Sarah Graves Books in Order
Explore Sarah Graves books in order, with series guides, short summaries, and easy starting points for Home Repair Is Homicide, Lizzie Snow, and more.
Last updated: June 10, 2026
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Publication Order
27 books
The Dead Cat Bounce
by Sarah Graves
1997
Jake Tiptree expects trouble from her rambling fixer-upper, not from the dead man she finds in her storeroom. When her friend Ellie confesses, Jake starts digging through Eastport's history to prove she is protecting the real killer.
Triple Witch
by Sarah Graves
1999
Kenny Mumford washes up on the beach looking drowned, until the bullet hole says otherwise. As more bodies follow, Jake and Ellie find Eastport's quiet surface cracking fast.
Wicked Fix
by Sarah Graves
2000
When hated hometown bully Reuben Tate is found with his throat slit on the cemetery gate, evidence points to Jake's former husband. Jake and Ellie have to sort through Eastport grudges before the violence gets even worse.
Repair to Her Grave
by Sarah Graves
2001
A charming stranger arrives at Jake's door chasing a cursed violin tied to her old house, then vanishes without a trace. Soon Jake is digging into Eastport history before another disappearance turns deadly.
Wreck the Halls
by Sarah Graves
2001
Just before Christmas, Jake finds Faye Anne Carmody covered in blood and her hated husband missing, then dead in butcher paper. The case looks simple, until another death shows Eastport's holiday trouble runs much deeper.
Unhinged
by Sarah Graves
2003
After a bad fall leaves Jake dizzy and off balance, her nosy neighbor Harriet vanishes and later turns up dead behind a wall. With sabotage threatening her family, Jake has to decide whether her fears are confusion or murder.
Mallets Aforethought
by Sarah Graves
2004
While restoring old Harlequin House, Jake and Ellie uncover a hidden room with a flapper-era skeleton, then a freshly poisoned corpse. When suspicion falls on Ellie's husband George, the women have to untangle past and present crimes.
Tool and Die
by Sarah Graves
2004
Jake hires intense housekeeper Bella Diamond so she can focus on summer repairs, then learns Bella is getting death threats. When Jake's prime suspect ends up dead, her peaceful Fourth of July plans disappear.
Nail Biter
by Sarah Graves
2005
Jake and Ellie buy a beachfront fixer-upper, only to rent it to a coven of would-be witches. After Jake finds a preacher-thief shot on her property and a girl vanishes, buried secrets under her own house start to matter.
Trap Door
by Sarah Graves
2006
Jake is still battling her crumbling 1823 house when her dead ex-husband seems to haunt it and a friend flees hired killers. A missing young man and a grisly barn discovery pull Jake into another dangerous mess.
The Book of Old Houses
by Sarah Graves
2007
Renovations uncover an old book beneath Jake's house, with her name written in blood. What starts as a creepy find opens into a bigger mystery of Eastport history, hidden connections, and another carefully planned murder.
A Face at the Window
by Sarah Graves
2008
As the man accused of killing Jake's mother disappears before trial, Jake's oldest trauma rushes back. When her best friend's infant daughter goes missing, past and present fold into one deeply personal case.
Crawlspace
by Sarah Graves
2009
A true-crime writer comes to Eastport to reopen interest in the old Dodd murders and instantly angers the town. Jake gets pulled into the cold case, where long-buried secrets are not nearly as settled as people hoped.
Knockdown
by Sarah Graves
2011
While repainting her porch, Jake notices a young man stalking past her house and hinting at old blood. Anonymous warnings and a photo of a murdered man push Eastport toward a dangerous Fourth of July.
Dead Level
by Sarah Graves
2012
Jake and Ellie head to a rough woods cottage so Jake can finish building a porch. But an escaped killer Jake once testified against is watching, and he plans to trap both women far from help.
A Bat in the Belfry
by Sarah Graves
2013
A violent storm closes in on Eastport as several desperate lives start colliding. Sam's friend becomes a murder suspect, a teenager plots escape, and newcomer Lizzie Snow arrives searching for a missing child.
Winter at the Door
by Sarah Graves
2015
Boston homicide cop Lizzie Snow arrives in remote Bearkill, Maine, hoping to start over and keep looking for her missing niece. Instead she walks into dead ex-cops, local secrets, and a killer hidden in the winter woods.
The Girls She Left Behind
by Sarah Graves
2016
With a forest fire closing in on Bearkill, Lizzie searches for runaway Tara Wylie after a terrifying text suggests real danger. An escaped kidnapper may also be nearby, pushing the case into darker ground.
Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake
by Sarah Graves
2018
Jake and Ellie open the Chocolate Moose bakery just as a hurricane scrambles Fourth of July plans. When a disliked health inspector is found dead in their kitchen, Ellie becomes the obvious suspect.
Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake
by Sarah Graves
2019
Eastport's big wedding celebration turns grim when the bride's bitter ex is poisoned with a milkshake. With the groom arrested and the wedding off, Jake and Ellie try to stop a killer before the next toast turns deadly.
