Susanna Calkins Books in Order

Susanna Calkins grew up in Philadelphia, where mystery fiction became an early favorite. She was drawn to the puzzles of Agatha Christie, along with the suspense of writers such as Phyllis Whitney and Lois Duncan. Those books gave her an appetite for secrets, danger, and the question that keeps any good mystery moving: what really happened?

History gave those interests a second home. Calkins earned a master's degree in education from Northwestern University, then completed graduate work in history at Purdue University, including a PhD. Her academic research focused on seventeenth-century England, a period full of political upheaval, disease, public punishment, and rapid change.

The path to fiction began in the archives. While researching domestic homicide, she read seventeenth-century ballads and broadsides that turned murders, trials, and gossip into popular news. The fragmentary stories made her wonder about the ordinary people caught up in them, especially women whose lives were often reduced to a few sensational lines.

That question led to Lucy Campion. Calkins began writing A Murder at Rosamund's Gate as a standalone novel, introducing Lucy as a young chambermaid in Restoration London who refuses to accept an easy answer when someone close to her is accused of murder.

The book arrived in 2013 and grew into the Lucy Campion Mysteries. Across From the Charred Remains, The Masque of a Murderer, and later installments, Lucy moves from domestic service into an apprenticeship with a printer. Her new work gives her access to London streets, rumors, printed news, and plenty of trouble.

Research is part of the fun.

Calkins uses the aftermath of the plague and the Great Fire of London as more than scenery. Her mysteries look at a city rebuilding itself, where people can lose their homes, change their identities, or find a chance to step beyond the role they were born into. Lucy's determination to learn, work, and ask difficult questions is the thread that ties the series together. The Masque of a Murderer received the 2016 Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery.

The settings may be historical, but the people have everyday worries.

Calkins later shifted to Prohibition-era Chicago with the Speakeasy Murders. In Murder Knocks Twice and The Fate of a Flapper, Gina Ricci works at the Third Door, a hidden club where jazz, bootleg liquor, family obligations, and criminal secrets mix freely. The books keep the mystery focus while trading seventeenth-century London for 1929 Chicago.

Alongside her fiction, Calkins has built a career in higher education. She is the director of the Nexus for Faculty Success and an associate professor at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons, continuing to balance university work, historical research, and stories about people who can't quite leave a suspicious death alone.