Dianne Freeman Books in Order

If you want the full character arc: A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder → A Lady's Guide to Gossip and Murder → A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Murder
If you want romance alongside the mystery: A Fiancée's Guide to First Wives and Murder → A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder → A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder
If you want the Paris and France books: An Art Lover's Guide to Paris and Murder → George and Frances Roll the Dice → A Daughter's Guide to Mothers and Murder

Dianne Freeman grew up in Michigan and spent thirty years working in corporate accounting and finance before she became a full-time novelist. That second career eventually led to the Countess of Harleigh mysteries, a historical series built around murder, manners, and an American heroine finding her footing in Victorian society.

Books came first.

Freeman has said she was an avid reader for as long as she can remember, and that her mother introduced her early to Agatha Christie and Edith Wharton. She read them again and again, and you can see the blend in her fiction: classic mystery structure, sharp social observation, and a lasting interest in the late Victorian period. That mix eventually became the backbone of the Countess of Harleigh books.

Writing, though, arrived by stages. There was no single lightning-bolt moment, just years of working at it alongside her day job. She kept journals, wrote and sold magazine articles, and tried her hand at fiction, including two romance novels she has joked were terrible. She also teamed up with a friend she met through a writers' conference to write the nonfiction book Haunted Highway. Then work got busy, she got married, and writing drifted out of daily life for about fourteen years.

Retirement brought her back to it.

Even then, it was not instant. Freeman has said she started again with a few false starts before the rhythm returned and she found herself deep into her first mystery manuscript. That book became A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder, published in 2018. It introduced Frances Wynn, an American-born countess in Victorian England whose widowhood gives her room to breathe, ask questions, and notice what other people miss. The series grew from there through books like A Lady's Guide to Gossip and Murder, A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder, and An Art Lover's Guide to Paris and Murder, each one sending Frances into another tangle of secrets, status games, and murder.

The series also widens as it goes. Early books stay close to London society and country house trouble. Later ones let Frances and George travel, first as an engaged couple and then as newlyweds, which gives Freeman room to bring in Paris art circles, backstage theater gossip, and seaside intrigue while keeping the mysteries personal.

Readers who click with Freeman usually seem to like the same things: the mix of wit and danger, the social puzzle layered on top of the murder puzzle, and the steady relationship at the center of the series. Her books move between London drawing rooms, country houses, Paris streets, and seaside resorts, but they keep returning to sharp observation, family complications, good gossip, and a heroine who can work a room as well as a case. The series has won Agatha and Lefty awards, and Freeman has also been a finalist for the Macavity's Sue Feder Memorial Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

These days she writes full time and splits her time between Michigan and Arizona with her husband. She has also said she enjoys reading, golfing, and gardening, which feels like a nice counterweight to all the fictional corpses. Her route to publishing was not quick, but that is part of what makes her story memorable. She built it in pieces, came back to it after a long gap, and made the second act count.