Mattie Winston Mysteries Books in Order
Part ofAnnelise Ryan Books in OrderExplore the Mattie Winston Mysteries by Annelise Ryan in order, with short summaries, series background, and a simple guide to where to start.
Last updated: June 8, 2026
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Publication Order
12 books
Working Stiff
by Annelise Ryan
2009
After catching her husband with another nurse, Mattie Winston leaves the hospital for a deputy coroner job. Then her first murder victim is the other woman, and Mattie lands painfully close to the suspect list.
Scared Stiff
by Annelise Ryan
2010
On Halloween night, fake gore gives way to a very real corpse. Mattie thinks the victim's estranged husband is innocent, so she uses her medical eye to dig into a case that gets stranger and more dangerous fast.
Frozen Stiff
by Annelise Ryan
2011
A beautiful stranger is found stabbed in a snowy field, and Steve Hurley knows her too well, because she was his former girlfriend and the knife is his. Mattie follows the twists while trying to ignore her own jealousy.
Lucky Stiff
by Annelise Ryan
2013
A Christmas Day house fire leaves a casino winner dead and his money missing. With suspects everywhere and another body soon to follow, Mattie and Hurley race to find the killer before the case turns even uglier.
Board Stiff
by Annelise Ryan
2014
At a nursing home, Mattie examines a board president found dead under suspiciously odd circumstances. The residents think he was killing costly patients, a key witness remembers nothing, and the politics around the case are anything but gentle.
Stiff Penalty
by Annelise Ryan
2015
When a high school math teacher is stabbed with a barbecue fork, the evidence points to his teenage son. Mattie isn't convinced, and while dealing with pregnancy and her estranged father's return, she hunts the real killer.
Stiff Competition
by Annelise Ryan
2016
Hunting season turns deadly when a land developer is found in the woods with an arrow through his neck. While Mattie investigates, Steve Hurley's missing teenage daughter raises the stakes and tightens the clock.
Dead in the Water
by Annelise Ryan
2017
Mattie is planning a wedding and blending households when a new hire at the medical examiner's office is killed on a fishing trip and his girlfriend vanishes. To keep her own life from capsizing, she has to work through some very murky clues.
Dead Calm
by Annelise Ryan
2019
What looks like a seedy motel murder-suicide is actually a carefully staged double killing. Newlyweds Mattie and Steve juggle family strain, competing suspects, and mounting pressure as they try to corner the real murderer.
Dead of Winter
by Annelise Ryan
2020
A battered teenage girl dies in the ER after saying her little sister is still with the man who brought her in. Mattie, Hildy, and Steve follow the evidence into a brutal human trafficking case.
Dead Ringer
by Annelise Ryan
2020
A Jane Doe is stabbed in the signature pattern of a serial killer who is supposedly already in prison. Mattie and Steve reopen old ground and find themselves chasing a murderer who may never have been caught.
Dead Even
by Annelise Ryan
2021
A wealthy realtor is found dead with a broken pool cue through his heart. Mattie and Steve sort through fake alibis, gambling debts, shady finances, and family secrets while trying to keep their own home life steady.
Series background & context
The Mattie Winston Mysteries start with a personal and professional blowup. Mattie catches her husband with another nurse, leaves her hospital job, and takes a new one as deputy coroner in Sorenson, Wisconsin. That switch gives the series its whole identity. She knows medicine, knows the town, and now spends her days figuring out why people died instead of trying to keep them alive.
Sorenson matters because it is small enough that everybody knows everybody else's business. Victims are neighbors, suspects are coworkers, and gossip moves fast. Mattie's best friend and boss, Izzy, keeps her grounded, while homicide detective Steve Hurley becomes her closest investigative partner and the center of the series' long personal arc.
The murders are serious, but the books never stay grim for long.
What makes the series work is the balance between forensic detail and comic timing. Mattie is smart, nosy, sarcastic, and not especially patient with nonsense, which is useful when she is facing suspicious fires, nursing home deaths, hunting season killings, motel murders, trafficking cases, and old crimes that refuse to stay buried. The medical side feels concrete, but the stories are built to move, with quick banter, recurring side characters, and plenty of small-town complications.
These are not feather-light cozies, because the crime scenes can get messy and the stakes are adult. But they are not bleak police procedurals either. Ryan keeps the tone approachable by giving Mattie a strong voice and by letting home life matter just as much as the case file. Relationships shift, exes linger, children and parents complicate things, and work has a way of following Mattie through every stage of her life.
That longer personal thread is a big part of the appeal. Over the run of the books, Mattie moves from deputy coroner to medicolegal death investigator, and her connection with Steve develops alongside the mysteries. Each novel has its own central case, so you get a full puzzle every time, but the emotional story pays off best if you read in order, starting with Working Stiff.
If you like sarcasm, scrubs, and murder in snowy Wisconsin, this series knows exactly what it is.
Edited by
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