Devon Delaney Books in Order

If you want the full story from the start: Expiration Date → Final Roasting Place → Guilty as Charred
If you like family-and-town stakes: Guilty as Charred → Eat, Drink and Be Wary → A Half-Baked Alibi
If you want holiday and event vibes: Double Chocolate Cookie Murder → A Holiday for Homicide
If you want the newer books first: Murder for Good Measure → Serving Up Spite → A Holiday for Homicide

Devon Delaney writes cozy mysteries that feel close to lived experience, which makes sense once you know how she got here. She has spent her life in the Northeast and now lives in coastal Connecticut. Before fiction became her main focus, she taught computer education and LEGO robotics for many years.

Writing was always part of the picture, but it was cooking that gave her fiction its shape. She has said that she entered her first recipe contest almost on a whim while her three children were napping. She spotted a magazine ad, sent in a recipe, won the contest, and suddenly had a new obsession.

Then the kitchen took over.

Delaney kept experimenting at home, sometimes so often that family dinner became its own test lab. She has joked that one of her children once asked if regular chicken could count as a special treat. That mix of competition, humor, and practical home life still runs through her books.

Over the next couple of decades, recipe contests became a serious part of her world. She won major appliances, five-figure cash prizes, and several trips to Disney World. She also won a national writing contest for her foodie poem Ode to Pork Passion, which feels like a neat summary of her interests: food, wordplay, and a willingness to lean into the fun of both.

A move to coastal Connecticut helped push things further. Delaney has said she used that moment as a career reset and gave herself a year to write a publishable book. The result was Expiration Date in 2018, the first Cook-Off Mystery and the beginning of Sherry Oliveri's busy life of contests, clues, and culinary chaos.

That series became her home base. Books like Final Roasting Place, Guilty as Charred, Eat, Drink and Be Wary, Double Chocolate Cookie Murder, and A Holiday for Homicide all build on the same appealing setup: a small Connecticut town, a sharp amateur sleuth, competitive cook-offs, and trouble that lands uncomfortably close to family and friends. Readers who enjoy culinary cozies tend to like the way Delaney mixes recipes, local gossip, and murder without losing the warmth of everyday life.

She writes from the inside out.

Because she knows the contest world firsthand, the cooking details in her books tend to feel grounded instead of generic. The same goes for the handmade, homey side of Sherry's world. Delaney enjoys gardening, needlepoint, painting, tennis, preserving produce, and hooking rugs, and those kinds of hobbies show up naturally in her fiction. They give the stories texture without making them fussy.

Her author bio also makes clear that she is still very much a maker outside the page. She is a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and by all accounts someone who likes to stay busy. Her standard poodle, Rocket, even gets a shout-out. That all fits. Delaney's books are built by someone who likes food, craft, community, and the small dramas of ordinary life, which is probably why her mysteries feel so comfortable settling in and still know how to keep the pot simmering.