DE Ireland Books in Order

DE Ireland is the shared pen name of two Michigan writers, Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta. They met as anthropology undergraduates, with Sharon leaning toward archaeology and history and Meg toward linguistics. By the time both were writing novels in the early 1990s, they had already been friends for years and were steady critique partners.

That long warm-up shows on the page.

Sharon brought a deep interest in history, research, and British settings. Born and raised in Detroit, she has said she knew she was a writer at nine and never really looked back. She later worked as a freelance writer, a principal investigator on an archaeological site, and a college history instructor, then published romance, fantasy, mystery, and nonfiction under several names, including Sharon Farrow and Cynthia Kirk. She has also lived in Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, but Michigan, especially the Lake Michigan shoreline, remained home.

Meg came to the partnership with her own love of historical fiction and a wide reading life that started early. She has traced that interest back to museum trips in Michigan and a steady diet of classic adventure and mystery. Born in Grosse Pointe, she earned a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University and later an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. Before and alongside fiction, she also worked as a freelance writer and substitute teacher. Today she lives in southeastern Michigan.

She also brought a strong mystery resume. Her western novel Double Crossing won the Spur Award for Best First Novel, and readers who like her solo work often point to capable heroines, brisk pacing, and a clear sense of place. Later, writing as Meg Macy, she moved into cozy mystery with titles like Bearly Departed. Sharon's solo fiction went in a different direction, but with a similar affection for history and trouble, and she later launched her own cozy series with Dying for Strawberries.

The spark for DE Ireland came during a drive across Michigan, when Meg was listening to the My Fair Lady soundtrack and started wondering what would happen if Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins became detectives. She took the idea to Sharon, who already knew Edwardian England well. Because they had spent years reading and sharpening each other's manuscripts, they knew how to divide the work and still sound like one voice. They dug into George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and chose to keep the sharper, less romantic tension between Eliza and Higgins.

It was a smart idea.

The result was a four-book historical mystery run, Wouldn't It Be Deadly, Move Your Blooming Corpse, Get Me To The Grave On Time, and With a Little Bit of Blood. The books mix murder, class comedy, and strong period detail, moving from drawing rooms and theater parties to racecourses, weddings, and country house weekends. Readers usually come for the familiar characters, then stay for Eliza's nerve, Higgins's grumbling brilliance, and the pleasure of watching the two meet as real partners instead of teacher and pupil.

The series also got attention inside the mystery world. Wouldn't It Be Deadly and Get Me To The Grave On Time were Agatha Award finalists for best historical mystery. Outside the shared pen name, both writers kept building their own careers, but DE Ireland remains a neat example of what can happen when two longtime friends finally find the right project. It feels researched, playful, and a little stubborn, which is probably exactly what Eliza and Higgins would want.