Katharine Schellman Books in Order

If you want to start with Regency London: The Body in the Garden → Silence in the Library → Death at the Manor
If you like haunted manors and winter house parties: Death at the Manor → Murder at Midnight → A Scandal in Mayfair
If you want Jazz Age speakeasy suspense: Last Call at the Nightingale → The Last Drop of Hemlock → The Last Note of Warning → Last Dance Before Dawn
If you want a quick feel for both series: The Body in the Garden → Last Call at the Nightingale

Katharine Schellman was born in Arlington, Virginia, and grew up there, just across the river from Washington, D.C. Virginia has stayed part of her story ever since. She went to William & Mary in Williamsburg, spent working years moving around the East Coast, and eventually settled in the mountains of Virginia. Even when her books travel to Regency London or Jazz Age New York, that strong sense of place still shows.

She started wanting to write early.

In interviews, Schellman has said she told her parents at about six years old that she wanted to write books. She kept at it, on and off, for years, learning by doing and, like most writers, by writing plenty of things that were never meant for print. Before publication, though, writing shared space with other jobs. After college she worked as an actor and dancer, and she also spent time in political consulting.

Those are surprisingly good training grounds for mystery fiction.

Performance teaches timing, dialogue, and what people reveal when they are trying to impress a room. Politics teaches its own version of suspense. Schellman eventually turned those instincts toward fiction, and she has written that the manuscript that became her debut took about three years and at least five drafts before she queried agents in 2018. The process moved quickly from there. She found representation within weeks, revised again, and in 2020 published The Body in the Garden, the first Lily Adler mystery.

That novel introduced Lily Adler, a young widow in Regency England who keeps noticing what other people would rather leave buried. Readers who like the Lily Adler books tend to enjoy the mix of social detail, clue-driven plotting, and Lily’s quiet stubbornness. Silence in the Library, Death at the Manor, Murder at Midnight, and A Scandal in Mayfair build on that foundation with country houses, family secrets, blackmail, and the constant pressure of a society that would prefer women to stay pleasant and uninvolved. Lily, very politely, does not.

In 2022 Schellman launched a second historical series with Last Call at the Nightingale, moving from ballrooms to speakeasies. The Nightingale books follow Vivian Kelly, a working-class young woman who finds community in a hidden New York club where music, liquor, and secrecy all run together. In The Last Drop of Hemlock, The Last Note of Warning, and Last Dance Before Dawn, Schellman keeps the mystery structure tight while leaning into a grittier world of mob pressure, class tension, and found family. Readers who like queer history, strong friendships, and fast-moving amateur sleuth stories usually find plenty to like there.

Across both series, she returns to some of the same interests. She likes people living inside strict social rules, and she likes watching them push back. Her books often bring together glamour and danger, with characters trying to make a life on their own terms. These days, Schellman lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia with her husband, children, and a growing collection of houseplants she has joked about accidentally murdering. It is a very fitting detail for a mystery writer.