Joan Hess

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Joan Hess's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    52 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    March 1986
  • Latest Book:
    July 2016
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Full Series List in Order

An Arly Hanks Mystery

1 - Malice in Maggody (Feb-1987)
2 - Mischief in Maggody (Aug-1988)
3 - Much Ado in Maggody (1989)
4 - Mortal Remains in Maggody (Oct-1991)
5 - Madness in Maggody (Jan-1991)
6 - Maggody in Manhattan (1992)
7 - O Little Town of Maggody (1993)
8 - Martians in Maggody (Nov-1994)
9 - Miracles in Maggody (Nov-1995)
10 - The Maggody Militia (Apr-1997)
11 - Misery Loves Maggody (Jun-1998)
12 - Murder@Maggody.com (Jan-2000)
13 - Maggody and the Moonbeams (Aug-2001)
14 - Muletrain to Maggody (Feb-2004)
15 - Malpractice in Maggody (Jan-2006)
16 - Merry Wives of Maggody (Jan-2010)

A Claire Malloy Mystery

1 - Strangled Prose (Mar-1986)
2 - The Murder at the Murder at the Mimosa Inn (Oct-1986)
3 - Dear Miss Demeanor (Aug-1987)
4 - A Really Cute Corpse (Dec-1988)
5 - A Diet to Die For (Nov-1989)
5.5 - Dead On Arrival (Nov-1996)
6 - Roll over and Play Dead (Jul-1991)
7 - Death by the Light of the Moon (Mar-1992)
8 - Poisoned Pins (1993)
9 - Tickled to Death (May-1994)
10 - Busy Bodies (Jun-1995)
11 - Closely Akin to Murder (May-1996)
12 - A Holly, Jolly Murder (Nov-1997)
13 - A Conventional Corpse (Jun-2000)
14 - Out on a Limb (Nov-2002)
15 - The Goodbye Body (Apr-2005)
16 - Damsels in Distress (Apr-2007)
17 - Mummy Dearest (Apr-2008)
18 - Deader Homes and Gardens (Feb-2012)
19 - Murder as a Second Language (Dec-2013)
20 - Pride V. Prejudice (Apr-2015)

Book List in Order: 52 titles

  • Strangled Prose

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 1

    I'm Claire Malloy. I run that cute little bookstore in the abandoned railroad depot--the Book Depot. I love Mildred--a.k.a. Azalea Twilight--so I agreed to let her use my store for the autograph party for her latest smutty romance, Professor of Passi...

  • The Murder at the Murder at the Mimosa Inn

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 2

    Claire Malloy here. The mock murder weekend at the charming Mimosa Inn, designed to let me and other amateur sleuths try our skills, sounded too fun to pass up. When we arrived, it was hard to tell the guests from the actors, and it was good I'd brou...

  • Malice in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 1

    UP THE CREEK WITH MURDER The last crime wave to hit Maggody, Arkansas, happened eight years back when a farmer's barn burned down and caught two teens in flaming delicto. That's why Arly yanks, back in the Ozarks after her marriage went sour in th...

  • Future Tense

    Silhouette First Love - 233

    READ MY LIPS Moran was something of a grind. She had her eyes fixed firmly on the future. Her only concern was getting good grades, so she could qualify for a special school. Then one day in physics class, she heard a voice: “Hey, gorgeous. How ab...

  • Dear Miss Demeanor

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 3

    First there's the scandal of Emily Parchester, Farberville's journalism teacher for forty years, who's removed from her position for pilfering petty cash. Then there are the suggestive letters to Miss Demeanor, the Falcon Crier's advice columnist. ...

  • Red Rover, Red Rover

    Harlequin Crosswinds - 16

    LITTLE RED LIES Wow! Lydia had been chosen to play violin in the International Youth Orchestra. It was a dream come true -- a week in the Big Apple, meeting kids from all over the world. There was one cute Russian guy in particular! Lydia thought th...

  • Mischief in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 2

    MOUNTAIN MOONSHINE, MONKEY BUSINESS--AND MURDER! The phone lines were buzzing all the way from Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill to the Flamingo Motel when four hippies, two bachelors, and a psychic moved into Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755). Chief of Police ...

