Terry Shames Books in Order

If you want the main series from the beginning: A Killing at Cotton Hill → The Last Death of Jack Harbin → Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek
If you want Samuel's early years: An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock → A Reckoning in the Back Country
If you want the strongest small-town ensemble: The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake → A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary → Murder at the Jubilee Rally
If you want action and underwater suspense: Perilous Waters → Deep Dive

Terry Shames grew up in Lake Jackson on the Texas Gulf Coast, and that landscape has stayed close to her fiction. She went to Brazosport High School, where she threw herself into theater, acting, directing, and chorus. After that she headed to the University of Texas at Austin. To help pay her way, she worked as a secretary, a waitress, and for two summers at Yellowstone National Park.

After college, she took a turn that does not sound much like the start of a mystery career. Shames joined the CIA and trained at Langley as a computer programmer and analyst. The job moved her from Washington, D.C., to Denver, and eventually to San Francisco, where another part of her life began to take shape.

Writing stayed with her throughout.

In 1986 she earned an MA in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She had wanted to publish for years, and in the early 2000s she began working seriously on mystery fiction. That longer road to publication shows in the books. They feel written by someone who has watched people closely, worked different jobs, and learned how much history can hide inside ordinary conversation.

Her first published novel, A Killing at Cotton Hill, arrived in 2013 and introduced Samuel Craddock, the quietly sharp lawman at the center of her Jarrett Creek books. The novel won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for other major mystery prizes. It also announced several things readers still come to Shames for, a strong sense of place, crimes rooted in daily life, and a belief that patience can be more interesting than swagger.

That is a big part of the Samuel Craddock series. In books like The Last Death of Jack Harbin, The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake, and An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, Shames returns again and again to small-town Texas, where family ties, money trouble, race, memory, and local reputation all shape the crimes. Samuel is not flashy. He listens, remembers, and keeps going. Readers who love regional mysteries often come for Jarrett Creek itself, then stay for the people who make the town feel real.

She knows that a town can be both comforting and dangerous at once.

Her books have also picked up starred reviews and more award attention over the years, but the appeal is not hard to name. Shames writes clearly. She trusts character. She lets tension build from what neighbors know, what families hide, and what old stories leave out. Even when a plot turns dark, there is usually room for decency, dry humor, and the sense that the people on the page have lives beyond the case in front of them.

More recently, she opened a new lane with the Jessie Madison thrillers. Perilous Waters shifts the action to the Bahamas, and Deep Dive takes Jessie into the Mediterranean on an FBI dive mission near Sicily. The setting is very different from Jarrett Creek, but the interests are familiar, capable people under pressure, hidden motives, and danger that gets worse the deeper you look. It is a nice reminder that Shames can move from dusty back roads to open water without losing her grip on character.

Today she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, a cat named Max, and a dog named Monty. She has also published numerous short stories and remains active in the mystery world through organizations including Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Texas Institute of Letters. Her fiction may travel, but its roots in place, community, and human mess are easy to spot.