Marcia Muller

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Marcia Muller's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    72 Books (4 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1977
  • Latest Book:
    April 2024
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Full Series List in Order

Cape Perdido (Rhoda Swift)

1 - Point Deception (Jul-2001)
2 - Cyanide Wells (Aug-2003)
3 - Cape Perdido (Jul-2005)

Elena Oliverez

1 - The Tree of Death (1983)
2 - The Legend of the Slain Soldiers (Jul-1985)
3 - Beyond the Grave (Oct-1986)

A Joanna Stark Mystery

1 - The Cavalier in White (Jun-1986)
2 - There Hangs the Knife (Jun-1988)
3 - Dark Star (Jul-1989)

A Sharon McCone Mystery

1 - Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977)
2 - Ask the Cards a Question (May-1982)
3 - The Cheshire Cat's Eye (Jan-1983)
4 - Games to Keep the Dark Away (1984)
4.5 - Wild Mustard (Jul-2005)
5 - Leave a Message for Willie (Sep-1984)
5.5 - Double (Oct-1984)
6 - There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (Aug-1985)
6.5 - The Broken Men (Nov-1996)
7 - Eye of the Storm (Mar-1988)
8 - There's Something in a Sunday (Jan-1989)
9 - The Shape of Dread (1989)
10 - Trophies and Dead Things (1990)
11 - Where Echoes Live (1991)
12 - Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (Jul-1993)
13 - Wolf in the Shadows (1993)
14 - Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (1994)
15 - A Wild and Lonely Place (Jul-1996)
15.5 - The McCone Files (1995)
16 - The Broken Promise Land (Jun-1996)
17 - Both Ends of the Night (Jun-1997)
18 - While Other People Sleep (Jul-1998)
19 - A Walk Through the Fire (May-1999)
19.5 - McCone and Friends (Feb-2000)
20 - Listen to the Silence (Jul-2000)
21 - Dead Midnight (Jul-2002)
22 - The Dangerous Hour (Jul-2004)
23 - Vanishing Point (Jul-2006)
24 - The Ever-Running Man (Jul-2007)
25 - Burn Out (Nov-2008)
26 - Locked In (Oct-2009)
27 - Coming Back (Nov-2010)
28 - City of Whispers (Nov-2011)
28.5 - Skeleton in the Closet (Oct-2012)
29 - Looking for Yesterday (Nov-2012)
30 - The Night Searchers (Jul-2014)
30.5 - Merrill-Go-Round (Sep-2014)
30.6 - Tell Me Who I Am (May-2016)
31 - Someone Always Knows (Jul-2016)
32 - The Color of Fear (Aug-2017)
33 - The Breakers (Aug-2018)
34 - Ice and Stone (Aug-2021)
35 - Circle in the Water (Apr-2024)

Book List in Order: 72 titles

  • Edwin of the Iron Shoes

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 1

    A wood-carved little-boy mannequin wearing ornate iron shoes is the key to an elaborate scheme involving arson, vandalism ... and murder. When a small-time San Francisco antique dealer is stabbed to death with a valuable bone-handled dagger from one ...

  • Ask the Cards a Question

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 2

    PRIVATE EYE SHARON MCCONE IS faced with a murder case too close for comfort--who would have wanted to kill Molly Antonio, the nicest lady in Sharon's building? The San Francisco neighborhood seems a pretty sleepy place for a murder; the most exoti...

  • The Cheshire Cat's Eye

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 3

    ONCE AGAIN, SAVVY PRIVATE EYE Sharon McCone is plunged into intrigue and murder. This time her investigations lead her to San Francisco's "Painted Ladies" -- the landmark district of gaudily colored Victorian row houses. Responding to her old frie...

  • The Tree of Death

    • / Amateur Sleuth
    • Buy Buy
    Elena Oliverez - 1

    Elena Oliverez, curator of the new Museum of Mexican Arts in Santa Barbara, wanted her first exhibit to convey the power and subtlety of fine Chicano art. Displaying the huge, gaudy ceramic árbol de la vida--tree of life--would please the wealthy pat...

