Henrietta and Inspector Howard Books in Order

Michelle Cox's best-known series starts with A Girl Like You and drops you into 1935 Chicago, where Henrietta Von Harmon is trying to keep her family afloat after her father's death. She is young, broke, and far more capable than most people realize. What begins as a desperate search for work pulls her into taxi-dance halls, burlesque theaters, and then into the path of Inspector Clive Howard, a detective with secrets of his own.

That meeting sets the whole series in motion.

Henrietta and Clive are the heart of these books. She comes from a crowded, struggling household and sees the city from street level. He moves through police work with a sharper sense of control, but he also comes from money and a very different social world. Much of the tension, especially early on, comes from that class divide. The series gets a lot of mileage out of watching them learn how to trust each other, argue with each other, and solve cases together.

Chicago matters here. Cox uses the Depression-era city not as wallpaper but as pressure: jobs are scarce, women are vulnerable, neighborhoods feel distinct, and one bad break can upend a whole family. As the books continue, the world expands to North Shore estates, Castle Linley in England, and even Europe on the edge of war. The scale grows, but the stories still return to the same basic question: how do decent people build a life when money, class, and danger keep closing in?

It's a romance, but never only a romance.

Each book brings its own mystery, from missing women and blackmail to suspicious deaths, spiritualists, stolen art, and a possibly haunted estate. At the same time, there is a strong continuing family story running underneath everything. Henrietta's siblings, Clive's relations, and a wider circle of friends and allies all matter, so the books reward reading in order. The tone shifts easily between grit and glamour, with equal interest in working kitchens, back rooms, grand houses, and the awkward business of falling in love while trying to stay alive.

If you like historical mysteries that give as much space to relationships as they do to clues, this series is a good fit. Start with A Girl Like You and keep going in order. The cases stand on their own, but the emotional payoffs build from book to book.