Blaize Clement Books in Order

If you like to start at the very beginning of a series: Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter → Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund → Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues.
If you want Dixie at her emotional turning point: Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof → Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs → Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons.
If you're curious about the later collaborations with John Clement: The Cat Sitter's Pajamas → The Cat Sitter's Cradle → The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives → The Cat Sitter's Whiskers → The Cat Sitter and the Canary.
If you prefer standalones and nonfiction: I, Malcolm → Dance of the Moon Daughter → Kids Stay Free → In the Beginning.

Blaize Clement was born in 1932 in the tiny community of Fink in north Texas and took a long, winding path to becoming a mystery novelist. Many readers first meet her through the Dixie Hemingway pet-sitting mysteries, but her working life stretched far beyond crime fiction.

As a young woman she married, started a family, and then faced a major health crisis when she contracted polio in her early twenties. She spent about a year in hospital and lived with the aftereffects for the rest of her life, an experience that shaped the way she wrote about vulnerability, courage, and getting on with things even when life is hard.

After the birth of her second child, she struck out on her own and went back to school, studying at the University of Houston and Baylor University to become a clinical psychologist. In Houston she spent years as a family therapist, listening to parents and children try to untangle ordinary heartbreaks and long standing patterns. That work led to her early nonfiction book The Loving Parent: A Guide to Growing Up Before Your Children Do, which treats parenting as much about the adult's growth as the child's.

Clement eventually moved to Sarasota, Florida, and kept building new careers. At different times she worked as a dressmaker, a caterer, a stay at home mom, and a therapist. Through all of it she wrote essays, plays, and stories on the side. She loved animals and people in roughly equal measure, and she was fascinated by the way both could be noble, exasperating, and brave in the same afternoon.

Her crime fiction career began surprisingly late. Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, published in 2005 when she was in her seventies, introduced Dixie Hemingway, an ex deputy sheriff who rebuilds her life as a pet sitter on Siesta Key, a barrier island off Sarasota. The books have the surface charm of a cozy mystery but do not shy away from grief, trauma, or the messier corners of human behavior. Animals are never just props in these stories. They reflect the moods of the people around them and often nudge Dixie toward the truth.

Over the next several years Clement wrote a string of Dixie novels, including Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof, Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs, and Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons. Threaded through the murder investigations is a quieter story about a woman learning how to live again after devastating loss, supported by her firefighter brother Michael, his partner Paco, and a circle of neighbors and clients who slowly become family.

She did not limit herself to one kind of book. Away from Siesta Key she wrote I, Malcolm, a slim novel narrated by a dog in the afterlife who is determined to save a kidnapped child, and Dance of the Moon Daughter, a romantic adventure set in a sixteenth century Indian kingdom under the pen name Lee Silvey. She also published Kids Stay Free, a collection of short stories, and In the Beginning, an accessible introduction to Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism that reflects her curiosity about how people search for meaning.

Friends and family describe her as someone who delighted in the everyday heroism of ordinary people. She liked to write about the quiet intelligence and loyalty of animals and about people who choose decency even when no one is watching. Her favorite childhood reading included Rudyard Kipling, and she reportedly loved The Elephant's Child enough to record herself reading it for her grandchildren.

In her final years, while living in Sarasota, Clement worked closely with her son John on future Dixie plots and characters. After her death in 2011 he continued the series with books such as The Cat Sitter's Cradle, The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives, The Cat Sitter's Whiskers, and The Cat Sitter and the Canary, all built on her notes and their conversations. Together they ensured that Dixie Hemingway would keep walking the beaches of Siesta Key, looking after animals and stumbling into trouble, long after Blaize Clement herself was gone.