Wendy Delaney Books in Order

If you want the true starting point: Trudy, Madly, Deeply → Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles → There's Something about Marty
If you like the quirkiest small-town cases: You Can't Go Gnome Again → Dogs, Lies, and Alibis → A Kiwi Before Dying
If you want the later relationship and wedding arc: No Wedding for Old Men → Farewell, Mr. Lovely → Better Wed Than Dead

Wendy Delaney writes cozy mysteries that mix murder, humor, family headaches, and a little romance. Her best-known books follow Charmaine Digby in the Working Stiffs series, set in the fictional town of Port Merritt, Washington. That setting was close to home for Delaney. She spent about thirty years in the Seattle area with her husband, raised two sons there, and later used that corner of the Pacific Northwest as the backdrop for her fiction.

She started young.

One of Delaney's earliest storytelling memories came after watching an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that did not end the way she wanted. So she wrote her own happier version. Later, in junior high, a science teacher handed the class a block of wood with a paring knife stuck in it and asked students to write what they saw. Most saw a block and a knife. Delaney saw a stabbed heart. It is a tidy origin story for a writer who would eventually mix romance with dead bodies.

Writing did not arrive as a straight line. Delaney has described herself as a left-brained former computer programmer, and that planner's streak still shows in how she works. Before she starts a book, she likes a map. She wrote early, unpublished novels on weekends, learned the craft the slow way, and eventually leaned into what she enjoyed most, mysteries with warmth, wit, and a heroine who notices what other people miss.

Years later, when she embraced her inner Nancy Drew, that became Trudy, Madly, Deeply.

That first Working Stiffs novel introduces Charmaine Digby, a former pastry chef and human lie detector who lands a job with the county coroner's office and promptly stumbles into murder. The hook is clever, but the series works because Delaney keeps the world lived-in and funny. In Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles, There's Something about Marty, and You Can't Go Gnome Again, readers get suspicious deaths, town gossip, family chaos, and an ongoing will-they-won't-they thread between Char and Detective Steve Sixkiller.

Food matters in these books, too. Delaney has long called herself a Food Network addict and a pastry chef wannabe, and that streak shows up on the page in a natural way. Her mysteries have cafes, recipes, comfort food, and people who talk through problems over dessert. Under the jokes and the banter, she keeps returning to a few steady themes: second chances, reinvention after disappointment, messy family ties, and the strange intimacy of small-town life, where everyone knows your business five minutes after you do.

She has also stayed closely tied to the mystery-writing world. Delaney is a long-time member of Mystery Writers of America, and she has spoken at regional writers' conferences and coached other writers on plotting and series building. That makes sense when you read her books. Even the breeziest scenes are carefully set up, and the mysteries move with the confidence of someone who likes structure but knows how to keep it light on the page.

These days, Delaney lives in the Texas Hill Country with what she has called the love of her life, and she is a proud grandmother. She has written about the move with the same easy humor found in her fiction, right down to the shock of learning how quickly a Texas temperature swing can wipe out a vegetable garden.

That same tone is a big part of why her books land so well. Delaney writes crime fiction for readers who want a puzzle, but also want company. The murders matter, the jokes help, and the people around the body are usually just as interesting as the case itself.