  • A Really Cute Corpse

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 4

    Claire Malloy, reluctant director of Farberville's Miss Thurberfest beauty pageant, is being driven to distraction by baton twirlers, off-key singers, lead-foot dancers, and the general hysteria that is convulsing the eighteen beauties vying for this...

  • Much Ado in Maggody

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 3

    RAISIN'' HELL, GOIN' TO THE DEVIL--AND MURDER There's trouble in Maggody Arkansas, again, and Chief of Police Arly Hanks has her hands full. The trouble's name is Brandon Bernswallow, the local bank president's playboy son, who became the new head...



  • A Diet to Die For

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 5

    Thanks to her deplorable weakness for saying yes when she should say no, Claire Malloy finds herself escorting Maribeth, an overweight, depressed heiress, to her diet and fitness sessions. But while the arduous regime is taking off pounds, it also se...

  • Madness in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 5

    A HOOT, A HOLLER ... AND A HOMICIDE No doubt about it, local gossips had finally gotten something right: a maniac was loose in Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755). So Chief of Police Ariel 'Arly" Hanks, a.k.a. the local girl who did not make good in New ...

  • Roll over and Play Dead

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 6

    Miss Emily Parchester's pampered bassets, Nick and Nora, have to be the most slobbery pets in Farberville, Bookstore owner Claire Malloy could kick herself for agreeing to dog-sit them, especially when on the third day of Miss Emily's vacation, they ...

  • Mortal Remains in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 4

    LIGHTS, CAMERA,...MURDER? Chief of Police Arly Hanks is still telling herself that someday she'll leave her hometown of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) and return to the bright lights of Manhattan. Ordinarily Arly's known for saying nothing ever happ...

  • Maggody in Manhattan

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 6

    RECIPE FOR MURDER Chief of Police Arly Hanks can't even look at a postcard of Manhattan's skyline--which reminds her of a broken line graph--without feeling dizzy and nauseated. So the last place on earth she wants to be is back in the City of Bri...

  • The Maggody Files: Hillnilly Cat

    in Cat Crimes 2
    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    From the pens of today's most prolific, popular, and feline-fancying mystery writers comes CAT CRIMES 2, a chilling collection of original stories that will leave cat- and mystery-lovers purring for more. Inside you'll encounter the Bogart drawl of P...

  • Death by the Light of the Moon

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 7

    No wonder my late unlamented husband never talked about his happy childhood. He didn't have one. This revelation strikes Claire Malloy the instant she meets her passel of venomous Malloy in-laws. Claire is invited down to their decaying Louisiana est...

  • The Last to Know

    in Malice Domestic 1

    CHARLOTTE MACLEOD ruffles feathers on Beacon Hill...BARBARA PAUL visits with a fatally clumsy clan...D.R. MEREDITH tells a murderer to go fly a kite...AUDREY PETERSON pursues a shadowy gentleman caller...VALERIE FRANKEL tracks a catnapper in Brooklyn...

  • O Little Town of Maggody

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 7

    MISTLETOE -- AND MURDER... Chief of Police Arly (Ariel) Hanks is still hiding out in her hometown of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755), the land of moonshine, Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill, Nashville on the radio, cheatin' hearts and, well, maybe murder. Ma...

  • Poisoned Pins

    • / Cozy Mystery
    • Buy Buy
    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 8

    Claire Malloy, bookstore owner, part-time sleuth, and full-time single mother, isn't quite sure she's ready to handle her big 4-0 birthday or her teenage daughter Caron. The Kappa Theta Eta sorority, which happens to be housed right next door to the ...



  • Tickled to Death

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 9

    Claire Malloy, Farberville's plucky amateur sleuth, feels the pull of summer doldrums until a predicament sends her to a posh lakefront community. Her best friend, Luanne, is having an affair with Dick Cissel, a dentist who just may have murdered his...

  • Make Yourselves at Home

    in Malice Domestic 3

    Acclaimed Agatha Award-winning author Nancy Pickard dishes up a perfectly delicious new feast of original mystery stories, served up in classic Agatha Christie style. Celebrating the enduring legacy of the most beloved crime writer of all time, MALIC...

