April Henry Books in Order
Explore April Henry books in order, with quick summaries, series lists, and where to start with her adult mysteries and fast-paced YA thrillers.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
28 books
Circles of Confusion
by April Henry
1999
Claire Montrose inherits her great-aunt's belongings and finds a painting hidden for decades in an old suitcase. When experts dismiss it as a forgery, she starts asking questions, and dangerous people start paying attention.
Square in the Face
by April Henry
2000
Claire agrees to help a friend find the daughter she gave up through a secretive adoption agency. What begins as a desperate family search turns into a deadly tangle of buried secrets.
Heart-Shaped Box
by April Henry
2001
At her 20-year high school reunion, Claire receives a creepy heart-shaped box containing her old yearbook photo. When a former cheerleader is found strangled, Claire realizes the reunion may be hiding a killer.
Learning to Fly
by April Henry
2002
After a fiery chain-reaction crash, 19-year-old Free Meeker ends up with a dead hitchhiker's bag and nearly a million dollars. When the body is mistaken for hers, a chance to disappear becomes a dangerous chase.
Buried Diamonds
by April Henry
2003
Claire finds an engagement ring that vanished 50 years ago and stumbles into an old death that may not have been suicide. Past and present collide as long-buried secrets turn newly dangerous.
Shock Point
by April Henry
2006
Cassie discovers her stepfather prescribed an experimental drug linked to teen suicides, then he has her shipped to a brutal facility in Mexico. To stop him, she has to escape and make it back alive.
Face of Betrayal
by April Henry
2008
When a Senate page vanishes over Christmas break, reporter Cassidy Shaw breaks the story first. Soon she is working with FBI agent Nicole Hedges and prosecutor Allison Pierce to untangle a case buried in politics and danger.
Torched
by April Henry
2009
Ellie is forced by the FBI to infiltrate a radical environmental group or watch her parents go to jail. Undercover, she starts believing in the cause, and falling for one of its members, just as the stakes turn deadly.
Girl, Stolen
by April Henry
2010
Blind teen Cheyenne Wilder is asleep in the back of a car when a thief steals it. What starts as an accident becomes a kidnapping, and Cheyenne has to outthink the people holding her.
Hand of Fate
by April Henry
2010
A polarizing radio host dies when poison gas floods his studio during a live show. Nicole, Cassidy, and Allison race through panic, betrayal, and hidden motives to find the killer.
Heart of Ice
by April Henry
2011
The crimes look random at first, arson, theft, fraud, murder, until one chilling pattern emerges. A charming, calculating woman is pulling the strings, and the Triple Threat team may already know her.
Eyes of Justice
by April Henry
2012
A shocking crime hits the Triple Threat team close to home and sends Cassidy, Allison, and Nicole into their most personal case yet. False leads, hidden motives, and a relentless killer keep shifting the ground beneath them.
The Night She Disappeared
by April Henry
2012
Pizza delivery driver Kayla goes missing after someone asks whether the girl in the Mini Cooper is working that night. Gabie and Drew race to find her, haunted by the fear that Gabie was the real target.
The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
by April Henry
2013
A teenage girl wakes in a ransacked cabin with no memory and hears two men arguing about killing her. She runs, and every answer she uncovers only makes the danger worse.
The Body in the Woods
by April Henry
2014
Alexis, Nick, and Ruby join Portland County Sheriff's Search and Rescue expecting training and routine calls. Instead they find a dead body in the woods and start hunting a killer before one of them becomes the next target.
Blood Will Tell
by April Henry
2015
When a woman's body is found in a Portland park, suspicion falls on search-and-rescue volunteer Nick Walker. With Nick's DNA tying him to the victim, Alexis and Ruby have to prove their friend is innocent.
The Girl I Used to Be
by April Henry
2016
Fourteen years after her mother was murdered, Olivia learns her father was killed the same day. Returning under a new identity, she starts digging into the truth before the real killer notices.
Count All Her Bones
by April Henry
2017
Months after surviving her kidnapping, Cheyenne is preparing to testify against Roy Sawyer. Then a secret meeting with Griffin goes wrong, and she is taken again, this time by people who want her dead.
Run, Hide, Fight Back
by April Henry
2019
A shooting erupts in a Portland shopping mall, trapping six teens behind a store's security shutter. With panic rising and secrets surfacing, Miranda has to lead them through impossible choices.
The Lonely Dead
by April Henry
2019
Adele can see and speak with the dead, a gift she has spent years trying to ignore. When her ex-best friend's ghost appears after a murder, Adele becomes a suspect and a target.
