Sharon Farrow Books in Order

Sharon Farrow is the latest pen name used by Sharon Pisacreta, a writer born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She has said she knew early that writing was the thing, declaring herself a writer at nine and sticking with it. By her twenties she was already freelancing, and that early start grew into a career that has moved across romance, fantasy, mystery, and nonfiction without getting too comfortable in any one lane.

She did not build that career by following a tidy script.

Over the years, Pisacreta has worked a grab bag of jobs that would give any novelist plenty to steal from. She has been a principal investigator on an archaeological site, a college history instructor, an art gallery assistant, a caterer’s assistant, and even a performer in a giant dog costume for a nonprofit group. It is an unusual list, but it helps explain two things that show up again and again in her books: a feel for history, and a taste for the odd details that make people seem real.

History stayed with her.

Her first novels, published under her own name, were Stolen Hearts in 1998 and Magic and Moonlight in 1999. Those books leaned toward historical romance, and they already showed her interest in the past as a living place, full of work, danger, money worries, and strong-willed people. She has also published fantasy and romance, and one of her short stories was optioned for film. Even early on, she was clearly not interested in writing the same book over and over.

Later, mystery took up more space in her work. With her college friend and longtime critique partner Meg Mims, she became one half of D.E. Ireland, the joint name they used for the Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins mysteries. That series starts with Wouldn't It Be Deadly and continues with Move Your Blooming Corpse, Get Me To The Grave On Time, and With a Little Bit of Blood. The books imagine what might happen after Pygmalion, and they use Edwardian London, class tension, and sharp banter as the engine for their murder plots. Readers who come for the literary hook often stay for Eliza’s independence and the constant sparring between the two leads.

Two of those D.E. Ireland mysteries were Agatha finalists, which tells you readers and mystery awards folks noticed them.

Under the Sharon Farrow name, Pisacreta shifted to a cozier corner of the genre with the Berry Basket mysteries. Beginning with Dying for Strawberries, then moving through Blackberry Burial, Killed on Blueberry Hill, Mulberry Mischief, and Hollyberry Homicide, the series follows Marlee Jacob in the fictional lakeshore town of Oriole Point, Michigan. The books mix berry festivals, shopkeeping, recipes, and local gossip with murder, family secrets, and the long memory of a small community.

That setting is not accidental. Pisacreta has lived in Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, but she has long described Michigan, especially the Lake Michigan shoreline, as home. The beaches, sand dunes, orchards, and fruit belt towns of western Michigan feed the Berry Basket novels in obvious ways. They give the series its weather, its seasonal rhythm, and its sense that beauty and trouble often live on the same block.

These days she still lives along Lake Michigan and continues her writing life from there, including freelance work alongside her fiction. If there is one clear thread across all the names, genres, and reinventions, it is this: Sharon Pisacreta likes stories with place in them. Whether she is writing a historical romance, an Edwardian mystery, or a cozy murder in a berry shop, she tends to start with people who want independence, communities full of secrets, and a past that refuses to stay quiet.