Tree of Life Books in Order

Tree of Life is Olivia Newport's contemporary genealogy mystery series, set in the Colorado mountain town of Canyon Mines. Each book pairs a present-day problem with a story from the past, then lets the two timelines speak to one another. Family history is not just a hobby here. It can change what people understand about themselves.

The main team is Jillian Duffy, a genealogist, and her father, Nolan, a lawyer and mediator. Jillian knows how to track family lines, records, and the gaps that people leave behind. Nolan is good with living people and the complicated situations that bring them to his door. Together, they keep finding that a question about the past rarely stays safely in the past.

The Inn at Hidden Run begins when a young woman named Meri arrives at a local bed-and-breakfast with little explanation. Jillian and Nolan follow the clues into a family story connected to the yellow fever epidemic in nineteenth-century Memphis. The book establishes the series pattern of modern uncertainty alongside historical lives under pressure.

In In the Cradle Lies, wealthy and reckless skier Tucker Kintzler arrives in Canyon Mines carrying questions about his grandfather's past. The search leads into 1930s Missouri as Tucker becomes dangerously focused on an old ski run. When I Meet You centers on an unclaimed trunk and the mysterious 1909 journey of Lynelle Bendeure.

The later books keep the Duffy family busy with histories that have left marks on the present. What You Said to Me involves troubled teenager Tisha Crowder and a mining-family story from 1893. Now That I Know You introduces a possible cousin whose identity and motives complicate Jillian's own Parisi family line.

The series is more about uncovering connections than solving a traditional crime in every installment. There is suspense, but also romance, family strain, legal trouble, and plenty of questions about inheritance, both emotional and literal. The historical sections give each modern mystery extra weight without requiring readers to know genealogy themselves.

Start with The Inn at Hidden Run. Each novel has its own main case, but the relationships among Jillian, Nolan, Meri, and the people of Canyon Mines develop across the series. Read in order for the fullest experience, especially if you enjoy dual timelines, family secrets, and mysteries built from old documents, forgotten names, and unfinished stories.