Emily Carpenter Books in Order

Emily Carpenter grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, with books close at hand. She has said that one of her earliest writing efforts was a thoroughly borrowed version of The Pokey Little Puppy, complete with Crayola pictures and a stapled binding made by her mother. The Birmingham Public Library was another early favorite, a place she remembers for its marble floors, murals, and huge atrium.

She studied communications at Auburn University, with minors in journalism and theater. After graduation, Carpenter moved to New York City with her husband and went to work at CBS in the Daytime Drama division.

Her job put her behind the scenes of As the World Turns and Guiding Light. She read daily scripts and wrote short plot summaries for newspapers, which meant boiling plenty of amnesia, betrayals, and romantic disasters down to a few sharp sentences. It was practical story training, even if it wasn't yet the kind of writing she hoped to do herself.

After returning to Atlanta, Carpenter tried spec scripts for soap operas, then shifted to screenplays. She sent work to agents and production companies, placed in a few contests, and was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. She also worked on two independent films, an experience that helped her decide that production wasn't where she wanted to stay.

Writing was.

With her three sons in school full-time, Carpenter began taking fiction seriously. She joined the Atlanta Writers Club and a critique group, read craft books, and started a romantic comedy manuscript in 2011. That book and a second attempt didn't find an agent, but they helped her work out what kind of stories she wanted to tell.

The answer was darker. Carpenter turned toward creepy, atmospheric Southern Gothic suspense, and that change led to Burying the Honeysuckle Girls, her 2016 debut. The novel follows a woman returning to Mobile, Alabama, where grief, recovery, and a frightening family history collide. It set the pattern for many of Carpenter's books: women carrying old wounds, places with long memories, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.

She continued in that territory with The Weight of Lies, in which Meg Ashley investigates the real murder behind her mother's famous horror novel, and Every Single Secret, a psychological thriller about an engaged couple at a deeply unsettling therapy retreat. Until the Day I Die splits its suspense between a grieving mother sent to a remote Caribbean resort and the daughter who suspects a corporate conspiracy back home. In Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters, a granddaughter digs into the hidden past of a faith-healer grandmother.

Her newer work keeps finding danger beneath appealing surfaces. Gothictown follows a family who accepts an irresistible offer to start over in a small Georgia town, while A Spell for Saints and Sinners brings readers to Savannah, where a young psychic becomes entangled with a wealthy local family. Carpenter now lives in Georgia with her family, still writing the kind of tense, Southern-set stories where the past is never quite finished.