Bobbi Holmes Books in Order

Bobbi Holmes grew up in Southern California and later at Havasu Palms on Lake Havasu, a place that would stay with her for years. Her father was a general contractor, and family stories, practical work, and desert memories all seem to have left a mark on the way she writes people and place.

Long before the ghost mysteries, she was writing nonfiction under her full name, Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes.

Books like Where the Road Ends and Havasu Palms, A Hostile Takeover come out of that earlier lane. They draw on family history and on the community where she grew up, and they show a writer who likes concrete detail, local memory, and the way big public events land on ordinary lives.

She eventually split her work across different names. Bobbi Holmes became the name readers know from her paranormal cozies. Anna J. McIntyre became the byline she has used for romance and grittier fiction. It was a sensible move, and it helped readers know what shelf they were walking onto.

Then came The Ghost of Marlow House, the book that opened the door for a lot of people. Danielle Boatman inherits an old Oregon house, plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast, and discovers the place comes with a resident ghost named Walt Marlow. From there, Holmes built a long-running series out of murders, small-town secrets, and a haunting that turns into a complicated partnership.

That series stuck.

Across books like The Ghost Who Loved Diamonds, The Ghost Who Wasn't, The Ghost of Valentine Past, The Ghost and the Witches’ Coven, and The Ghost and the Silver Scream, Holmes keeps returning to a few pleasures readers clearly enjoy. There are mysteries with personal stakes, spirits who refuse to move on, and a cast that grows from housemates and neighbors into something like an extended family. The tone stays cozy, but the books also make room for grief, romance, old resentments, and the occasional bit of wonderfully odd supernatural trouble.

One reason the series lasts is that the setting matters. Frederickport and Marlow House are not just backdrops. The bed and breakfast, the beach, the pier, the neighboring houses on Beach Drive, and the people who keep drifting in and out all give the books a lived-in feel. Even when the plots get strange, they still feel tied to everyday concerns like money, loyalty, family, and whether the people closest to you are telling the truth.

Even some of the details inside the series come from home. Holmes has said that Walt Marlow was named for her father, Walter Clint Johnson. It is a small detail, but it says a lot. Her fiction may include ghosts and dream hops, but it is grounded in memory, family ties, and the personalities of real people.

She also writes from the long view of ordinary life. Her own posts and author bios point to a marriage that began in 1976, two children, and years of collecting stories from family life. That mix of the everyday and the uncanny is a big part of why the Marlow House books feel warm even when someone has just turned up dead.

Now she lives in Oregon with her husband and their dogs, and she is still adding to the world that made her name as a novelist.

It feels fitting. Whether she is writing about old family ground in nonfiction or sending Danielle Boatman into another ghostly mess, Holmes tends to keep the voice clear, the people recognizable, and the story moving.