Jessica Ellicott Books in Order

If you want the classic village setup: Murder in an English Village → Murder Flies the Coop → Murder Cuts the Mustard
If you like friendship-first sleuthing with more village scandal: Murder Comes to Call → Murder Through the English Post → Murder at an English Séance
If you prefer WWII home front mysteries: Death in a Blackout → Murder on the Home Front
If you want the London school detour: Murder at a London Finishing School

Jessica Ellicott is a pen name used by mystery writer Jessica Everett, who has also published as Jessie Crockett and Jessica Estevao. She has said she has lived in New Hampshire since she was eight, and today she splits her time between a tiny New Hampshire village and the coast of Maine.

Writing came early.

She has said she felt like a writer before she could read. As a child she kept company with a crowd of imaginary friends and was already inventing trouble for them. That instinct, to build a world and then complicate it, still sits at the heart of her fiction.

She was shy, too. By her own account, she once could not even order a pizza by phone. A sales job at sixteen helped push her out of that shell, and she has talked about deciding that shyness could not be allowed to run her life.

Her route to novels was steady rather than flashy. She wrote stories young, kept at it through different stages of adult life, and eventually found her footing in crime fiction. In interviews, she has spoken about wanting lighter mysteries when family life felt full of worry, books that promised things would be all right by the last page.

Later, she moved more strongly toward historical fiction and gave herself room for darker shades. That shift makes sense when you look at her catalog. Even in her cozier books, there is usually some pressure coming in from the outside world, war, money, class, scandal, or the simple fact that women are being told to stay in their place.

Under the Jessica Ellicott name, she is best known for the Beryl and Edwina mysteries, which begin with Murder in an English Village. Those books pair bold American Beryl Helliwell with the more proper Edwina Davenport in post-World War I England. Readers tend to come for the murders, then stay for the friendship, the village gossip, and the sharp little social observations that run under the cozy surface.

She took a different route in the Billie Harkness books, starting with Death in a Blackout and continuing in Murder on the Home Front. These stories move into 1940s Hull and follow a young woman trying to prove herself as a police constable during the war. They are brisk, traditional mysteries, but they also make room for fear, duty, class, and the daily strain of life on the home front.

Her other pen names fill out the picture. As Jessie Crockett she wrote the Sugar Grove books and the Daphne du Maurier Award winning Live Free or Die. As Jessica Estevao she wrote the Change of Fortune mysteries, including Whispers Beyond the Veil. She has also been an Agatha Award nominee. Across all those names, the constants are easy to spot: smart women, close communities, buried secrets, and a real affection for history without ever making it feel like homework.

The personal details in her public bios are memorable in the best way. She loves fountain pens and throwing parties. She knits wool socks, speaks Portuguese with cheerful disregard for strict grammar, and lives with her family and a poodle named Sam. It all fits the books rather well, warm, curious, a little mischievous, and always ready to follow a mystery into trouble.