Burning Cove Books in Order
Part ofAmanda Quick Books in OrderBrowse the Burning Cove series by Amanda Quick in order, with 1930s California mysteries, character summaries, and tips on following this glamorous yet dangerous resort town across the novels.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Publication Order
7 books
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
by Amanda Quick
2017
Fleeing a bloody scene in New York, Anna Harris remakes herself as reporter Irene Glasson and heads west. At the glamorous Burning Cove Hotel she finds an actress dead in a pool and teams up with owner Oliver Ward, a former stage magician, to expose secrets Hollywood would kill to keep buried.
The Other Lady Vanishes
by Amanda Quick
2018
Adelaide Blake escapes from a private sanitarium where she was drugged and discredited, then starts over serving herbal teas in Burning Cove. A wary alliance with widowed businessman Jake Truett pulls her into a web of experimental drugs, illusionists, and the people who will kill to control them.
Tightrope
by Amanda Quick
2019
Trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn retires after a near‑fatal fall and opens a boardinghouse in Burning Cove. When a guest is murdered on her front steps, she joins forces with Matthias Jones, a designer of stage illusions, to untangle a plot involving assassins, spies, and a stolen invention.
Close Up
by Amanda Quick
2020
Vivian Brazier photographs crime scenes for Los Angeles papers, a job respectable society loathes. When she captures an image that links several killings, she becomes a target and reluctantly accepts protection from enigmatic psychic investigator Nick Sundridge as they hunt a serial killer with a taste for actresses.
The Lady Has a Past
by Amanda Quick
2021
Socialite Lyra Brazier enrolls in a private investigator’s training course, then travels to a luxury spa in Burning Cove when her mentor vanishes. There she teams up with gruff investigator Simon Cage, whose unusual talent makes him dangerous company, to expose blackmail, hidden identities, and murder behind the resort’s serene façade.
When She Dreams
by Amanda Quick
2022
Lucid dreamer Maggie Lodge hires private investigator Sam Sage after receiving blackmail threats tied to her work for a mysterious self‑help guru. Their search through dream research circles, hypnotists, and Hollywood hangers‑on uncovers a scheme that uses subconscious suggestion as both weapon and lure.
The Bride Wore White
by Amanda Quick
2023
On the morning after what should have been her wedding, Prudence Ryland wakes beside a dead man and no memory of how she got there. Fleeing to Burning Cove, she turns to reclusive investigator Luther Pell and brilliant psychic Archer Norwood to clear her name and expose a killer who stages perfect crimes.
Series background & context
The Burning Cove novels shift Amanda Quick’s historical lens forward to 1930s California, trading Regency ballrooms for art‑deco hotels and Hollywood back lots. All of the books are set in and around Burning Cove, an exclusive seaside resort town where film stars, studio bosses, gangsters, and fortune‑tellers go to escape their reputations – or bury their scandals.
The series begins with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, in which a former secretary on the run from a New York scandal reinvents herself as a gossip reporter. Her first big lead dies at the bottom of a swimming pool at the luxurious Burning Cove Hotel, throwing her together with the hotel’s owner, a retired stage magician whose career ended in a suspicious accident. Their investigation peels back the glittering surface of the resort.
Later books explore other corners of the town. The Other Lady Vanishes follows a young woman who has escaped from a private sanitarium where she was wrongly confined. Working in a tea shop that caters to film people and spiritualists, she teams up with a mysterious businessman to uncover who wanted her silenced. Tightrope brings in a circus trapeze artist recovering from a fall and a former intelligence officer who now designs stage illusions; together they untangle a string of deaths tied to a ruthless blackmailer.
In Close Up, a crime‑scene photographer with a knack for spotting staged accidents crosses paths with a reclusive psychic consultant as they track a killer obsessed with silent‑era starlets. The Lady Has a Past pairs a sheltered socialite trying to learn detective work with a seasoned investigator at a high‑end spa hotel that hides as many secrets as it cures. When She Dreams centers on a woman gifted in lucid dreaming and a researcher of psychic phenomena facing off against a hypnotist blackmailer. The Bride Wore White spins a wedding‑day murder into a web of old crimes and new identities.
What ties the series together is mood: smoky jazz clubs, cliff‑side mansions, and a sense that everyone in Burning Cove is pretending to be someone else. The romances are threaded tightly through the mysteries, and many characters reappear as side figures in each other’s stories, giving the town the feel of a living, shifting community.
If you like Golden Age mysteries, vintage Hollywood gossip, and subtle paranormal touches woven into romantic suspense, Burning Cove is an inviting – if perilous – place to linger.
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