Darci Hannah Books in Order

If you want a bakery cozy with a lighthouse and small-town Michigan: Murder at the Beacon Bakeshop → Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-Off → Murder at the Blueberry Festival
If you want fruit-filled Door County cozies: Cherry Pies & Deadly Lies → Cherry Scones & Broken Bones
If you want ghosts, food, and a stronger paranormal thread: A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor → A Spirited Supper at Dundoon Castle
If you want historical Scotland with romance and atmosphere: The Exile of Sara Stevenson → The Angel of Blythe Hall

Darci Hannah was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, and grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. She has spent most of her life somewhere around the Great Lakes, and that mix of water, weather, and small-town lake culture shows up again and again in her fiction.

Long before she was publishing novels, she was the kind of person who liked adventure in real life as much as on the page. She has written and spoken about a long-running love of travel, hiking, paddling, history, and old places, especially lighthouses and the stories attached to them.

The outdoors stayed with her.

Hannah studied at Indiana University, and for years writing was more of a stubborn inner pull than a formal career plan. In interviews she has said she did not really picture herself as a novelist when she was young. That changed in her mid-thirties, when she was home with her three small sons and finally decided to listen to the voice in her head and start writing fiction seriously.

The road was not instant. After years of work and plenty of rejection slips, her first published novel, The Exile of Sara Stevenson, arrived in 2010. Set in Scotland and built around a remote lighthouse, it shows two things that still matter in her books now: a love of moody settings, and an interest in the pull between everyday life and the unexplained.

The Angel of Blythe Hall followed in 2011 and kept her in historical Scotland, this time with a family fortress, political trouble, and a strong-willed heroine at the center. Those early books made it clear that Hannah liked history, danger, romance, and a touch of the uncanny, but she writes them in a way that keeps the story moving.

Then she found cozy mysteries, and the fit made sense.

Her first cozy, Cherry Pies & Deadly Lies, introduced Whitney Bloom, a cherry-loving baker pulled back to her family’s Door County orchard and inn when murder hits close to home. Its follow-up, Cherry Scones & Broken Bones, leans into the same pleasures: food, family tension, a pretty tourist town, and a heroine trying to rebuild her life while asking awkward questions. Readers who like recipes, small-town drama, and a little romantic friction usually find a lot to enjoy there.

From there Hannah moved into the Beacon Harbor books, starting with Murder at the Beacon Bakeshop. That series gives her another perfect playground: a bakery inside a lighthouse, a Lake Michigan town full of festivals, a big lovable dog, and just enough ghostly atmosphere to keep things interesting. More recently, she has pushed the paranormal side a little further with A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor and A Spirited Supper at Dundoon Castle, where chef Bunny MacBride cooks for a ghost-hunting reality show and keeps stumbling into murder.

Across all of these books, certain Hannah favorites keep turning up: food, dogs, friendships, family complications, haunted histories, and places that feel lived in. She now lives in a small town in Michigan with her husband, their three sons, and two dogs, and she has also worked at the historic Howell Carnegie District Library. When she is not writing, she is usually baking, walking the dogs, drinking coffee, or finding a reason to wander near the water.