  • Games to Keep the Dark Away

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 4

    The woman under the pier... Picture Salmon Bay: an isolated, run-down northern California village, home to an idle fleet of fishing boats, a deserted amusement park, and a handful of secretive, even hostile residents. When private investigator Sharo...

  • Leave a Message for Willie

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 5

    PRIVATE EYE SHARON McCONE takes on a case for Willie Whelan, a vendor at the local San Francisco flea market--not to mention his moon-lighting job as a fence. She's checking up on a silent man in dark clothes and a yarmulke who has been hanging aroun...

  • Witches Brew

  • Double

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 5.5

    MYSTERY WAS THE ONLY THING THEY HAD IN COMMON. BUT THAT WAS MORE THAN ENOUGH... Sharon McCone had come home again: to her warm, troubled family, to San Diego and a convention of private detectives in a posh seaside hotel. For Sharon it was a chanc...

  • Chapter and Hearse

    Sixteen witty tales of mystery and suspense, focusing on the world of books, include classic works by Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Lawrence Block, James Gould Cozzens, Lawrence G. Blochman, and others...



  • Dark Lessons

  • She Won the West

  • The Legend of the Slain Soldiers

    Elena Oliverez - 2

    Santa Barbara's Fiesta brings droves of visitors to Elena Oliverez's Museum of Mexican Arts. And a shocking murder. Dead on Fiesta Eve is Elena's friend, Ciro Siseros, a historian researching the Legend of the Slain Soldiers, a slaughter of Mexican-A...

  • Deadly Arts

  • There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 6

    Heartbreak Hotel... The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rise above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving ...

  • Wickedest Show on Earth

  • The Cavalier in White

    A Joanna Stark Mystery - 1
    Worldwide Mysteries - 8

    A Masterpiece Of Crime Frans Hals's painting The Cavalier in White disappears from a San Francisco gallery. Art security expert Joanna Stark returns from self-imposed retirement to solve the crime from a building she had made burglarproof. But art...

  • Beyond the Grave

    Elena Oliverez - 3

    The bestselling author of The McCone Files teams up with the creator of the "Nameless Detective" for a collaborative mystery that bridges the San Franciscos of 1894 and 1986. Muller and Pronzini masterfully parallel the investigations of turn-of-the-...

  • Eye of the Storm

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 7

    Private eye Sharon McCone is lured away from San Francisco to what she thinks will be a weekend "busman's holiday." Her sister Patsy has invited her to Appleby Island, once the home of an agricultural tycoon. With his heirs long gone, the rich man's ...

  • There Hangs the Knife

    A Joanna Stark Mystery - 2
    Worldwide Mysteries - 34

    Joanna Stark, art lover and part owner of an art security firm, has devised a daring plan to recover two valuable stolen paintings. Here scheme will also entrap one of the world's greatest art thieves - a man with whom she shares a passionate and vio...



  • The Web She Weaves

  • There's Something in a Sunday

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 8

    It's a cold Sunday in San Francisco. Sharon McCone's alone on a routine surveillance job, following a man named Frank Wilkonson through the city's lush horticultural hot spots to the sere foothills of the Diablos. But when she returns to find her kin...

  • The Shape of Dread

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 9

    PRIVATE EYE SHARON McCONE is enlisted into a case that had made lurid headlines ten years earlier: it was then that Bobby Foster, ex-crack addict and parking valet at the trendy Cafe Comedie, confessed to the kidnapping and murder of young stand-up c...

  • Dark Star

    A Joanna Stark Mystery - 3
    Worldwide Mysteries - 58

    A SPLASH OF RED From her peaceful Sonoma Valley home, art security expert Joanna Stark can't escape the crippling fear that Antony Parducci--thief, art dealer; dreaded enemy and onetime lover--is nearby, hot on the trail of a newly discovered Van ...

