Shari Hearn Books in Order

If you want the main present-day mysteries: Nearly Departed → Mutiny on the Bayou → Overdue → Nearly Beloved
If you want ghostly cozy mysteries: Happy Birthday, Marge → Soul Man
If you want younger Ida Belle, Gertie, and Marge: Undercover → Sinful Alibi → Saving Ruby
If you want a funny standalone: Merlin's Misfortune

Shari Hearn likes to tell the story that she wrote her first one at age four. It was made of squiggly lines, a stick figure, a door, and the only two words she knew how to write, THE END. It is a good origin story because it sounds a lot like the books she writes now, playful, visual, and always moving toward a punch line or a twist.

For Hearn, the urge to make stories came first.

After that early start, she moved to Los Angeles and built a career in television. Public bios describe her working on sitcoms as both a writer and a producer, while also writing screenplays and TV pilots. Her credits include work connected with The Hogan Family, Going Places, and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, which helps explain the quick timing and ensemble energy in her fiction.

She eventually carried that comic training into mystery writing. Much of her published fiction so far sits inside Miss Fortune World, the licensed story world connected to Jana DeLeon's Sinful, Louisiana books. Hearn has written 14 stories there, spread across the present-day Sinful Stories books, the earlier-timeline Sinful Past books, the paranormal Sinful Spirits stories, and the standalone Merlin's Misfortune.

That setup gave her room to play.

In the present-day books, titles like Nearly Departed, Overdue, and Wickedly Sinful drop Fortune Redding and the Swamp Team 3 into fake funerals, library disasters, Founders' Day trouble, and one mess after another. Hearn keeps the cases moving, but the real fun is often watching competent people make slightly terrible plans in a town that refuses to stay calm. The tone is cozy mystery with a comic streak, plus enough danger to keep the stakes from feeling fake.

She also likes to shift the angle. Happy Birthday, Marge and Soul Man bring Marge Boudreaux back as a ghost, still trying to protect her friends and solve crimes from the other side. Undercover, Sinful Alibi, and Saving Ruby rewind the clock to younger versions of Ida Belle, Gertie, and Marge, showing what the original Swamp Team 3 was like before Fortune ever came to town. And Merlin's Misfortune hands the microphone to Fortune's cat, who is convinced the real rulers of Sinful are feline.

She clearly enjoys oddball teams.

Across those books, a few things keep showing up: tight friendships, small-town gossip, disguises, improvised investigations, and characters who never seem able to leave a mystery alone. Readers who like Hearn usually come for that mix of bayou mischief and fast, easy-to-read plotting. Even when the premise gets strange, a ghost detective, a cat sleuth, a roller derby rematch, the stories stay grounded in personality and group chemistry.

In the 2020s, she started stretching past the Miss Fortune setting. Her Bev and Queenie mysteries, including Murder Most Defrightful and Christmas Most Shocking, pair two senior sleuths who do not especially enjoy each other, which is of course part of the appeal. Notes tied to Murder Most Defrightful also point to an original paranormal project called Prickly Pear PI, another sign that Hearn likes mixing mystery with a little offbeat fun.

Hearn keeps a pretty low public profile, so the personal details available in public are brief. What comes through clearly, though, is the line between her TV years and her fiction. She knows how to build a scene fast, give a cast room to bounce off one another, and land a joke without slowing the plot.

That is a useful skill in Sinful.

If you are new to her work, start wherever the premise makes you smile most. Want the classic present-day capers? Try Nearly Departed. Want something sweeter and stranger? Go with Happy Birthday, Marge. Want the backstory? Pick up Undercover. Hearn's corner of cozy mystery is light on its feet, fond of chaos, and very comfortable in the company of people who should probably stop investigating and never do.