Natalie Lockhart Books in Order

The Natalie Lockhart books are set in Burning Lake, a small upstate New York town that makes money off witch history, ghost tours, and Halloween spectacle. From the outside it can look charming, theatrical, even a little kitschy. Underneath, it is a place where old accusations, old grief, and old lies never really die.

That tension is the whole engine of the series.

Natalie starts out in Trace of Evil as a rookie detective and a hometown daughter who knows the streets, woods, and families too well for comfort. She is not investigating from a safe distance. Years earlier, her sister Willow was murdered, and that wound never closed. Later books also circle back to the disappearance of Natalie's old best friend, so almost every case carries a personal charge for her.

Burning Lake matters as much as any character. The town has graveyards, covens, costume shops, shadowy woods, and a history of false accusations that people still use, ignore, or profit from depending on the season. In The Wicked Hour, the chaos of the town's Halloween celebration spills into a case involving a dead young woman and a trail of linked disappearances. In The Witching Tree, the murder of a respected local Wiccan pulls Natalie back into the town's witch lore in an even more painful way.

By The Shadow Girls, the past is everywhere.

Natalie herself is the reason the books hold together so well. She is stubborn, bruised, intelligent, and often running on instinct more than rest. Her long connection to Luke Pittman, her boss and oldest ally, gives the series a strong emotional center, because Natalie is always balancing the job with loyalty, grief, and the urge to escape the town that made her. She keeps digging even when digging makes her own life harder.

These are police procedurals, but they carry the chill of folk horror without slipping fully into fantasy. Wiccan symbols, carved curses, and local legends shape the mood, yet the real danger usually comes from very human cruelty, secrecy, and obsession. If you like small-town mysteries with eerie atmosphere, recurring characters, and cases that keep reopening old wounds, this series is best read in order.