The Treasure Hunters Club Books in Order

The The Treasure Hunters Club books are adult ensemble mysteries set in Maple Bay, a Nova Scotia seaside town where pirate lore is not just atmosphere, it is local history. People have been drawn there for generations by the story of a lost treasure, but the real hook of the series is everything buried around it: family secrets, old grudges, unexplained deaths, and the way a whole town can learn to live beside half-told stories. These books have some cozy charm on the surface, but the stakes are much sharper.

The first novel, The Treasure Hunters Club, brings together three strangers whose lives start to overlap in ways none of them expected. Peter Barnett arrives in Maple Bay after a letter pulls him back toward an estranged family and the mansion tied to them. Dandy Feltzen is a teenager grieving her grandfather, and she takes up the treasure hunt that shaped his life. Cass Jones, a stalled-out writer, lands in town almost by accident and realizes Maple Bay might hold both her next big subject and a chance to start over.

That mix of ages and motives is a big part of the series' appeal. Peter wants answers about family and belonging. Dandy wants to honor the person she loved most and prove she can finish what he started. Cass wants a breakthrough, but she also wants to believe she is not done yet. Because the books move between their perspectives, the mystery keeps widening, and every clue seems to touch more than one life.

Maple Bay is cozy until it really is not.

The setting matters here. Maple Bay has cliffs, coves, old mansions, secret societies, and the kind of long memory small towns are famous for. Treasure lore brings people together, but it also keeps class resentments, old alliances, and private betrayals simmering in the background. Ryan uses that seaside atmosphere well. The town feels inviting enough that you want to wander around it, and dangerous enough that you know not to trust the postcard version.

The follow-up, Return to Breakneck Island, keeps Peter, Dandy, and Cass at the center but pushes the story outward to a rocky island off the coast. There, the vanished MacLeary family and whispers of a missing fortune pull the trio into another layered case. The treasure hunting never works as a simple scavenger hunt. It is really a way into buried history, missing people, and the question of who gets to control the story a town tells about itself.

So if you like mysteries with puzzle plotting, a strong sense of place, and characters who are trying to rebuild their lives while chasing clues, this series is an easy fit. Expect shifting alliances, old family damage, queer romance threads, and reveals that matter emotionally as much as they do mechanically. The books are adventurous and twisty, but they never lose sight of the people doing the digging.