  • Martians in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 8

    For Police Chief Arly Hanks, Maggody, Arkansas, (pop. 755) is a sleepy little town where nothing ever happens--until the day UFOs, Martians, Bigfoot, and tabloid reporters descend on Maggody... and bring along a case of murder. The summer starts o...

  • Busy Bodies

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 10

    Leave it to Claire Malloy, devoted amateur sleuth and owner of the Book Depot in Farberville, to start out having tea and end up investigating a murder. When Zeno Gorgias, an avant-garde artist, moves into town, the whole neighborhood is up in arms. ...

  • Miracles in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 9

    Chief of police Arly Hanks usually handles all the crime that comes her way in Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755), with the ease that Ruby Bee at Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill gets out her blue plate specials. But that's before televangelist Malachi Hope rolls in...

  • Closely Akin to Murder

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 11

    A chilling phone call from a cousin thought dead for thirty years sends bookseller and amateur sleuth Claire Malloy off on what may be a wild goose chase--or a hunt that may make her a sitting duck for a killer. Veronica "Ronnie" Landonwood is phonin...

  • Dead On Arrival

    in Modern Treasury of Great Detective and Murder Mysteries
    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 5.5

    No hit-or-miss anthology, this first-rate collection of 25 contemporary mysteries offers a cross-section view of the American detective, suspense and mystery short-story worlds. Gorman, editor of Mystery Scene, gathers the works of such masters as To...

  • The Maggody Militia

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 10

    MURDER PAINTS MAGGODY Chief of Police Arly Hanks is the law in Maggody, Arkansas (pop.755), a peaceful little Ozarks town snuggled in the heartland of America. Until a group of camouflage-clad patriots march in with maneuvers--and murder. It be...

  • Funny Bones

    YOU'LL DIE LAUGHING If you love to be skewered by rapier wit or prefer punch lines with your police procedurals, this delightful collection of screwball mystery stories will get you where you giggle. Fifteen of today's best writers gang up to make...

  • The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories: Sixth Annual Edition



  • A Holly, Jolly Murder

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 12

    MISTLETOE, MAGIC, AND MURDER Murder never takes a holiday, as Arkansas bookseller-sleuth Claire Malloy discovers when she celebrates with a Druid ritual, a run-in with a witch, and a far from ho-hum case of homicide. When Malthea Hendlerson, t...

  • Misery Loves Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 11

    When beleaguered chief of police Arly Hanks hears that her mother, Ruby Bee, and best friend, Estelle Oppers. are headed to Memphis on an Elvis pilgrimage, she thinks she may be getting a long-overdue break. But before she can say "Thank you, thank y...

  • Crime After Crime

    An anthology of psychological thrillers, whodunits, and suspense stories by popular mystery writers takes readers deep into dark hearts and twisted minds in stories by Anne Perry, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain, Ruth Rendell, and others...

  • Murder@Maggody.com

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 12

    To the quirky and colorful residents of Maggody, Arkansas, population 755, "going online" is something one does at the DMV. So when the high school's new computer lab gains access to the Internet, the town is plunged into virtual chaos. Students are ...

  • Malice Domestic 9

    JOAN HESS PRESENTS MALICE DOMESTIC 9: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TRADITIONAL MYSTERY STORIES Including Agatha Christie's classic mystery “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” With fourteen Christie inspired tales from today's most talented myste...

  • A Conventional Corpse

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 13

    Farberville, Arkansas, is playing host to its first-ever mystery convention with five major mystery writers--each representing a different subgenre of the mystery world--making the trek to the local college for "Murder Comes to Campus." Bookseller Cl...

  • Maggody and the Moonbeams

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 13

    A youth trip turns deadly, and Chief of Police Arly Hanks must catch the killer while serving as chaperone, in this hilarious small-town mystery. Arly Hanks has caught all sorts of killers since she returned home to Maggody, Arkansas, population 759,...

  • Death of a Romance Writer and Other Stories

  • Out on a Limb

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 14

    WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS...IT'S MURDER Faberville bookstore owner Claire Malloy is ruminating over the state of her love life when she gets disturbing news. Elderly Miss Emily Parchester is up a tree. Chained to an old oak, packing a thermos of tea a...