The Girl in the White Van
by April Henry
2020
After an argument with her mom's boyfriend, Savannah disappears and everyone assumes she ran away. In reality she has been kidnapped, and with another captive girl, she has to find a way out.
Playing with Fire
by April Henry
2021
Cautious Natalia finally agrees to go hiking with Wyatt, only to be trapped when a wildfire cuts off the trail home. To survive the Oregon woods, she has to face old fears and very real danger.
The Eyes of the Forest
by April Henry
2021
When a bestselling fantasy author disappears, only his biggest fan thinks he is in real danger. Bridget has to leave the safety of his invented world and investigate what happened in the real one.
Two Truths and a Lie
by April Henry
2022
A blizzard strands Nell's school theater group in a creepy motel, where a party game turns sinister fast. When students start disappearing, Nell realizes a killer is trapped inside with them.
Girl Forgotten
by April Henry
2023
True-crime fan Piper Gray starts a podcast about Layla Trello's unsolved murder from 17 years earlier. The deeper she digs with Jonas, the clearer it becomes that the killer is still listening.
Stay Dead
by April Henry
2024
After a plane bombing and crash kill her powerful mother, Milan is told the only way to survive is to let the world think she died too. Now she has a key, pursuers on her trail, and nowhere safe to hide.
When We Go Missing
by April Henry
2025
Willow finds a camera card packed with photos of teenage girls, including one of herself. Teaming up with fellow volunteer Dare, she starts chasing what may be a serial killer before he finds her first.
In the Blood
by April Henry
2026
When adopted senior Tessa takes a DNA test, her search for her birth parents collides with an active serial killer case. The police believe her biological father is the Portland Phantom, and that changes everything.
Where should I start?
If you want her adult amateur mysteries: Circles of Confusion → Square in the Face → Heart-Shaped Box
If you want a tense kidnapping thriller: Girl, Stolen → Count All Her Bones
If you want a teen team mystery: The Body in the Woods → Blood Will Tell
If you want fast standalone suspense: The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die → Girl Forgotten → Stay Dead
Author bio
April Henry grew up in Medford, Oregon, in a family that did not have much money but always had library books close at hand. She learned to read at three, thanks to her mother and a stack of alphabet flash cards, and books quickly became her favorite way to travel without leaving home.
She started writing early, long before she imagined it could turn into a career.
When she was 12, she mailed Roald Dahl a story about a giant frog who loved peanut butter. Dahl liked it, shared it with an editor, and the piece ended up in Puffin Post, a British children's magazine. It was a thrilling start, but it did not send her straight into an author life.
Instead, Henry studied business at Oregon State University and graduated into a rough job market. She worked a string of jobs, then landed in hospital admitting, where she spent her days around illness, worry, and sudden turns of fate. That setting stayed with her. So did the experience of reading one truly bad novel and thinking, more or less, I could at least try.
The path was slow. Her first manuscript did not sell. Her second got her an agent. Her third did not get very far. Then her fourth book, Circles of Confusion, sold quickly and introduced Claire Montrose, an amateur sleuth who feels more like a real person than a polished detective. For years Henry kept writing while working full time and raising a family, and in 2008 she was finally able to leave her day job and write full time.
She has always been a research person.
That shows up all over her books. Shock Point throws a teenager into a brutal behavior camp in Mexico. Girl, Stolen follows a blind teen who is accidentally kidnapped when a thief steals the car she is sleeping in. The Body in the Woods turns a search and rescue training mission into a murder case. The Girl I Used to Be takes a cold case and makes it painfully personal. Readers tend to come to Henry for cliffhanger chapters, smart but vulnerable young characters, and just enough practical detail to make everything feel a little too possible.
Her stories often focus on girls who are underestimated, kids who have to think fast, and families carrying secrets they would rather leave buried. Oregon shows up again and again, sometimes as city streets, sometimes as forest trails, sometimes as the kind of place where help is just a little too far away. Even when she writes adult crime fiction, the pull is similar: ordinary people under pressure, bad choices closing in, and danger that starts close to home.
Henry does not just sit at a desk and guess. She has trained in martial arts, worked with search and rescue, and built a reputation for digging into the details, whether that means learning how a blind character might navigate a crisis or how someone could fight back when trapped.
She now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family. By this point she has written more than 30 mysteries and thrillers for teens and adults, including books with Lis Wiehl, and she still comes across as someone who likes figuring out how things work, especially when the answer is a little alarming.
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