Susan Furlong Books in Order

Susan Furlong was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1967 and grew up in North Dakota. Long winters meant plenty of time at the library, where she gravitated toward mysteries. She later attended Montana State University, earning degrees in French and Spanish.

Before fiction became her main focus, Furlong taught high school language arts. After her first child was born, she left the classroom and began working from home. She translated instructional material into Spanish, wrote travel copy, took on academic projects, helped compile medical dictionaries, and worked as a ghostwriter.

It was a practical route into a writing life.

Her first published piece of fiction, a short mystery, appeared in 2010. Her first novel, Murder for Bid, followed in 2013. She also continued the Novel Idea Mysteries under the pen name Lucy Arlington, stepping into an established series and writing new adventures for its literary-agent heroine.

Furlong's early books under her own name include the Georgia Peach Mysteries. In Peaches and Scream, Rest in Peach, and War and Peach, amateur sleuth Nola Mae Harper investigates trouble in the small Georgia town of Cays Mill while helping keep her family's peach business going. The books pair murder puzzles with family friction, local gossip, and recipes.

She shifted into darker territory with the Bone Gap Travellers novels, beginning with Splintered Silence. Those books follow former Marine MP Brynn Callahan and her cadaver dog, Wilco, in a Tennessee mountain community shaped by Irish Traveller traditions, old loyalties, and distrust between neighbors. Fractured Truth and Shattered Justice keep Brynn close to the danger as she works as a deputy sheriff while carrying the effects of her military service.

Brynn and Wilco make a tough team.

Later standalones such as What They Don't Know and The Killer's Wife move into domestic and psychological suspense. Furlong's characters often have to sort through family secrets, public suspicion, and the uneasy feeling that the people closest to them may not be telling the truth. Her newer romantic suspense novels, including Lethal Wilderness Trap, Murder in the Appalachians, and Amish Country Homicide, add faith, danger, and partnerships tested under pressure.

Her work has also made room for the places she knows well, from small towns and mountain communities to suburban neighborhoods where appearances can hide a lot. Furlong and her family have lived in several states before settling in central Illinois. Along the way, she has also worked as a martial arts instructor, a useful bit of life experience for a writer who puts her characters through difficult situations.