Carlene Thompson Books in Order
See Carlene Thompson books in order, with quick summaries, standalone reading tips, and help choosing where to start with her small-town suspense novels.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
19 books
Black for Remembrance
by Carlene Thompson
1990
Twenty years after her daughter Hayley was kidnapped and killed, Caroline Webb thinks she has rebuilt her life. Then Hayley's doll reappears, murders begin again, and Caroline fears the past is reaching for her family.
All Fall Down
by Carlene Thompson
1992
Blaine Avery is already fighting whispers about her husband's suspicious death when a teenage girl's body is found on her property. As more supposed suicides unsettle Sinclair, Blaine tries to clear her name before she becomes the next victim.
The Way You Look Tonight
by Carlene Thompson
1995
Deborah Robinson's perfect life cracks open when her husband disappears just as brutal murders shake their town. Searching through Steve's past, she begins to fear she never really knew the man she married.
Tonight You're Mine
by Carlene Thompson
1998
Nicole has never stopped wondering whether Paul, the man she loved, really died after a violent night years ago. After her father's death and a series of murders, she begins to suspect someone from that past has come back.
In the Event of My Death
by Carlene Thompson
1999
Laurel Damron and her old friends buried the truth about a girl's death when they were teenagers. Thirteen years later, one friend is dead, Laurel gets a chilling warning, and the secret starts claiming lives.
Don't Close Your Eyes
by Carlene Thompson
2000
Veterinarian Natalie St. John returns to Port Ariel, Ohio hoping for rest, then finds her friend Tamara murdered. As eerie phone calls in Tamara's voice begin and more bodies fall, Natalie realizes the killer is dangerously close.
Since You've Been Gone
by Carlene Thompson
2001
Rebecca Ryan once used her second sight to help solve crimes, until she failed to save her younger brother. Years later, a new vision sends her back to Sinclair, where another child has vanished and old resentments are still alive.
If She Should Die
by Carlene Thompson
2004
When a body surfaces in a West Virginia creek, Christine Ireland fears it may be her sister Dara, missing for three years. Dara's diary and a stream of strange letters pull Christine into a stalking case that is far from over.
Share No Secrets
by Carlene Thompson
2005
Adrienne Reynolds and her daughter Skye find Adrienne's friend murdered in an abandoned riverside hotel. Another witness dies almost immediately, and Adrienne realizes a killer with a carefully hidden past is closing in on everyone around her.
Last Whisper
by Carlene Thompson
2006
Brooke Yeager saw her mother murdered and spent years believing the killer was safely behind bars. Then a woman who looks like Brooke is killed, and the nightmare returns with messages, fear, and fresh bloodshed.
Last Seen Alive
by Carlene Thompson
2007
Back in Black Willow for her mother's funeral, Chyna Greer is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend Zoey. When Zoey's voice seems to call for help and more girls vanish, Chyna digs into the town's darkest secrets.
If You Ever Tell
by Carlene Thompson
2008
Teresa Farr comes back to Point Pleasant still shadowed by the night her father and stepmother were murdered. When old suspicions flare again and her silent stepsister begins to remember, someone starts delivering cruel, deadly reminders.
You Can Run...
by Carlene Thompson
2009
Diana Sheridan races to her friend Penny's house after a panicked late-night call, only to watch it explode. With Penny in a coma and a child to protect, Diana starts uncovering secrets someone is willing to kill for.
Nowhere to Hide
by Carlene Thompson
2010
Years after her best friend Gretchen was murdered, journalist Marissa Gray returns to Aurora Falls and nearly dies in a staged crash. When other people from Gretchen's circle start turning up dead, Marissa knows the past is hunting her again.
To the Grave
by Carlene Thompson
2012
Psychologist Catherine Gray thinks she can finally build a future with her first love, James, until his missing ex-wife turns up murdered. A ruined crime scene and a trail of obsession force Catherine to question everyone, especially James.
Can't Find My Way Home
by Carlene Thompson
2015
Brynn Wilder swore never to return to Genessa Point, the town where her father was branded a serial killer. When her troubled brother disappears after uncovering new information, Brynn must face the past before it swallows him too.
Just a Breath Away
by Carlene Thompson
2018
Interior designer Kelsey March watches her glamorous sister die in a stalker's attack on a Louisville street. As she digs for answers, the crime begins to connect to an older tragedy that was never fully understood.
Praying for Time
by Carlene Thompson
2020
Eight years after her sister vanished from an Oregon beach, actress Vanessa Everly gets impossible news, Roxanne is alive. Back home, Vanessa faces threatening calls, missing memories, and the sense that the nightmare never really ended.
Such a Winter's Day
by Carlene Thompson
2022
Juliet Reid returns to Parrish, Ohio for her twenty-fifth birthday and learns her father may not have taken his own life. As old questions about her brother Fin's murder resurface, a cold killer starts moving again.
Where should I start?
For a classic first taste: Black for Remembrance → All Fall Down → The Way You Look Tonight
If you like buried secrets and old crimes: In the Event of My Death → Don't Close Your Eyes → Since You've Been Gone
For later, twisty standalones: Last Whisper → If You Ever Tell → You Can Run... → Nowhere to Hide
If you want the newer Severn House books: Can't Find My Way Home → Just a Breath Away → Praying for Time → Such a Winter's Day
Author bio
Carlene Thompson was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, but most of the emotional map of her life leads back to Point Pleasant. After an early stretch in Indiana, her family settled there while she was still young, and that mix of small-town closeness, memory, and unease would later power much of her fiction.
Her father was a doctor in general practice, and some of her most vivid childhood stories involve the way rural life and medicine overlapped. Families sometimes paid him with what they had on hand, which could mean food, or a puppy, or a kitten for his daughter. It is easy to see where her lifelong affection for animals began.
Animals never left the picture.
Thompson has said she fell in love with mysteries when she was nine. What hooked her was not fashion or glamour, but intrigue, danger, and creatures she cared about. On weekends she wrote stories for fun, and even later, when college pulled her toward more literary work, she kept coming back to the darker, more emotional suspense novels she most wanted to read.
That academic side of her life was real, though. She studied English at Marshall University, then went on to earn both a master's degree and a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. Afterward she taught at the University of Rio Grande for six years before deciding to leave teaching and write full time.
It was a practical leap, and also a gutsy one.
Her first published novel, Black for Remembrance, came out in 1990. It already had many of the qualities readers now associate with her work, grief that refuses to stay buried, women pulled back toward old terror, and ordinary towns that turn strange when the past starts talking. She once thought publishing five books would be enough. Then ten sounded better. She kept going.
Books like The Way You Look Tonight, In the Event of My Death, Don't Close Your Eyes, and Last Whisper helped define her lane. These are standalones, but they feel connected by mood: family secrets, missing people, uneasy romance, and the sense that someone in the room knows more than they are saying. Readers who like fast hooks and old wounds reopening tend to feel at home in her books.
She also has a strong feel for place. West Virginia appears again and again, along with nearby Ohio, not just as scenery but as pressure. Her towns are pretty, watchful, tight-knit places where everyone has history and nobody gets to disappear cleanly. In later novels like You Can Run..., Nowhere to Hide, To the Grave, and Can't Find My Way Home, that local atmosphere is still doing a lot of the work.
There is also a warm streak running through all the menace. Thompson has long said she loves animals, and many readers notice that dogs and cats often slip naturally into her stories. Today she lives in Point Pleasant with her husband Keith and spends her time writing and caring for the animals she has adopted. That seems exactly right for a writer who knows how to make a place feel haunted, but still lived in.
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