Emily Kenyon Books in Order

In the Emily Kenyon books Gregg Olsen drops a single mother and small‑town cop into crimes that feel far too big for any one person to handle. Emily has left a high‑pressure homicide job in Seattle for the quieter town of Cherrystone, Washington, hoping to give her teenage daughter Jenna a steadier life. What she finds instead is that evil travels just fine on back roads and farm lanes.

A Cold Dark Place opens with a devastated farmhouse in the Pacific Northwest, a family slaughtered, and a teenage son missing. Emily leads the investigation, but Jenna secretly reaches out to the boy, convinced he’s more scared witness than killer. As the bodies of other families start turning up in different states, the case stretches back decades and brushes against the failure that drove Emily off the Seattle force in the first place.

In Heart of Ice, Emily is now the county sheriff when a pregnant young woman is found dead beneath winter ice. The case soon links to a series of sorority‑girl murders in neighboring states. On paper it’s a textbook serial‑killer hunt, but each new scene feels uncomfortably personal, and Emily begins to suspect the predator is rehearsing for an attack on the one victim he truly wants: her daughter.

Across the series Olsen balances procedural detail with the messy realities of family life. Emily has to juggle crime scenes, strained relationships with former colleagues, and Jenna’s very normal teenage rebellions. Cases sprawl from quiet cul‑de‑sacs to highway motels and rural churches, but the stakes remain rooted in whether this mother and daughter can stay one step ahead of the violence closing in on them.

Readers who like their crime fiction grounded in recognizable places will notice how often the books return to storm‑streaked Washington backroads, old farmsteads and campus houses. Olsen uses those familiar settings to explore questions about guilt, second chances, and the way secrets inside a family can be as dangerous as the stranger in the dark.

Although each Emily Kenyon novel tells a complete story, reading them in order lets you watch Emily and Jenna age, argue, and keep choosing each other in the middle of extraordinary pressure. Start with A Cold Dark Place if you want the full arc of how a quiet town cop finds herself chasing a killer across the country while fighting to protect her only child.