Julianna Deering Books in Order

If you want the true starting point: Rules of Murder
If you want the early romance and best character build: Rules of Murder → Death by the Book → Murder at the Mikado
If you want Drew and Madeline as a married team: Dressed for Death → Murder on the Moor → Death at Thorburn Hall
If you want the full series arc: Rules of Murder → Death by the Book → Murder at the Mikado → Dressed for Death → Murder on the Moor → Death at Thorburn Hall

Julianna Deering is the pen name of DeAnna Julie Dodson, a Texas writer born and raised in Dallas who has stayed close to home. She earned a business administration degree from the University of Texas at Dallas, which is not the route most people expect for a novelist. Still, that practical background seems to suit the kind of stories she writes, books with clean structure, clear stakes, and a real pleasure in fitting clues together.

Writing, by her own account, started as a way to make business and accounting classes less dull.

In interviews, Dodson has said she began writing novels to entertain herself and never imagined anyone else would read them, much less buy them in bookstores. That low-key beginning explains a lot about her work. There is no sense of flashy reinvention here. She comes across as someone who loved stories first, then slowly turned that private habit into a steady writing life.

Before the Julianna Deering name appeared, she published as DeAnna Julie Dodson. Her earlier books included medieval romances such as In Honor Bound, By Love Redeemed, and To Grace Surrendered, along with contemporary mysteries like Letters in the Attic and The Key in the Attic. History, suspense, and questions of faith were already in the mix. The pen name simply let her mark out a new shelf for a different kind of story.

That new shelf turned out to be 1930s England, country houses, clever suspects, and a gentleman amateur sleuth named Drew Farthering.

The Drew Farthering books begin with Rules of Murder and continue through Death by the Book, Murder at the Mikado, Dressed for Death, Murder on the Moor, and Death at Thorburn Hall. Readers who warm to them usually like the same cluster of things: the period setting, the easy banter between Drew, Madeline, and Nick, and mysteries that feel classic without reading like a museum piece. Murder at the Mikado brings backstage theater trouble into the mix. Murder on the Moor widens the canvas with Yorkshire atmosphere. Death at Thorburn Hall sends the series into Scotland without losing the tight whodunit feel.

Dodson's affection for older British mysteries is easy to spot, and she has spoken openly about loving classic detective fiction and British history. The Drew Farthering novels lean into those pleasures, house parties, village gossip, family secrets, odd clues, and suspects who are rarely what they seem. They also carry a gentle thread of forgiveness, love, and people pushing through hard things, which fits the values she has long said matter to her.

Away from the desk, she has described herself as a fifth-generation Texan who lives north of Dallas with three cats. She also mentions quilting, cross stitch, and NHL hockey, which is a nicely specific trio of hobbies and somehow feels exactly right. It makes her author photo sharper in your mind. Not a grand public figure, just a working novelist with wide reading tastes, a fondness for puzzles, and the patience to build them one chapter at a time.