travel, and mystery reading all feed into her work. Whether she is writing about bread contests or a bookmobile on Georgia back roads, her stories keep circling the same things: community, curiosity, everyday courage, and the trouble that starts when one determined woman refuses to look away.