AW Hartoin Books in Order
Explore AW Hartoin books in order, with quick summaries, series guides, and easy advice on where to start with Mercy Watts, Stella Bled, and more.
Last updated: July 8, 2026
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Publication Order
24 books
A Fairy's Guide to Disaster
by AW Hartoin
2012
Matilda Whipplethorn is tiny, hearing-impaired, and desperate to prove she is capable of more than babysitting. When humans tear her home from the manor wall, she has to protect her charges in a world that suddenly feels huge.
Coke with a Twist
by AW Hartoin
2012
Mercy's PI father pulls her into a fast, ugly case involving a young woman's attack. Chasing answers from a dive bar to sorority row, Mercy learns she needs to solve it quickly or become the next victim.
It Started with a Whisper
by AW Hartoin
2012
Puppy MacClarity thinks the family stories about dead ancestor Ernest are just stories until one angry wish comes true. A summer of magic, fear, and family secrets shows him his clan is much stranger than he knew.
Touch and Go
by AW Hartoin
2012
To avoid paperwork for her father, Mercy takes a case for an old rival and instantly regrets it. A missing man and an unruly dog turn a simple job into another scramble to stay ahead of trouble.
A Good Man Gone
by AW Hartoin
2013
Mercy thinks she is finally free from her parents' investigations until a family friend's sudden death pulls her back in. Then a bride is murdered, and Mercy has to figure out whether the two deaths are connected.
A Monster's Paradise
by AW Hartoin
2013
Matilda reaches Paris hunting a cure, but the city is full of warring fairies and shifting loyalties. With Miss Penrose fading and the Vermillion clan in hiding, every question Matilda asks creates a new enemy.
Diver Down
by AW Hartoin
2013
Mercy escapes to Roatan for sun and scuba, only to find that her problems have followed her there. The deeper she gets into island trouble, the clearer it becomes that someone wants her dead.
Fierce Creatures
by AW Hartoin
2013
Life in a human house feels dull after kidnapping and spriggan battles, until Matilda's tutor falls desperately ill. To save Miss Penrose, Matilda must return to the antique mall and face enemies she barely escaped before.
Flare-up
by AW Hartoin
2013
This short prequel catches Matilda Whipplethorn as a child, right when her quiet day turns wild. An adventure inside a dog's snout gives an early glimpse of the trouble that seems to find her.
Nowhere Fast
by AW Hartoin
2013
Guilt-tripped by family, Mercy goes looking for a missing girl the police cannot find. What starts as a favor quickly turns dangerous when it becomes clear someone is determined to keep the runaway hidden.
A Wicked Chill
by AW Hartoin
2014
Stranded in Vienna with her parents missing, Matilda hides in St. Stephen's Cathedral and tries to stay ahead of trolls, politics, and panic. The widening revolution may force her to use the dangerous power she has been hiding.
Double Black Diamond
by AW Hartoin
2014
A Colorado ski trip goes off the rails when Mercy agrees to a desperate favor and ends up a suspect in a brutal crime. To save a child, she may have to break the law before she can solve the case.
Dry Spell
by AW Hartoin
2014
When Mercy's friend turns up terrified in the middle of a brutal Missouri drought, the explanation could be grief, madness, or something long buried. Mercy follows the trail into a mystery that feels almost supernatural.
Drop Dead Red
by AW Hartoin
2015
A mass killing at a St. Louis restaurant should have nothing to do with Mercy, but favors and family say otherwise. Her search for the truth leads from home to New Orleans and a case with a nasty scientific twist.
In the Worst Way
by AW Hartoin
2015
Sent to a remote castle to hide from a vengeful gang, Mercy expects trouble, but not murder. Surrounded by bickering cousins, baseball campers, and old ghosts, she has to solve the crime before the killers find her.
A Sin and a Shame
by AW Hartoin
2016
While recovering from injury, Mercy gets pushed into defending a retired librarian who has taken a life. The case is stranger than it first appears, and solving it forces Mercy toward a choice with real cost.
The Wife of Riley
by AW Hartoin
2016
Mercy owes the Fibonacci family a favor, and it sends her to Paris to identify a woman who may not be dead after all. Mafia pressure, family secrets, and the Klinefeld Group make this search far riskier than it looks.
To the Eternal
by AW Hartoin
2016
Matilda's hidden power is no longer hidden, and now everyone wants something from her. As her parents remain in danger and the unrest in France spreads, she heads to Rome in search of help only a powerful ally can give.
