Looking Glass Trilogy Books in Order

The Looking Glass Trilogy is another three‑book arc that braids together past, present, and future inside the Arcane Society universe. Where the Dreamlight books revolve around the Burning Lamp, these stories focus on a different line of dangerous inventions: psychically charged mirrors and clockwork devices created by the brilliant, unbalanced Mrs. Bridewell.

Each novel explores a different era. The contemporary opener, written as Jayne Ann Krentz, centers on Fallon Jones in the isolated town of Scargill Cove, a man whose talent lets him see patterns where others see chaos. When his new assistant arrives on the run from deadly trouble, the pair uncover an antique clock infused with dark energy and a conspiracy tied to Bridewell’s legacy.

The second book, written as Amanda Quick, steps back into Victorian England. Here the heroine is a glass reader who can sense impressions left in mirrors and lenses, and the hero is a hunter from the Sweetwater clan, called in when psychic predators start using look‑alike artifacts to trap their victims. The story roams from elegant photography studios to menacing private clubs as they chase a killer who uses reflections as weapons.

The futuristic closer, written under the Jayne Castle name, lands on the island of Rainshadow on Harmony. An antique curiosity shop, alien ruins, and a series of strange incidents point toward a new incarnation of the same old technology. As in the earlier volumes, a couple with complementary talents has to figure out what the devices are doing before someone turns an entire community into collateral damage.

What links the trilogy, beyond its artifacts, is a mood of investigative partnership. These are books about people who take their work seriously – detectives, analysts, hunters, shopkeepers – forced to accept that a long‑dead inventor still has the power to ruin lives. The romance grows out of shared problem‑solving as much as chemistry.

You can read the Looking Glass books simply as high‑stakes paranormal mysteries with strong love stories, or you can slot them into the larger Arcane reading order to see how one woman’s experiments ripple through centuries. Either way, the trilogy offers a satisfying tour through three of the author’s favorite storytelling modes.