  • Kill or Cure

  • Trophies and Dead Things

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 10

    A RANDOM SERIES OF MURDERS IS ONLY a succession of headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle for investigator Sharon McCone until one of her legal co-op's clients becomes a victim. Perry Hilderly had been a founder of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement...

  • Where Echoes Live

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 11

    IN HER TWELFTH OUTING, P.I. Sharon McCone leaves her San Francisco turf for the forbidding high desert landscape of Tufa Lake near the Nevada border. An environmental group thinks that the Hong Kong-based Transpacific Corporation has some dubious pla...

  • Deceptions

    in Women on the Edge

    She had it all. She was known throughout ultra-chic designer circles as Alix, the hottest American fashion model in all of Paris. Women envied her dazzling success. Men worshipped her streamlined beauty.
    But only one man had the power to expose h...

  • The Lighthouse

    Anticipating a peaceful and relaxing year in which to write and illustrate a book, college professor Jan Ryerson and his artist wife Alix move to the isolated Cape Despair Lighthouse on a desolate stretch of Oregon coast. But their well-laid plans ar...

  • Wolf in the Shadows

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 13

    San Francisco PI. Sharon McCone isn't ready at all to cope with the disaster. Just when All Souls Legal Cooperative hands her an ultimatum that will tie her to a desk forever. Hy Ripinsky, her lover and an environmental activist, suddenly vanishes. D...



  • Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 12

    It looked like a lost cause. Convicted of a brutal society murder in 1956, Lis Benedict had served a long sentence and just been released from jail. Then in a last desperate attempt to clear the Benedict name, her daughter Judy convinces All Souls Le...

  • Criminal Intent

  • Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 14

    FLYING SOLO Now that private investigator Sharon McCone has struck out on her own, she needs all the clients she can get--even a shady character from her Berkeley days. T. J. "Suitcase" Gordon's made millions as a "turnaround man," a corporate tro...

  • Lady on the Case

  • The McCone Files

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 15.5

    Marcia Muller is, as Sue Grafton pointed out, the creator of the modern female private eye story, and Sharon McCone is one of the finest and most sensitive of all current sleuths. Sharon came upon the scene in 1977 with Edwin of the Iron Shoes, ...

  • The Cracks in the Sidewalk

    in Women On the Case

    Crime and detection are women's work for twenty-six great writers in this second brilliant collection of mystery fiction edited by Sara Paretsky. From wicked irony and white-collar crime in Amanda Cross's "The Baroness," to the chilling "Only a Woman...

  • The Broken Promise Land

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 16

    Ricky Savage is Sharon McCone's brother-in-law, and the hottest country singer in the business. He's on top professionally, but hitting rock bottom in his personal life. His longtime marriage to Sharon's sister Charlene is breaking up, forcing him to...

  • A Wild and Lonely Place

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 15

    It's worth a $1 Million reward to Sharon McCone if she catches the man called the Diplo-bomber, who has set off bombs at consulates all over the U.S. Now he's in San Francisco--and that's McCone's turf. When he misses his latest target, the embassy o...

  • The Broken Men

    in Modern Treasury of Great Detective and Murder Mysteries
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 6.5

    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...

  • Both Ends of the Night

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 17

    A DESPERATE LETTER, A DISAPPEARANCE...AND A FRIEND'S FIERY DEATH. P.I. SHARON McCONE'S LONG NIGHT IS JUST BEGINNING. Sharon McCone knew something was wrong when her friend and former flight instructor, Matty Wildress, arranged a flying test for he...



  • Detective Duos

    Sleuthing twosomes have long made their mark on detective fiction. From the unnamed narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" who adroitly recounts the virtuosity of the Parisian detective, C. Auguste Dupin; to Dorothy L. Sayers's beloved ...

  • While Other People Sleep

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 18

    With her agency going great guns, Sharon McCone is known as one of the best detectives in the business...until her untarnished reputation is threatened by an impostor. A mysterious woman is handing out McCone's business cards, advising clients, and p...