Brain Trust
by AW Hartoin
2017
Racing home from Sturgis, Mercy finds danger waiting and gets pulled into one of her darkest cases yet. With her father missing and violent predators closing in, she and her oddball crew have to keep digging.
My Bad Grandad
by AW Hartoin
2017
Mercy heads to the Sturgis motorcycle rally with her grandad, hoping for a break from trouble. Instead she gets a dead Vietnam veteran, a string of suspicious deaths, and an old secret still stalking the Watts family.
Down and Dirty
by AW Hartoin
2018
Back at the clinic and hoping for normal, Mercy instead lands in a lawsuit and a messy case full of jealousy and affairs. With Chuck absent and danger rising, she has to sort out who is lying before the situation turns deadly.
The Paris Package
by AW Hartoin
2018
On a 1938 honeymoon, Stella Bled and her husband are pulled into danger when a Jewish friend entrusts them with a secret package. Fleeing Vienna after Kristallnacht, they must outrun the Reich and decide what they are willing to risk.
Small Time Crime
by AW Hartoin
2019
A cold case from 1965 drags Mercy back into family history when the FBI uncovers a new clue. What should be a vacation turns into a hunt for answers some relatives would rather leave buried.
Strangers in Venice
by AW Hartoin
2019
After the terror of Vienna, Stella and Nicky chase Abel's missing cousins to a flooded Venice. Injuries, suspicion, and Nazis on their trail force Stella to decide how far she will go to keep a promise.
Where should I start?
If you want twisty crime with family chaos: A Good Man Gone → Diver Down → Double Black Diamond
If you want WWII suspense: The Paris Package → Strangers in Venice
If you want fantasy for younger readers: A Fairy's Guide to Disaster → Fierce Creatures → A Monster's Paradise
If you want a one-book taste of the magical side: It Started with a Whisper
Author bio
AW Hartoin grew up in rural Missouri, but one place seems to have stayed with her in a big way, her grandmother's home in the Central West End of St. Louis. Those visits gave her a feel for old houses, hidden rooms, and the idea that every door might be holding a story.
That image, big rooms and bigger secrets, shows up all over her fiction.
Hartoin has said she can't remember a time when she didn't love reading. She read Harry and the Lady Next Door again and again, and Anne of Green Gables was the first book that made her want to step inside a fictional world and stay there.
As an adult, she decided she needed more life experience if she was going to write believable characters, so she joined the Air Force. That choice changed the shape of her writing life. It brought travel, a wider view of the world, and the chance to live in places including Alaska, Italy, and Germany. She also met her husband along the way.
Her first published series was Away From Whipplethorn, a fantasy adventure built around Matilda Whipplethorn, a tiny hearing-impaired fairy who keeps landing in very large trouble. The books have the pleasure of classic middle grade adventure, odd creatures, hidden worlds, and a heroine who has to rely on nerve as much as power.
A lot of readers first meet Hartoin through Mercy Watts. Beginning with A Good Man Gone and continuing through books like Diver Down and The Wife of Riley, the Mercy novels mix murder, travel, family chaos, and a heroine who would really prefer a quiet life but never gets one. Mercy is a nurse, the daughter of a private investigator, and a magnet for bad situations. Hartoin uses that setup to write mysteries that are funny without going soft on the danger.
Then there is The Paris Package, the opening book in the Stella Bled series. That line moves Hartoin into WWII suspense, with Stella starting out as a young bride in Europe in 1938 and getting pulled into a much larger fight. In Strangers in Venice and the books that follow, Hartoin keeps one eye on history and the other on the human cost of living through it. The result is tense, fast-moving fiction that still makes room for loyalty, fear, and stubborn hope.
She likes big casts, old secrets, and people who get dragged into trouble because they can't quite walk away.
Across her work, you can see a few steady interests. Family matters, sometimes in helpful ways and sometimes in deeply inconvenient ones. Place matters too, whether that means St. Louis streets, wartime Europe, or a fairy world hiding in plain sight. Her books tend to ask what ordinary people do when loyalty and danger arrive at the same time.
She has also lived in Waldenbuch, Germany, with her family and two spoiled cats. She has said she reads almost everything except horror because she likes to sleep, which feels like exactly the kind of practical detail a mystery and fantasy writer would keep.
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