Cealie Gunther Mystery Books in Order

The Cealie Gunther mysteries center on Cealie, a widowed grandmother and business owner who would prefer to make her own choices, even when family and romance keep tugging her in other directions. She runs a copyediting business, not a detective agency, but her curiosity and refusal to ignore a problem repeatedly place her in the middle of murder investigations.

Cealie is not a typical hard-boiled sleuth. She worries about family, independence, aging, and whether she can trust herself to love again. She is also funny, determined, and willing to ask the extra question that makes a killer uncomfortable.

The series starts with Relative Danger. Cealie arrives in the Chicago suburbs to attend her motherless granddaughter Kat's graduation, only for a school custodian's death to threaten the ceremony. Kat's beloved Spanish teacher becomes a suspect, and Cealie takes a substitute-teaching job to learn what happened inside the school. The more she investigates, the clearer it becomes that Kat may be in danger too.

Family is never far from the evidence.

In Killer Cousins, Cealie changes travel plans after her cousin Stevie asks for help in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The two women have a difficult history, and Cealie arrives to find a dead man in Stevie's yard. The victim belonged to a stop-smoking group that becomes central to the case, while Cealie's on-and-off love, Gil Thurman, opens another of his Cajun restaurants nearby.

Deadly Reunion moves the action to an Alaskan cruise, where Cealie joins former classmates for a reunion and hopes to visit her son. A death on board turns the trip into another investigation. Gil also turns up, adding romantic strain to a trip already filled with old friendships, hidden histories, and people Cealie is not sure she ever truly knew.

The books are light mysteries with real stakes. Their settings change from a school to the Smoky Mountains to a cruise ship, but Cealie remains the constant: a woman trying to protect the people she loves without giving up the independent life she has built. Read them in order, beginning with Relative Danger, to follow both the cases and Cealie's changing relationship with Gil and her family.