  • Duo

    The world's first two-author, husband-and-wife short story collection.Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini are two of the world's most popular and respected mystery authors. Their new collection demonstrates why this team has so many fans.Here you'll find...

  • Mystery for Short

  • A Walk Through the Fire

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 19

    ALOHA MURDER Accidents are plaguing a documentary film crew on breathtakingly beautiful Kauai. Can San Francisco P .T. Sharon McCone ferret out possible sabotage behind the scenes? The job sounds like a breeze--McCone envisions romantic, tropical ...

  • McCone and Friends

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 19.5

    Creator of the modern female private eye story, Marcia Muller has been writing novels and short stories about Sharon McCone since 1977. In the process, McCone has gained a host of associates and formed her own detective agency. Some seven years ago, ...

  • Listen to the Silence

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 20

    THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL News of her father's death sends San Francisco P.I. Sharon McCone rushing to her family home. While going through his personal effects, McCone comes upon a shocking document, one that raises questions about her birth. The stu...

  • Point Deception

    Cape Perdido (Rhoda Swift) - 1

    Rhoda Swift, sheriff's deputy in California's Soledad County, lives with her haunting dreams of an unsolved mass murder thirteen years earlier. In a remote spot on the rocky Pacific coast two families were found riddled with bullets. Two children lay...

  • Dead Midnight

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 21

    Sharon McCone, who has faced and survived many personal crises, must endure another long, dark journey after her brother Joey takes his own life. Reeling from the anguish and the perplexing reasons for Joey's suicide, Sharon tries to escape through w...

  • Time of the Wolves

    Marcia Muller is one of the finest authors of detective fiction, however, she also writes Western stories. When the title story first appeared, it not only won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, but went on to inspire a motion picture....



  • Cyanide Wells

    Cape Perdido (Rhoda Swift) - 2

    A hard, four-hour drive north of San Francisco leads to sparsely populated Soledad County, a combination of spectacular seashore, inland forests, and small towns steeped in gold-mining history. One of those towns is Cyanide Wells, now an artsy commun...

  • The Dangerous Hour

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 22

    Complacency can make a person careless, and Sharon McCone, who makes crime her business, should know that better than most. One minute she's riding high with her detective agency expanding, her bank account growing, and her only "problem" a marriage ...

  • Cape Perdido

    Cape Perdido (Rhoda Swift) - 3

    Marcia Muller, bestselling author of the acclaimed series starring San Francisco P.I. Sharon McCone, returns to the remote northern California coast of Point Deception and Cyanide Wells with an exciting new novel.A riveting mystery full of atmosphere...

  • Wild Mustard

    in A Moment on the Edge
    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 4.5

    "

    “An absolutely first-rate anthology. . . a thoughtful and intelligent paean to crime fiction.” — New York Sun

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George serves up a century''s worth of superb crim...

  • Vanishing Point

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 23

    Till Death Do They Part Commitment-phobic Sharon McCone has just shocked everyone she knows -- she's eloped with her sexy fellow investigator and longtime significant other, Hy Ripinsky. With her PI business booming and marital adjustments looming a...

  • Somewhere in the City

    "Her stories crackle like few others on the mystery landscape."-San Francisco Chronicle

    "One of the treasures of the genre."-Chicago Tribune

    A new collection of Marcia Muller's best short fiction from the past twenty years, including...

  • The Ever-Running Man

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 24

    Sharon McCone is hired by her husband's security firm to track down "the ever-running man," a shadowy figure who has been leaving explosive devices at their various offices. She doesn't have to search for long. When McCone narrowly escapes an explosi...

  • Burn Out

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 25

    Traumatized by a recent life-or-death investigation, Sharon McCone flees to her ranch in California's high desert country to contemplate her future. Deep depression shadows her days and nights, and a chance encounter with a troubled, highly secretive...

