Nancy Pickard Books in Order

Jenny Cain’s first case begins when wealthy local donors start turning up dead in bizarre circumstances. With a taunting rhyme suggesting she may be next, Jenny has to outthink a killer fast.

A harbor restoration project should be good news for Port Frederick, until sabotage turns deadly. Jenny races to clear the one suspect she cannot bear to see convicted while the killer closes in.

An empty grave is only the beginning of Jenny Cain’s trouble with a local funeral home. When a murdered employee and a macabre body mix-up shake the town, Jenny starts digging where others would rather not.

Jenny and Geof should be thinking about their wedding, but Port Frederick is suddenly rocked by the murders of abusive husbands. As fear and anger spread through town, Jenny uncovers a fixation that may kill again.

Jenny hopes to help create a recreation center for former mental patients in an abandoned building. Then a man is found murdered there, and the obvious explanation looks a little too easy.

In this award-winning short story, a woman who has moved far from city comforts finds isolation turning into dread. Pickard keeps the setup small and intimate, then lets the fear grow stranger and darker.

When the Port Frederick Civic Foundation unexpectedly inherits a Kansas cattle ranch, Jenny travels west to make sense of it. A murder, a baffling will, and a nest of family secrets turn the job into one of her toughest cases.

Jenny is grieving her mother when old questions about madness, family ruin, and the collapse of the Cain business come roaring back. The deeper she digs into the past, the more dangerous the present becomes.

Genia Potter returns to her Arizona ranch after an urgent call, only to find friends missing and danger already close at hand. When her famous chili seems tied to multiple deaths, she has to act quickly.

After a friend is killed in New York, Jenny leaves Port Frederick to sort out the dead woman’s unfinished foundation work. The city is thrilling, unnerving, and full of loose ends that lead her straight into murder.

A teenage boy arrives with a believable claim that Geof Bushfield is his biological father, then insists the police got his parents’ deaths wrong. Jenny and Geof follow a trail of clues and confessions that could change their marriage for good.

Jenny Cain is busy staging a fall festival in Port Frederick when protests, insurance trouble, and a disputed nature trail turn ugly. A string of suspicious deaths forces her into the middle of one more town-wide fight.

After finding ancient pottery shards on her ranch, Genia Potter heads to Mesa Verde to learn more. Murder, confusion, and the disappearance of a busload of teenagers turn her trip into a tense investigation.

In this Agatha Award-winning short story, a nurse’s aide begins to suspect that a patient’s family may be hiding something ugly. Pickard keeps the stakes personal, quiet, and deeply unsettling.

This collection gathers nine dark short stories linked by foreboding and the sense that disaster is already on its way. The moods range from eerie to brutal, but the tension stays tight throughout.

Florida true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot thinks she has found the perfect case in the trial of killer Raymond Raintree. Then the story grows stranger, more personal, and far more dangerous than anything she planned to write.

Marie Lightfoot takes on a sensational Florida case involving a minister, his lover, and a murdered wife. After a shocking turn in court, she becomes convinced the official story is missing something dangerous.

Staying on the Rhode Island coast, Genia Potter helps host a recipe tasting party built around secret ingredients. When the host turns up dead and a young relative looks guilty, she starts sorting through motives and hidden grudges.

Threatening emails force true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot to tell the story of her own life while someone circles closer to violence. To survive, she must return to Alabama and confront the mystery of her parents’ disappearance.

Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott map the emotional stages writers move through, from early excitement to doubt, revision, and persistence. It is part craft guide, part morale boost for anyone trying to finish the work.

Seventeen years after an unidentified girl was found murdered in a Kansas blizzard, her grave has become the center of local legend. When an old witness returns, the town’s buried lies begin to surface.

Jody Linder learns that the man convicted of killing her father is coming home from prison, and the past refuses to stay buried. On a Kansas ranching landscape thick with grudges, another man’s search for the truth upends everything.

This motivational guide asks what fear is costing you and what might change if you acted with more courage. It blends reflective questions, encouragement, and practical nudges toward a bigger life.