Tessa Leoni Books in Order

The Tessa Leoni books spin out of a single explosive question: what would it take for a dedicated state trooper and mother to shoot her husband and go silent about their missing child. Introduced in Love You More, Tessa starts as a suspect and slowly becomes one of Gardner’s most intriguing investigators.

When readers first meet her, Tessa is a Massachusetts state police trooper accused of killing her abusive husband. Her face is bruised, her story is thin, and her six year old daughter is gone. Boston detective D.D. Warren handles the case from the outside, while the narrative gradually reveals how far Tessa will go to protect the only family she has left.

After surviving that crucible, Tessa leaves the uniform behind and reappears as a private investigator tied to a corporate security firm. In Touch & Go she is hired to look into a construction company’s problems, then walks into the empty townhouse of the Denbe family. Three people have vanished, leaving behind only scuffed floors and a pile of phones. The search forces her to parse ransom ploys, boardroom betrayals, and the secrets inside a seemingly perfect marriage.

Crash & Burn sends Tessa into even murkier territory. A woman named Nicky Frank crawls from the wreckage of a car accident insisting that a little girl called Vero is missing. Her husband swears no such child exists. Partnering with New Hampshire sheriff’s investigator Wyatt Foster, Tessa must weigh brain injury, lies, and buried crimes to decide who needs rescuing and from what.

Across the trilogy, Tessa’s own history is as important as the cases. She carries scars from childhood, a complicated sense of right and wrong, and a willingness to bend rules when the system fails. Her emerging relationship with Wyatt adds a quieter emotional thread, asking whether someone who has spent years in survival mode can risk building a new life.

These books are ideal if you like domestic thrillers where family dynamics and hidden identities matter as much as ballistics. They also knit closely with the D.D. Warren novels, but you can read the Tessa Leoni arc on its own and still get a complete, satisfying story about loyalty, reinvention, and the cost of keeping loved ones safe.