Isis Crawford Books in Order
Explore Isis Crawford books in order, from the cozy Mystery With Recipes novels to the Robin Light books, with summaries, series background, and where to start.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
30 books
Chutes and Adders
by Isis Crawford
1994
Recently widowed Robin Light is trying to keep her Syracuse pet store afloat when an employee dies from a poisonous snake hidden in an unmarked package. With suspicion circling close, she has to find out who set the trap.
Twister
by Isis Crawford
1995
Robin Light's second case sends the Syracuse pet-store owner into another fast, rough investigation where a small favor turns dangerous. The deeper she digs, the more the city's hard edges close in around her.
In Plain Sight
by Isis Crawford
1996
A woman caught in a vicious divorce wants Robin's help protecting the two shih tzus her husband despises. Before Robin can act, the woman is killed, and the pet-store owner is back on a murder trail.
The Scent of Murder
by Isis Crawford
1997
A frightened street girl bursts into Robin's pet store with a ferret and a message from Robin's dead husband. When the girl's legal father is found murdered, Robin has to untangle a family history full of lies.
Vanishing Act
by Isis Crawford
1998
A missing college student draws Robin into a case that starts with worry and turns darker as secrets surface. Following the trail through Syracuse, she finds that disappearing is easier than coming home alive.
Endangered Species
by Isis Crawford
1999
When Manuel and his cousin tell Robin about a suitcase full of smuggled Cuban cigars, the story sounds half ridiculous and half profitable. Her curiosity opens the door to a much uglier crime and puts her in real danger.
Blowing Smoke
by Isis Crawford
2001
Robin is chasing three threads at once, a runaway teen, a suspicious pet psychic, and the identity of a woman in a dead migrant worker's photo. The deeper she digs, the faster the bodies pile up.
Rubbed Out
by Isis Crawford
2002
Robin takes what should be a simple missing-wife job and ends up between a dead lawyer and the Russian mob. To survive, she has to find the missing woman and the money before everyone around her pays.
A Catered Murder
by Isis Crawford
2003
Bernie Simmons comes home to Longely after a bad breakup and helps her sister Libby cater a high school reunion. When the guest of honor drops dead after a sip of water, their family business gets its first murder case.
A Catered Wedding
by Isis Crawford
2004
A society wedding promises money and prestige for Bernie and Libby's catering business, until bride Leeza Sharp is killed hours before the ceremony. The sisters trade canapes for questions as secrets spill from both families.
A Catered Christmas
by Isis Crawford
2005
Libby and Bernie join a televised holiday cooking showdown where celebrity chefs, random ingredients, and bad tempers make a messy mix. When one contestant dies in an oven explosion, the season turns murderous.
Salt City Blues
by Isis Crawford
2005
Robin Light's pet store is struggling, so she takes shifts at a rough Syracuse bar and hopes for quieter days. Then a petty thief linked to her life is shot, and the case proves a lot murkier than gang trouble.
A Catered Valentine's Day
by Isis Crawford
2007
Bernie and Libby are juggling Valentine's orders and a chocolate-themed fundraiser when a local death pulls them into a fresh mystery. Between romantic chaos and business headaches, they have to track a killer with plenty of possible targets.
No Good Deed
by Isis Crawford
2007
A trip to confront a possible cheater leads Robin Light straight into a killing, then into the fallout from a friend's shocking suicide. Her search for answers pulls her through old loyalties, corruption, and danger in Syracuse.
A Catered Halloween
by Isis Crawford
2008
The sisters cater a haunted house fundraiser at Longely's old Peabody School, where locals still whisper about a girl's death years earlier. When socialite Amethyst Applegate is murdered inside, past and present collide.
A Catered Birthday Party
by Isis Crawford
2009
A spoiled pug's birthday party seems like easy money until wealthy Annabel Colbert drinks poisoned wine and dies. Bernie and Libby promised the victim answers, and the guest list is full of people who wanted her gone.
A Catered Thanksgiving
by Isis Crawford
2010
Bernie and Libby cater Thanksgiving for the feuding Field family, who are all anxious about patriarch Monty's will. When the turkey explodes in his face during a snowstorm, the sisters are trapped in the mansion with a killer.
A Catered St. Patrick's Day
by Isis Crawford
2012
A St. Patrick's Day celebration goes sour when Mike Sweeney is found dead in a vat of green beer. Asked to help a powerful client's nephew, Bernie and Libby uncover a club full of bad blood and buried secrets.
A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange
by Isis Crawford
2013
Bernie and Libby agree to judge a Christmas cookie contest for a TV show, only to see the favorite die in a suspicious crash before the competition. Rival bakers, missing recipes, and old grudges heat up the case.
A Catered Fourth of July
by Isis Crawford
2014
During a sweltering Revolutionary War reenactment on the Fourth of July, notorious playboy Jack Devlin ends up truly dead on the field. With suspicion falling on Bernie's beau Marvin, the sisters hurry to clear him.
A Catered Mother's Day
by Isis Crawford
2015
Their friend Ellen fakes her own kidnapping to jolt her ungrateful family, then ends up arrested with a dead man in her motel room. Bernie and Libby race to clear her name before the prank ruins her life.
A Catered Tea Party
by Isis Crawford
2016
At the opening-night fundraiser for Longely's new Blue House arts complex, billionaire Zeb Zalinsky collapses during an Alice in Wonderland tea party. Bernie and Libby must sort through art-world grudges, money, and murder.
