Eileen EF Watkins Books in Order

If you want cozy cat mysteries: The Persian Always Meows Twice → The Bengal Identity → Feral Attraction
If you like paranormal sleuthing: Dark Music → Hex, Death and Rock 'N' Roll
If you want vampire-leaning suspense: One Blood → Dance with the Dragon
If you prefer standalone thrillers: Ride a Dancing Horse → Black Flowers → Paragon

Eileen EF Watkins grew up in Cranford, New Jersey, and started making books almost as soon as she could print, folding paper, drawing covers, and filling pages with horse adventures. By high school at Benedictine Academy in Elizabeth, her stories had turned into Nancy Drew style mysteries. She wanted to write novels early, and she never really let go of that plan.

In her freshman year at Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she won a campus short story contest. Then came the moment she still points to as the big turning point: a friend loaned her Dracula, and she read it by flashlight during a thunderstorm blackout in the dorm. That mix of suspense, atmosphere, and the uncanny stuck.

It shows.

Before fiction became her main public identity, Watkins spent more than twenty years as a journalist. She wrote and edited for daily newspapers and freelanced for magazines, often covering art, architecture, interior design, and home improvement. That background shows up all over her novels. Old houses matter, rooms have texture, and settings feel lived in instead of pasted on.

She published early short fiction in Belladonna, Doppleganger, and the anthology In a Fearful State. She also won contest recognition for excerpts from Paragon and Black Flowers. Long before the Cat Groomer books, she was writing darker suspense under the name E. F. Watkins, building stories that mixed mystery with horror, romance, and the paranormal.

Her later series brought in a cozy mystery audience. The Cat Groomer books begin with The Persian Always Meows Twice, where groomer Cassie McGlone gets pulled into a murder case through one very important cat. Books like The Bengal Identity and Night of the Were-Cat keep that same balance of small-town sleuthing, animal know-how, and genuine stakes. Readers who like cozies with real affection for cats, but also solid puzzles, usually settle in quickly.

She also wrote the Quinn Matthews Haunting Mysteries, beginning with Dark Music. Those books lean more paranormal. Quinn is a journalist with growing psychic sensitivity, and the series gives Watkins room to play with old houses, restless spirits, music, and secrets from the past. If the Cat Groomer books are her warmest entry point, Quinn Matthews shows her taste for a spookier mood.

Outside those series, Watkins has moved between horse-centered suspense, vampire fiction, and standalone thrillers. Ride a Dancing Horse brings sabotage and danger to a ranch that breeds Andalusian show horses. One Blood and Dance with the Dragon dive into darker supernatural territory. Across all of it, certain interests keep resurfacing: animals, intuition, people in over their heads, and the thin line between everyday life and something stranger.

She has stayed active in New Jersey's writing world through groups such as Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Liberty States Fiction Writers, and she has served as a publicist for Sisters in Crime Central Jersey and the Deadly Ink Mystery Conference. She is still a very New Jersey writer, rooted in local places, older houses, and communities that look ordinary until trouble moves in. She has also said she is seldom without at least one cat at home and still makes regular trips to the riding stable.