Julie McElwain Books in Order

If you want the full story from the beginning: A Murder in Time → A Twist in Time → Caught in Time
If you like bigger London investigations: Betrayal in Time → Shadows in Time → Echoes in Time
If you want the strongest romance thread: A Twist in Time → Caught in Time → Ripples in Time
If you want a later-series sampler after the basics: Shadows in Time → Ripples in Time → Echoes in Time

Julie McElwain grew up in North Dakota, where books were not just entertainment, they were fuel. She has said that reading a Nancy Drew mystery in fourth grade lit the fuse, and before long she was writing stories of her own, tossing drafts aside, and starting again. Long before publication entered the picture, she was already building the habits that would stick, reading hard, writing often, and learning by doing.

She was hooked.

College took her in a slightly different direction at first. McElwain attended North Dakota State University, where she started out focused on textiles and clothing before journalism pulled her in. A journalism course, and work on the student newspaper, showed her that writing could be more than a private obsession. She graduated with a double major in textiles and clothing and print journalism, a combination that sounds unusual on paper but fits someone who has spent her career paying close attention to both people and details.

After college she moved to Los Angeles and began her journalism career at California Apparel News, covering the fashion business. She later freelanced for a range of publications, including magazines tied to photography and fashion, and eventually became West Coast editor for Soaps In Depth, covering The Young and the Restless. That reporting life seems to have suited her, with its deadlines, facts, sharp observation, and constant scene setting. But even while journalism was her day job, fiction kept tugging at her sleeve.

When McElwain turned seriously toward novels, she found her way in through a question rather than a grand plan. What happens if you drop a capable, modern investigator into a world with none of her usual tools? That idea became the engine of A Murder in Time, which sends FBI agent Kendra Donovan back to Regency England and asks her to solve crimes armed with brains, nerve, and very little else. McElwain has said she was drawn to 1815 because the period fascinates her. It sits just after the Napoleonic wars, at the edge of industrial change, and feels oddly close to the modern world in its tensions and upheaval.

She also did the legwork. McElwain has traveled through England, Scotland, and Ireland, touring castles and estates that helped shape the feel of Aldridge Castle and the wider Kendra Donovan books. Readers can see that blend of curiosity and research all through the series, from A Murder in Time and A Twist in Time to Caught in Time, Betrayal in Time, Shadows in Time, Ripples in Time, and Echoes in Time. People who like her work usually respond to the same mix, a solid murder puzzle, a fish-out-of-water heroine, a slow-building emotional thread, and a Regency setting that feels lived in rather than decorative.

The time travel is the hook, but the mystery is the point.

McElwain's books return again and again to questions of class, gender, power, and what really changes across two centuries. Kendra may know more science than the people around her, but she still has to deal with pride, secrecy, love, and plain old bad judgment, problems that belong to every era. That human focus helps explain why the series works for readers who do not usually pick up historical fiction or science fiction. McElwain still lives in Long Beach, California, and her path makes a kind of sense in hindsight. A journalist who loved mysteries grew up, kept asking questions, and built a series around a woman who refuses to stop asking them.