Most Recommended Books

Track reading, wishlists & new-book alerts

Get
Skip to content
Share:

Beth Amos Books in Order

Explore the Beth Amos suspense novels by Beth Amos, with reading order, short summaries, and background on the standalone paranormal thrillers.

Last updated: July 3, 2026

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).

View

Publication Order

Sort:

29 books

Cold White Fury

by Beth Amos

1996

After a freak accident leaves a sliver of metal in her infant son's brain, Jennifer Bolton years later faces voices, seizures, and menacing intruders. The boy's bizarre abilities may expose a murderous conspiracy, if mother and son can survive long enough.

Eyes of Night

by Beth Amos

1997

A missing young mother leaves behind no clear evidence, only a terrified child who will not speak. Psychiatrist Kerri Whitaker coaxes out the truth and finds herself pulled into a deadly mystery that keeps claiming new victims.

Second Sight

by Beth Amos

1998

Blinded in an explosion, investigative journalist Marlie Kaplan regains partial vision through experimental surgery, and gains a disturbing new way of reading people. When a colleague is murdered, her strange perception may be the only thing standing between her and a killer.

Working Stiff

by Beth Amos

2009

After catching her husband with another nurse, Mattie Winston leaves the hospital for a deputy coroner job. Then her first murder victim is the other woman, and Mattie lands painfully close to the suspect list.

Scared Stiff

by Beth Amos

2010

On Halloween night, fake gore gives way to a very real corpse. Mattie thinks the victim's estranged husband is innocent, so she uses her medical eye to dig into a case that gets stranger and more dangerous fast.

Frozen Stiff

by Beth Amos

2011

A beautiful stranger is found stabbed in a snowy field, and Steve Hurley knows her too well, because she was his former girlfriend and the knife is his. Mattie follows the twists while trying to ignore her own jealousy.

Lucky Stiff

by Beth Amos

2013

A Christmas Day house fire leaves a casino winner dead and his money missing. With suspects everywhere and another body soon to follow, Mattie and Hurley race to find the killer before the case turns even uglier.

Murder on the Rocks

by Beth Amos

2013

After taking over her late father's Milwaukee bar, Mackenzie Dalton finds a body in the alley where he was killed. With her fingerprints on the knife and a detective probing both deaths, she has to clear herself before the killer closes in.

Nick of Time

by Beth Amos

2013

Dr. Rachel Mayton thinks her experimental coma drug could change lives, until ghostly warnings and a vanished patient suggest it may do far worse. Soon Rachel is running from murder, madness, and a future catastrophe tied to time itself.

The Face of Death

by Beth Amos

2013

Years after surviving a masked killer's attack, Andrea McIntyre returns home with her daughter and tries to build a new life. Then fresh deaths begin, and she realizes the terror she escaped may still have a grip on her family.

Board Stiff

by Beth Amos

2014

At a nursing home, Mattie examines a board president found dead under suspiciously odd circumstances. The residents think he was killing costly patients, a key witness remembers nothing, and the politics around the case are anything but gentle.

Murder with a Twist

by Beth Amos

2014

Milwaukee bar owner Mackenzie Dalton uses her synesthesia to help Detective Duncan Albright at a suspicious suicide scene. When the case widens into a kidnapping, Mack has to decide whether her strange gift can really help save a child.

In the Drink

by Beth Amos

2015

When a new bar regular asks Mackenzie Dalton to revisit his sister's cold case, Mack's unusual senses quickly find trouble. Then reporters swarm the bar and a taunting rival turns her local notoriety into something far more dangerous.

Stiff Penalty

by Beth Amos

2015

When a high school math teacher is stabbed with a barbecue fork, the evidence points to his teenage son. Mattie isn't convinced, and while dealing with pregnancy and her estranged father's return, she hunts the real killer.

Shots in the Dark

by Beth Amos

2016

A week before Christmas, Mackenzie Dalton is still reeling from the murder of bouncer Gary Gunderson. While hunting his killer and the source of cryptic letters, she follows clues that pull the danger uncomfortably close to home.

Stiff Competition

by Beth Amos

2016

Hunting season turns deadly when a land developer is found in the woods with an arrow through his neck. While Mattie investigates, Steve Hurley's missing teenage daughter raises the stakes and tightens the clock.

A Toast to Murder

by Beth Amos

2017

On New Year's Eve, Mackenzie Dalton sets a trap for the mastermind who has been taunting her. But when her prime suspect turns up dead at midnight, she has to read the room fast before the real killer strikes again.

Dead in the Water

by Beth Amos

2017

Mattie is planning a wedding and blending households when a new hire at the medical examiner's office is killed on a fishing trip and his girlfriend vanishes. To keep her own life from capsizing, she has to work through some very murky clues.

Last Call

by Beth Amos

2018

After a businessman is shot, Mackenzie Dalton helps Detective Duncan Albright trace the case to an undercover friend whose fingerprints are on the gun. As trust frays and clues point in ugly directions, Mack follows her instincts into a final, dangerous round.

Dead Calm

by Beth Amos

2019

What looks like a seedy motel murder-suicide is actually a carefully staged double killing. Newlyweds Mattie and Steve juggle family strain, competing suspects, and mounting pressure as they try to corner the real murderer.

Needled to Death

by Beth Amos

2019

Social worker Hildy Schneider hears from a grief-group member that her son's death may have been murder. With her therapy dog and Detective Bob Richmond beside her, she starts pulling at clues that reach all over Sorenson.

