Cheryl Hollon Books in Order

If you want the clearest entry point: Pane and Suffering → Shards of Murder → Cracked to Death
If you want mountain scenery and moonshine: Still Knife Painting → Draw and Order → Death a Sketch
If you want Savannah Webb's later run: Etched in Tears → Shattered at Sea → Down in Flames

Cheryl Hollon was born in Hazel Green, Kentucky. Her parents moved to Dayton, Ohio, when she was very young, but eastern Kentucky stayed close. She spent her summers on her grandparents' farm in Wolfe County, learning the rhythms of country life and getting to know the trails, food, and family stories that would later show up in her fiction.

Years later, that landscape became one of her best settings.

Before she published mysteries, Hollon had a very different career. She worked as an engineer, designing and installing military flight simulators, and that job took her to England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. It was a long way from a writer's shed, but it gave her a practical cast of mind and a lot of life experience. Then she left engineering and gave her long-held wish a real shot, writing fiction full time.

She has said that getting there took patience. She kept working until the writing finally felt good to her, and a face-to-face critique group helped her sharpen what was already on the page. That steady, workmanlike approach still fits her books. They are cozy mysteries, but they are also stories about people doing jobs, solving problems, and trying to hold ordinary life together when something terrible lands in the middle of it.

Her mystery reading leans classic and character-focused. She has pointed to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Louise Penny as important influences, which makes sense once you see how much care she puts into clues, setting, and the people around the crime.

Her first published series begins with Pane and Suffering, and it grows out of another part of her everyday life: glass art. Hollon and her husband create stained, fused, and painted glass in their St. Petersburg, Florida, studio, and she also paints in oils. That hands-on knowledge gives the Webb's Glass Shop books a solid feel. When readers open Shards of Murder, Etched in Tears, or Down in Flames, they get more than a puzzle. They get shop classes, art festivals, museum events, tools, process, and the feel of a creative business that has to keep running while Savannah Webb chases a killer.

Then Hollon turned back toward Kentucky for the Paint & Shine books. In Still Knife Painting, Draw and Order, and Death a Sketch, Miranda Trent runs an unusual business that mixes outdoor painting, Southern cooking, and moonshine in the Daniel Boone National Forest. The series pulls directly from Hollon's family ties to the region, including the farmhouse where her father grew up and the summers she spent there as a child. That is a big part of why the setting feels sturdy under the mystery. Readers who like strong atmosphere, food, local lore, and a little wilderness with their whodunits tend to feel at home there fast.

She likes work, and her characters do too.

That may be one reason her fiction is easy to settle into. Her sleuths are not dabbling for fun. They are running shops, leading tours, meeting deadlines, and protecting people they care about. The crimes matter, but so do the meals, the tools, the weather, the neighborhoods, and the small choices that make a life hold together.

These days Hollon lives in downtown St. Petersburg with her husband and writes every day as a full-time author. She has also stayed active in the mystery world as a past president of the Florida Gulf Coast Sisters in Crime and a regular presence at writers' conferences. If you read her for the first time, that mix of everyday craft, strong settings, and steady storytelling is the thread that ties the books together.