Linda Greenlaw Books in Order

Linda Greenlaw was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on December 22, 1960, and grew up in Topsham, Maine. Her family spent summers on Isle au Haut, a small island off the Maine coast that would later become the center of much of her writing. The working waterfront, rough weather, and close-knit island life were part of the background from the start.

At Colby College, where she studied English and government, Greenlaw took a summer job on a swordfishing boat to help pay the bills. She worked as a cook and deckhand, then kept returning to the work after graduating in 1983.

The sea won.

Over time, Greenlaw worked her way up to captain a swordfishing boat, the Hannah Boden. Her life at sea brought long stretches offshore, complicated crews, unpredictable catches, and the practical pressure of making a trip pay. The Hannah Boden was the sister ship of the Andrea Gail, the lost vessel at the center of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm.

Greenlaw's connection to that story led to a new job she hadn't planned on: writing. After appearing in Junger's book, she was approached to tell her own story, resulting in The Hungry Ocean. The 1999 memoir follows a month-long swordfishing trip near the Grand Banks and puts readers right alongside a captain juggling weather, gear, crew tensions, fish, and money.

It wasn't a sea story from a safe distance.

She followed it with The Lobster Chronicles, shifting from offshore swordfishing to hauling lobster traps around Isle au Haut. The book mixes the hard routines of lobstering with the funny, sometimes frustrating realities of living among neighbors who all know one another's business. In All Fishermen Are Liars, she gathers rough, funny, and occasionally alarming stories exchanged among fishermen at a Portland bar.

Greenlaw also turned her Maine knowledge toward fiction. Her Jane Bunker mysteries follow a former Miami homicide detective who returns to coastal Maine, where quiet towns prove to have plenty of secrets. Books such as Slipknot, Fisherman's Bend, Shiver Hitch, and Bimini Twist combine small-town crime with insurance investigations, working boats, local grudges, and Greenlaw's firsthand feel for the coast.

Her books don't stay in one lane. She and her mother, Martha Greenlaw, wrote Recipes from a Very Small Island and The Maine Summers Cookbook, filling them with coastal food, family stories, and the everyday pleasures of Maine summers. In Lifesaving Lessons, Greenlaw writes more personally about becoming responsible for a troubled teenage girl named Mariah.

Across memoir, mystery, and food writing, Greenlaw comes back to people who work hard, make do, and often tell stories bigger than life. She received the U.S. Maritime Literature Award in 2003 and the New England Book Award for nonfiction in 2004. She lives on Isle au Haut, Maine, where she has continued to work hauling lobster.