Roxy Loewen Mystery Books in Order

The Roxy Loewen stories are historical adventures built around speed, nerve, and a heroine who would rather trust an engine than a promise. The series opens with Chasing the Wind, which drops Roxy into the dangerous glamour of the 1930s. She is an aviatrix, a student of Amelia Earhart, and the kind of person who makes a hard turn first and worries about the landing later.

Flight is freedom for Roxy, but it is also how trouble finds her.

The setting matters a lot. Humphreys moves Roxy from Long Island to East Africa, Madrid, Berlin, and the last voyage of the Hindenburg, using early aviation routes to power the plot. This is not soft-focus period nostalgia. The background is a Europe sliding toward fascism, where borders are unstable, money talks loudly, and seemingly romantic adventures can turn political in a hurry.

Roxy herself is the reason the story works. She is clever, impulsive, bruised by the loss of her father, and too stubborn to stay out of danger once she thinks something is wrong. Her love story with fellow pilot Jocco Zomack gives the book some heat, but it also complicates everything. He pulls her into a high-risk hunt involving a stolen Bruegel painting, smugglers, art dealers, and men who are already learning how to use culture, fear, and force together.

This is the kind of mystery that runs on propellers, maps, and bad odds.

Even though the series starts with a caper, it never drifts far from the human cost of the time. Roxy is moving through worlds mostly run by wealthy men, political men, or violent men, and she has to outfly, outtalk, or outstare all of them. That gives the book a strong undercurrent of survival. The tension does not come only from clues or puzzles. It comes from whether a woman who loves motion and risk can keep control of her own story while history is closing in.

If you like historical fiction that moves like an adventure novel, this series is a good fit. Expect aerial escapes, uneasy romance, art theft, looming war, and a lead character with real spark. Roxy is not a drawing-room detective. She is a flyer, which means the stories tend to move fast, cover ground, and keep one eye on the horizon for the next crisis.