  • Big Foot Stole My Wife!: And Other Stories

    Eleven stories of jealousy, lunacy, and murder told in the uproarious style of Joan Hess, the creator of Maggody, Arkansas. As he waits in the checkout line at Consumers Market, Jay Jay Anderson is certain of one thing: His wife, Cookie, deserves to ...



  • The Deadly Ackee and Other Stories of Crime and Catastrophe

    Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Author

    In the title novel, The Deadly Ackee, retired florist Theo Bloom lucks into what appears to be a perfect situation -- escorting his teenage niece and her five friends to lush Jamaica, where he can study the...

  • Muletrain to Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 14

    Under the benign watch of Police Chief Arly Hanks, things are pretty quiet in the sleepy Arkansas town of Maggody these days. Not even the prospect of a historical society-funded Civil War documentary on the locally touted (albeit historically insign...

  • The Goodbye Body

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 15

    Claire Malloy runs a bookstore in the normally quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas - an enterprise which provides the verging-on-meager living for her and her deeply sarcastic teenage daughter Caron. So when emergency work forces Claire and C...

  • Malpractice in Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 15

    A part from small-town feuds and church scandal, things have been so quiet in the little Arkansas town of Maggody that even police chief Arly Hanks has found time for a vacation. But she returns to find trouble brewing and tongues wagging at fever pi...

  • Damsels in Distress

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 16

    THE LORDS ARE LEAPING... A Renaissance Fair is coming to the relatively quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas, which is not the sort of news that usually sets local bookseller Claire Malloy's heart racing. But with Claire's daughter, Caron, be...

  • Mummy Dearest

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 17

    After a somewhat long and, at times, strange courtship, Claire Malloy -- a single, widowed mother of a teenage daughter and a bookseller in Farberville, Arkansas - has finally said 'I do' to her swain, Lt. Peter Rosen of the Farberville Police Depart...

  • Merry Wives of Maggody

    An Arly Hanks Mystery - 16

    Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) is perceived of as a two-bit hick town, filled with one-bit hicks. But Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanan seeks to change that perception with her latest scheme -- a charity golf tournament. This presents a bit of a challenge, since n...

  • Deader Homes and Gardens

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 18

    Back from her somewhat unusual honeymoon, Claire Malloy must face the harsh reality of life with her new husband, police chief Peter Rosen, and her teenage daughter Caron -- three people simply can't fit into her cosy two bedroom apartment. After a w...

  • Murder as a Second Language

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 19

    Claire Malloy -- now a married woman of leisure -- tries her hand at volunteering, but instead lands her right in the middle of another murder investigation Longtime bookseller and single mother, Claire Malloy has recently married her long term be...

  • Pride V. Prejudice

    A Claire Malloy Mystery - 20

    Claire Malloy, for as long as she can remember, has been the local bookseller and owner of the Book Depot and the widowed mother of teenage Caron, who frequently speaks in ALL CAPS. But her life has changed dramatically in recent years. Claire has ma...



  • Caveat Emptor and Other Stories

    Delightfully deadly short fiction from the pen of Joan Hess, creator of Maggody, Arkansas. Althea is caught in a romance writer’s worst nightmare: She’s been trapped in one of her own melodramatic creations. Around her, strapping men chase after ...

  • The Deadly Ackee

    Retired florist Theo Bloomer would much rather stay at home than go on a disastrous Jamaican vacation in this charming cozy mystery. Every time Dorrie Caldicott gets into trouble, it falls to Theo Bloomer to bail her out. So when Dorrie and her colle...

  • The Night-Blooming Cereus

    Retired florist Theo Bloomer goes to Israel to rescue his niece from terrorists in this engrossing mystery. On the shores of the Dead Sea, Dorrie Caldicott is coming into bloom. A spoiled graduate of the finest prep schools on the Atlantic Seaboard, ...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Joan Hess has published 52 books.

Joan Hess does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Caveat Emptor and Other Stories, was published in July 2016.

The first book by Joan Hess, Strangled Prose, was published in March 1986.

Yes. Joan Hess has 2 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
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