Capital of Texas / Amy King Books in Order

Amy King is the heart of the Capital of Texas series: a fifty‑something entrepreneur in Austin who decides she is due for a fresh start. Instead of slowing down, she launches a home‑staging and events business and discovers that murder seems to follow her jobs.

In the first book, Murder in the Bookstore, her very first client is an antiquarian bookseller on Twelfth Street. When he is found dead at the event Amy has staged, the shock threatens to destroy her fledgling reputation before she can even print business cards. The only way to keep her company alive is to work alongside her husband, detective Nick Race, and start asking questions that many of her clients would rather avoid.

That pattern continues as the series moves through parties and photo shoots across Austin. In Murder by the Clowns, a high‑end investment firm hires Amy for a birthday celebration that spirals into chaos when a troupe of kilted clowns and bagpipers arrive and the charismatic founder is shot. Murder through the Window takes her into the orbit of a fading film star, where a glittering rebranding party ends with a scream, a shadow at the glass and a corpse on the floor.

Later mysteries carry Amy to landmarks and neighborhoods that locals recognise by name: downtown institutions, busy corridors like MoPac and gated developments such as Hidden Harbor. Each job should be a chance to grow her business, but instead it drops her into the middle of another homicide, with clients, neighbors and staff all hiding motives of their own.

Amy rarely works alone. Nick brings official access and a more hard‑nosed view of justice, while her best friend Danielle and extended family add warmth and comic relief. Her adult children and in‑laws can become entangled in the cases too, turning every new client into both a professional opportunity and a personal risk.

Across the Capital of Texas books, the tone stays firmly cozy: the violence happens off‑page, the language stays clean, and the focus rests on puzzles, relationships and community. Underneath the humor, Lewis writes about midlife reinvention, small‑business hustle and what it means to start over in a rapidly changing city.

Although each mystery stands on its own, reading the series in order lets you watch Amy grow more confident as an investigator and as a business owner. The books reward readers who enjoy returning to familiar characters and seeing how their lives shift from case to case.