  • Locked In

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 26

    Shot in the head by an unknown assailant, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone finds herself trapped by locked-in syndrome: almost total paralysis but an alert, conscious mind. Since the late-night attack occurred at her agency's offices, the natu...

  • Coming Back

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 27

    New York Times bestselling author, Marcia Muller, brings you another thrilling mystery with her famous private investigator, Sharon McCone. In Locked In, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone was shot in the head and suffered from locked-in synd...

  • City of Whispers

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 28

    Private eye Sharon McCone receives an e-mail asking for help from her emotionally disturbed half brother Darcy Blackhawk. She replies . . . but gets no response. As Sharon digs deeper, she discovers that Darcy sent his message from an Internet café i...

  • Skeleton in the Closet

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 28.5

    New York Times bestselling author, Marcia Muller, brings you another thrilling mystery with her famous private investigator, Sharon McCone.Sharon McCone is excited--and relieved--to move her detective agency into the perfect new office space. Unfortu...

  • Looking for Yesterday

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 29

    Three years ago, Caro Warrick was acquitted for the murder of her best friend Amelia Bettencourt, but the lingering doubts of everyone around Caro is affecting her life. Sharon McCone is confident that she can succeed where other detectives have fail...

  • The Night Searchers

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 30

    When new clients Jay and Camilla Givens come to Sharon McCone with Camilla's stories of devil worshippers performing human sacrifices in San Francisco, the detective is skeptical, to say the least. However, when she discovers that Jay is involved wit...

  • Kindling Point

    A Short Story by New York Times Best-Selling Author Marcia MullerOld Victorian houses, Ouija boards, and forces beyond human ken are familiar devices in macabre fiction; but the use Marcia Muller makes of them in this contemporary tale is unusual, su...

  • Merrill-Go-Round

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 30.5

    A Short Story by New York Times Best-Selling Author Marcia Muller“Merrill-Go-Round” is McCone’s first recorded short case -- a private-eye story that is also a “woman’s story,” in the best sense of that term.ExcerptI CLUNG to the metal po...

  • Tell Me Who I Am

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 30.6

    From New York Times bestselling author Marcia Muller, a new short story featuring her beloved private investigator, Sharon McCone....

  • Someone Always Knows

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 31

    Finally settled into their new home after losing their house in a fire, and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband Hy are starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered...

  • The Color of Fear

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 32

    In New York Times bestselling author Marcia Muller's captivating new mystery, private detective Sharon McCone's investigation hits closer to home than ever before... THE COLOR OF FEAR When a knock on the door in the middle of the night wakes Shar...

  • He Said...She Said

    in Deadly Housewives

    A heart-stopping mystery anthology from fourteen of today’s best-loved and bestselling female mystery and suspense writers.

    In the expert hands of fourteen unsurpassed storytellers, being a housewife takes on a whole new meaning. Get ready...

  • The Breakers

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 33

    On a foggy summer morning, private investigator Sharon McCone receives a call from her former neighbors, the Curleys. Their usually dependable daughter Chelle hasn't been answering their calls for weeks. Would Sharon check on her? Sharon arranges ...

  • Ice and Stone

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 34

    Private Investigator Sharon McCone goes undercover to investigate the murders of two Indigenous women in remote Northern California in this gripping, atmospheric mystery in the New York Times bestselling series.  When the bodies of two Indi...

  • Circle in the Water

    A Sharon McCone Mystery - 35

    In this twisting mystery in a New York Times bestselling series, pranks escalate into a deadly scheme that Private Investigator Sharon McCone must unravel -- ​before they claim her life. San Francisco is home to more than 200 privately owned street...

Award-Winning Books by Marcia Muller

The Ever-Running Man
2007 RT Reviewers Choice Award -- PI Novel
Wolf in the Shadows
1994 Anthony Award -- Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Marcia Muller has published 72 books.

Marcia Muller does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Circle in the Water, was published in April 2024.

The first book by Marcia Muller, Edwin of the Iron Shoes, was published in January 1977.

Yes. Marcia Muller has 4 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
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