Dead of Winter

by Beth Amos

2020

A battered teenage girl dies in the ER after saying her little sister is still with the man who brought her in. Mattie, Hildy, and Steve follow the evidence into a brutal human trafficking case.

Dead Ringer

by Beth Amos

2020

A Jane Doe is stabbed in the signature pattern of a serial killer who is supposedly already in prison. Mattie and Steve reopen old ground and find themselves chasing a murderer who may never have been caught.

Night Shift

by Beth Amos

2020

Moonlighting with local police, Hildy Schneider is pulled into a late-night case when a former patient insists he's haunted by a murder victim. A body in a decaying farmhouse turns his wild story into something far more dangerous.

Dead Even

by Beth Amos

2021

A wealthy realtor is found dead with a broken pool cue through his heart. Mattie and Steve sort through fake alibis, gambling debts, shady finances, and family secrets while trying to keep their own home life steady.

A Death in Door County

by Beth Amos

2022

Bookstore owner and cryptozoologist Morgan Carter is asked to investigate bodies on Lake Michigan that look like the work of a lake monster. With her dog Newt, she heads into Death's Door to separate legend from murder.

Death in the Dark Woods

by Beth Amos

2023

After reports of a Bigfoot-like creature in northern Wisconsin, Morgan Carter is asked to look into a man killed by a savage throat wound. She and Newt head into the forest and uncover lies, danger, and something unexpected.

Beast of the North Woods

by Beth Amos

2025

An ice fisherman is mauled near Rhinelander, and the only witness swears a hodag did it. Morgan Carter takes the case to clear him, but the closer she gets, the more exposed she becomes to a very real threat.

New

Monster in the Moonlight

by Beth Amos

2026

A woman turns up dead on a lonely rural road, apparently mauled by the Beast of Bray Road. Morgan Carter follows scratches, rumors, and local fear to learn whether a monster, or a very human killer, is stalking the night.

Where should I start?

If you want funny forensic mysteries: Working StiffScared StiffFrozen Stiff
If you want a warmer Sorenson spinoff: Needled to DeathNight Shift
If you want barroom cozies with a twist: Murder on the RocksMurder with a TwistIn the Drink
If you want cryptids and Wisconsin folklore: A Death in Door CountyDeath in the Dark WoodsBeast of the North Woods
If you want darker paranormal suspense: Cold White FuryEyes of NightSecond Sight

Author bio

Beth Amos took the long road to publication. As a child she moved often because of her father's job, and she has said that books became some of her best friends. She started writing early, sent out her first short story at seventeen, and kept going through years of quick rejections, bad luck, and real life getting in the way.

She kept at it.

Before novels paid the bills, nursing did. Amos earned a nursing degree in New Jersey and later a degree in health administration in Richmond, Virginia. Her work took her through obstetrics, hospice, and eventually the emergency room, where she spent the last twenty years of her nursing career. That broad medical background later became one of the most reliable things in her fiction: even when the plots get strange, the bodies, injuries, and hospital details usually feel grounded.

Her first published credit was not a novel at all, but a personal essay in a hospice magazine, paid for with contributor copies. Later she built a freelance career as a medical writer and book reviewer, including work for Barnes & Noble. Still, fiction was the goal. At forty, after years of trying, she sold Cold White Fury to HarperCollins. Two more standalones followed, Eyes of Night and Second Sight, and all three show the mix that would become her signature, medical suspense, ordinary people under extreme pressure, and just enough paranormal edge to make the world feel unstable.

Then she changed course again. Amos eventually walked away from most nonfiction work because it made writing feel too much like a job, went back to nursing, and kept her novel writing alive on the side. She later self-published Nick of Time and The Face of Death, both darker suspense stories that lean into loss, danger, and the idea that the past never stays buried as neatly as people hope.

That combination of grit and weirdness never really left her books.

Under the name Annelise Ryan, she found her largest audience. The Mattie Winston mysteries, beginning with Working Stiff, follow a sarcastic nurse turned deputy coroner in small-town Wisconsin, and readers tend to come for the forensic detail, quick banter, and slow-building relationship drama as much as the murders. She later expanded that world with the Helping Hands books, starting with Needled to Death, which shifts the focus to social worker Hildy Schneider and gives the same town a warmer, more compassionate angle.

She used another name, Allyson K. Abbott, for the Mack's Bar mysteries, which start with Murder on the Rocks. Those books center on Milwaukee bar owner Mackenzie Dalton, whose synesthesia gives her an unusual way of reading people and crime scenes. More recently, Amos returned to the strange side of mystery with the Monster Hunter books, beginning with A Death in Door County, where bookstore owner Morgan Carter and her dog Newt investigate killings that may, or may not, involve legendary creatures.

Across all those names, the appeal is pretty consistent. Amos likes capable women, jobs with real-world texture, and plots where medical knowledge or unusual perception changes the stakes. She is just as comfortable with a coroner's table as she is with a haunted farmhouse, a bar packed with regulars, or a stretch of Wisconsin woods full of monster stories.

Now retired from nursing, she lives in Wisconsin with family and a menagerie of pets. She has written more than 200 published articles, belongs to groups such as Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers, and still seems drawn to the same sweet spot she found early on: a solid mystery, a little darkness, and one unnerving question hanging over everything.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

Comments

Did we miss something? Have feedback?

Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts

We only use your email to notify you about replies.

All comments are moderated.

Discover and track your reading on the go

Track your reading, manage wishlists, and get notified when new books are added.