Booster Club Capers Books in Order

The Booster Club Capers are the loosest, most comic corner of Angela M Sanders's mystery writing. These books are less about an amateur sleuth stumbling onto a corpse and more about a ragtag crew of thieves, ex-thieves, and near-thieves trying to do some good with highly questionable methods. If you like capers more than classic whodunits, this is probably the series to try.

At the center is Claudine, a fourth-generation cat burglar with skills that would be more useful in a better-run life. Around her gathers a memorable team, including Ruby, a sharp-tongued hairdresser with shoplifting experience, and Deborah, whose alter ego Sabine is much better at theft than polite society would prefer. Together they form the Booster Club, and the group energy is the point. These are ensemble books. The fun comes from watching a bunch of clever misfits pool their talents, argue through the plan, and improvise when the plan inevitably goes sideways.

The stories have heart under all the scheming. In The Booster Club, the goal is not just stealing for the thrill of it. The women are trying to help four children keep a roof over their heads while taking on a ruthless developer and a stack of local power players. Cat in a Bag widens the chaos with an art forger, stolen fake paintings, old resentments, and one wildly specific argument over Marie Antoinette's dog bed. That gives you a good sense of the tone. These books like crooked people, oddball details, and plots that get a little gloriously tangled.

These books root for the misfits.

That is what keeps them from feeling mean. There are criminals here, yes, but the moral center is warm. The Club's members are messy, sly, and not always trustworthy in the conventional sense, yet the books are interested in second chances, loyalty, and the strange communities people build when the respectable world has no use for them. The retirement home for petty criminals that hovers around the series only adds to that feeling.

Read these as comic capers first and cozy mysteries second. Start with The Booster Club and then move to Cat in a Bag. There are only two books, but the order matters because the relationships and the group's makeshift mission are already in motion by book two. If you want fast-moving plots, lovable crooks, and a mystery series that is more interested in the scheme than the solemnity, the Boosters are good company.