Hilary Davidson Books in Order

For a New York police thriller: One Small Sacrifice → Don't Look Down
For travel-heavy mysteries: The Damage Done → The Next One to Fall → Evil in All Its Disguises
For family-secret suspense: Her Last Breath → Every Lie I Told
For a twisty standalone: Blood Always Tells

Hilary Davidson was born and raised in Toronto, and she started early. As a child she won a writing contest at eight, which feels like a neat clue in hindsight. Long before crime fiction, she was already the kind of person who liked stories, structure, and the small strange details that make people memorable.

She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1994 and moved into magazine work. An internship at Harper's Magazine in New York gave her an early foothold in publishing, and she later joined the staff of Canadian Living in Toronto. That mix of New York and Canadian magazine life seems to have suited her, practical on one side, curious and city-aware on the other.

Editing was useful, but writing pulled harder. Davidson left staff work, went freelance, and built a long career as a journalist before fiction took center stage.

Travel writing shaped a lot of what came next. Her first travel article was about New Orleans cemeteries, and her second was about the brothels of Pompeii, which tells you something about the corners of the world that caught her eye. She went on to write eighteen nonfiction books, most of them guidebooks, and reported from places ranging from Thailand and Peru to Israel and Easter Island. Even when the assignments were practical, she kept gravitating toward settings with history, atmosphere, and just a little menace around the edges.

Then she started turning that eye for place and unease toward crime fiction.

Her debut novel, The Damage Done, introduced travel writer Lily Moore and won the 2011 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. It also set up several things Davidson does especially well: missing women, damaged families, secrets that get worse the longer they are protected, and heroines who are smart enough to see trouble but human enough to get pulled into it anyway. The Lily Moore books, The Damage Done, The Next One to Fall, and Evil in All Its Disguises, move from New York to Peru and Acapulco without losing that intimate emotional pressure.

That sense of place never feels decorative. In Davidson's fiction, location changes the whole temperature of the story. Peru in The Next One to Fall is high, beautiful, and unsettling. Acapulco in Evil in All Its Disguises turns a work trip into a trap. New York, which she has called home since October 2001, keeps returning as a city of ambition, grief, class tension, and people who can hide almost anything if they understand how power works. Readers who like suspense with atmosphere usually notice that right away.

She later built another New York thread with the Shadows of New York books, One Small Sacrifice and Don't Look Down, which bring NYPD detective Sheryn Sterling to the front. The standalones widen the range again. Blood Always Tells is a dark knot of family loyalty and deception. Her Last Breath digs into sisterhood, marriage, and buried resentments. Her newest novel, Every Lie I Told, was published on June 16, 2026, and centers on a woman whose professional talent for spin becomes part of the danger.

Short fiction is a big part of her career too. Davidson has written around fifty short stories, and My Side of the Matter won the 2018 Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Her shorter work has also earned a Derringer Award, which helps explain why her novels are so controlled. She knows how to build pressure fast.

What readers tend to come back for is the mix. Davidson writes twisty plots, but she also pays close attention to sisters, friends, exes, and the half-healed damage people carry from one city or one relationship into the next. She has also written openly about living with celiac disease, and she still writes about travel. That combination, reporter's observation, real places, and a taste for danger hiding in plain sight, runs through almost everything she does.