Death by Chocolate Frosted Doughnut
by Sarah Graves
2020
Pirate Festival should be a boon for the Chocolate Moose, until celebrity foodie Henry Hadlyme turns up dead in the bakery basement. Jake must clear her own name while sorting through enemies on land and at sea.
Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle
by Sarah Graves
2021
Jake and Ellie enter Eastport's cookie contest for fun, then local curmudgeon Alvin Carter is killed and sweet-natured Billy Breyer is blamed. As grass fires spread across the island, the investigation grows more urgent.
Death by Chocolate Chip Cupcake
by Sarah Graves
2022
Catering a movie star's party at gloomy Cliff House sounds easy enough for Jake and Ellie. Then a storm traps the guests, someone is shoved over a cliff, and the women are stuck hunting a very human killer.
Death by Chocolate Marshmallow Pie
by Sarah Graves
2023
Eastport's arts festival brings extra business and a slick rival bakery called Choco's. After its owner is killed with Ellie's gun, Jake and Ellie have to protect the Chocolate Moose and prove Ellie's innocence.
Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone
by Sarah Graves
2024
Late summer sends Jake and Ellie across Passamaquoddy Bay after a friend begs them to find her missing husband's remains. His vanished gold doubloon attracts dangerous attention, and the search turns deadly on the water.
Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffin
by Sarah Graves
2025
Jake and Ellie deliver desserts to a waterfront party at TV renovator Hank Rafferty's mansion and arrive just after he falls from the turret. Police suspect Lizzie Snow's boyfriend, but Eastport has plenty of other people who wanted Hank gone.
Death by Chocolate Ladyfingers
by Sarah Graves
2026
During Eastport High's Class of '86 masquerade reunion, Cindy Munson is found dead and suspicion falls on a classmate who remembers nothing. Jake and Ellie take in his small daughter and dig into old grudges that never really died.
Where should I start?
If you want the original cozy mysteries: The Dead Cat Bounce → Triple Witch → Wicked Fix
If you want Jake and Ellie's bakery mysteries: Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake → Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake → Death by Chocolate Frosted Doughnut
If you want darker Maine suspense: Winter at the Door → The Girls She Left Behind
If you want a later Eastport mystery: Repair to Her Grave → The Book of Old Houses → A Bat in the Belfry
Author bio
Sarah Graves is the pen name of Mary Squibb, a Wisconsin native who turned a big midlife move into a long-running body of Maine mysteries. Her books usually start with ordinary work, fixing a house, driving a winter road, getting a bakery ready for a rush, and then let trouble walk straight in.
Before the series life settled in, her career did not move in a straight line. She has described herself at different points as a respiratory therapist and a commercial writer, and for years she was trying to build a fiction career while living farther south in the crowded Northeast.
In 1996, she and her husband moved to Eastport, Maine, bought a battered 1823 sea captain's house, and started restoring it themselves. Graves has said she already had her first Eastport mystery in mind before the move, but the house and town gave that story its real shape. The weather, the harbor, the old clapboard buildings, and the endless repair jobs all became part of the fiction.
That house changed the books.
She once described the relationship as a kind of symbiosis. The renovation work gave her details, problems, and setting, and the novels helped pay for more renovation. That is a big reason the Home Repair Is Homicide books feel so grounded. Jake Tiptree's world of ladders, windows, plaster, and bad surprises comes from somebody who actually did the scraping and sanding.
That mix clicked in The Dead Cat Bounce, the first Jacobia Tiptree novel, and Graves kept building from there. In books like Repair to Her Grave, The Book of Old Houses, and A Bat in the Belfry, readers get a smart heroine, a close-knit Maine setting, strong female friendship, and the sense that an old house can be as full of danger as any dark alley. Her longtime pair of Jake and Ellie White became central to the appeal.
She knows that a porch, a cellar, or a loose hinge can all carry suspense.
Graves did not stay in one lane. With Winter at the Door and The Girls She Left Behind, she moved into colder, darker suspense and created Lizzie Snow, a former Boston homicide detective working cases in the remote Maine woods. Later, in Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake, she brought Jake and Ellie back in a lighter register, now running the Chocolate Moose bakery in Eastport. Across all those books, she keeps returning to capable women, local secrets, rough weather, and the way family history never stays buried for long.
Readers who come for the mystery often stay for the setting. Graves writes Maine as a place of beauty and inconvenience at the same time, gorgeous water, biting cold, long drives, stubborn houses, and towns where people know more than they say. Her stories can be cozy, but there is usually a harder edge under the surface.
She still lives in Eastport with her husband, in a 200-year-old house much like the one that inspired Jake Tiptree's. When she is not writing, she has said she cooks or bakes, tends a big garden, or shovels snow, depending on the season. That practical rhythm fits her fiction. Even at their darkest, Sarah Graves's books feel written by someone who knows how work gets done, and how quickly an ordinary day can go sideways.
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