A Catered Costume Party
by Isis Crawford
2017
Hired to cater Darius Witherspoon's Halloween party at the Berkshire Arms, Bernie and Libby walk into a gathering already shadowed by his missing wife. When Darius dies and a second body turns up, the sisters know it is no suicide.
A Catered Cat Wedding
by Isis Crawford
2018
Bernie and Libby cater Susie Katz's lavish wedding for her two Russian blue cats, complete with rival breeders and bickering heirs. When the chaos spills into murder, the sisters have a house full of suspects and claws out.
A Catered New Year's Eve
by Isis Crawford
2019
An estranged relative asks Bernie and Libby to cater a New Year's Eve party and witness a diary reading meant to expose an old killer. When a guest dies and the diary vanishes, family history turns deadly.
A Catered Book Club Murder
by Isis Crawford
2020
When punctual art restorer Margo Hemsley fails to pick up her usual pastries for mystery book club, Bernie and Libby know something is wrong. Finding her body uncovers missing paintings, hidden secrets, and a case the police dismiss too quickly.
A Catered Doggie Wedding
by Isis Crawford
2022
Bernie and Libby expect a silly publicity stunt when they cater a wedding for two golden retrievers at a new doggie day care. Threats, vandalism, and a dead contractor turn the furry celebration into a murder case.
A Catered Quilting Bee
by Isis Crawford
2024
Catering a quilt exhibition sounds harmless until one quilter is found hanged in her sewing room. As Bernie and Libby look past the suicide ruling, they uncover a hidden past and a missing antique quilt fragment.
A Catered Bake-Off
by Isis Crawford
2025
Bernie and Libby join a reality-show bake-off at a country estate, where sabotaged ingredients, broken equipment, and even wandering goats spell trouble. When a judge dies in an espresso-machine blast, the cameras keep rolling and so does the danger.
A Catered PTA Murder
by Isis Crawford
2026
Back-to-school season turns nasty when PTA president Rita Sullivan hires Bernie and Libby, then ends up dead beside their cakes with a lipstick X across her body. The sisters have to sort through blackmail, feuds, and business secrets.
Where should I start?
If you want the cozy culinary mysteries from the beginning: A Catered Murder → A Catered Wedding → A Catered Christmas
If you want the holiday-heavy middle books: A Catered Valentine's Day → A Catered Halloween → A Catered Thanksgiving
If you want the newer Bernie and Libby cases: A Catered Book Club Murder → A Catered Doggie Wedding → A Catered Quilting Bee → A Catered Bake-Off
If you want Crawford's darker Syracuse crime novels: Chutes and Adders → In Plain Sight → The Scent of Murder → Salt City Blues
Author bio
Isis Crawford was born in Egypt, the daughter of parents in the diplomatic corps. When she was five, the family returned to the United States. Her mother opened a restaurant in Upper Westchester County, and her father became a university professor. That mix of food, travel, and close observation would end up shaping almost everything she wrote.
Food and movement were there from the start.
Before the Bernie and Libby books, Crawford worked on both sides of the page. She ran a catering service and also wrote travel pieces, with publisher bios noting articles on places as far apart as Omsk and Paraguay. That background matters. In her fiction, meals are never just decoration. Kitchens are workplaces, parties are pressure cookers, and the details of how people shop, cook, serve, and eat tell you who they are.
Her first crime novels appeared under the name Barbara Block. Starting with Chutes and Adders in 1994, she introduced Robin Light, a Syracuse pet-store owner who slips into private detection whether it is wise or not. Books like In Plain Sight, The Scent of Murder, Rubbed Out, Salt City Blues, and No Good Deed are tougher and darker than her later cozy work. They are full of struggling businesses, rough neighborhoods, lost animals, missing people, and the kind of bad decisions that leave bruises.
Then she changed kitchens, not mysteries.
With A Catered Murder in 2003, Crawford launched the series most readers know best, the Bernie and Libby Simmons books. The hook is simple and strong: two sisters run A Little Taste of Heaven in the small New York town of Longely, and every catered job seems to end with a body. A Catered Wedding and A Catered Christmas built on that idea, and later titles like A Catered Fourth of July, A Catered Book Club Murder, and A Catered Bake-Off show how durable the setup is. Readers come for the food and the holidays, but they stay for the sisterly sparring, the family mess, and the pleasure of watching smart women keep poking at problems until the truth gives way.
What makes Crawford's work easy to spot is the way she builds mystery from ordinary working life. Her characters are caterers, pet-store owners, ex-cops, neighbors, customers, and relatives who cannot quite stay out of one another's business. She likes upstate New York settings, busy small businesses, and communities where everyone thinks they know everyone else. She also likes secrets, especially the old family kind that sit quietly for years and then ruin dinner.
She writes crime with a practical streak.
Even when the setups are playful, a cat wedding, a cookie contest, a haunted-house fundraiser, the people inside them have money worries, grudges, bad romances, and private histories that feel lived in. The Robin Light books lean streetwise and bruised. The Mystery With Recipes novels are warmer, but they still have bite. That balance is a big part of her appeal.
More recent publisher bios place Crawford in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, still writing new Bernie and Libby mysteries. That feels fitting. New York, in all its different moods, from small-town kitchens to Syracuse back streets, runs through her fiction like a steady line of heat.
Edited by
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