Domestic Diva Mysteries in Order: All 19 Books (Krista Davis)

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Sophie Winston plans other people’s parties for a living in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, lives in a rambling historic house she cannot quite afford to keep perfect, and has spent nineteen books being quietly out-staged by her childhood rival Natasha, who has a television show and opinions about everything. Her publisher once described her as a young Martha Stewart; readers tend to describe her as the friend who actually knows where the extra chairs are.

The Domestic Diva Mysteries are built around occasions — Thanksgiving stuffing contests, cookie swaps, pie festivals, a chocolate tasting, a Fourth of July house party — and every book comes with recipes and entertaining tips in the back. This is the complete reading order: all 19 novels with their years, where the series changed publishers, where to start, and what else Krista Davis writes. Spoiler-free throughout.

Domestic Diva Mysteries in Order: All 19 Books

Years below are first US edition publication years, taken from the publishers’ own series listings and checked against library catalogue records. One thing worth knowing before you look at the list: there is a two-year gap between book 10 (2016) and book 11 (2018), because the series moved from Berkley to Kensington, where it was relaunched in hardcover. Nothing is missing — the numbering runs straight through.

1. The Diva Runs Out of Thyme (2008). Thanksgiving in Old Town, and Sophie Winston wants to win the town’s Stupendous Stuffing Shakedown more than she wants to be gracious about it. Her hunt for the right turkey turns up a body instead, and her childhood rival Natasha is installed in the plot from page one.
2. The Diva Takes the Cake (2009). Sophie’s sister is getting married at the family home, which means relatives, a cake, and a wedding that goes wrong in the way only a family wedding can. The weakest excuse for a murder in the series and one of the funniest books in it.
3. The Diva Paints the Town (2009). A neighbour’s house is being made over in time for the spring home tour, with Sophie coordinating paint chips and egos. If you like the home-renovation strand of cozy mysteries, this is the one to try early.
4. The Diva Cooks a Goose (2010). Christmas arrives with a neighbourhood toy swap and a houseful of visiting family. The first of two proper Christmas books in the series, and a good standalone read in December even if you are reading everything else out of order.
5. The Diva Haunts the House (2011). A Halloween party and a community haunted house give Sophie two decorating jobs and one corpse. Easily the most atmospheric entry for autumn reading.
6. The Diva Digs Up the Dirt (2012). A television makeover crew sets up in a back garden, and Sophie finds that a camera crew in a small neighbourhood turns every old grievance into material. Gardens, gossip and a cold case feel.
7. The Diva Frosts a Cupcake (2013). An animal shelter fundraiser pits local bakeries against one another, and the rivalry gets personal long before it gets fatal. A natural next step if you came to Davis from a bakery series.
8. The Diva Wraps It Up (2014). A holiday office party, a neighbourhood cookie swap, and the kind of December schedule that would flatten most event planners. The second Christmas-set book and the one most readers name as their favourite of the holiday pair.
9. The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss (2015). A chocolate company’s fiftieth anniversary tasting brings Sophie a dream assignment and a family business with a long memory. Read it in February.
10. The Diva Serves High Tea (2016). A new tea shop opens with a literacy fundraiser attached, which is about as on-brand as this series gets. It is also the last book published by Berkley before the series changed houses.
11. The Diva Cooks Up a Storm (2018). A fashionable pop-up dinner party, and Sophie back at work after the series’ two-year gap. This was the first Domestic Diva book published in hardcover, by Kensington, in May 2018.
12. The Diva Sweetens the Pie (2019). Old Town’s annual pie festival, complete with a pie-eating contest and bakers who take the judging extremely seriously. One of the best of the later books for pure small-town comedy.
13. The Diva Spices It Up (2020). Sophie takes on the ghostwriting of a celebrity cookbook, which gives her an inside view of a food personality’s household and everyone who wants something from it.
14. The Diva Serves Forbidden Fruit (2021). A home-decorating street fair in Old Town runs alongside a local travel group’s trip to Portugal, so this one has a wider map than most of the series.
15. The Diva Says Cheesecake! (2022). A midsummer dessert dinner on the waterfront, tied to an outdoor Shakespeare performance. Lush, warm-weather setting and a very good cheesecake chapter.
16. The Diva Delivers on a Promise (2023). A ghost-kitchen convention and a charity lunch at a socialite’s house put Sophie between the food industry’s newest business model and Old Town’s oldest money.
17. The Diva Goes Overboard (2024). A lavish engagement party is exactly the sort of job Sophie is hired for, and exactly the sort where the guest list is the suspect list.
18. The Diva Poaches a Bad Egg (2025). Brunch season in autumn, with a house renovation running in the background. A gentler, more domestic entry after the big party books either side of it.
19. The Diva Hosts a Murderer (2026). Published in hardcover on 26 May 2026, the nineteenth book builds a Fourth of July house party around a group of guests and ends the evening with fireworks and a murder. The newest book in the series as of October 2026.

Where should you start?

Start at book 1. The Diva Runs Out of Thyme sets up the house, the neighbours, the ex-husband-shaped complications and the Natasha rivalry that the whole series runs on, and the early Berkley books are short enough that catching up is a pleasure rather than a project.

If you would rather read by season, the series makes that easy. The Diva Cooks a Goose (book 4) and The Diva Wraps It Up (book 8) are the two Christmas books; The Diva Haunts the House (book 5) is the Halloween one; book 1 is Thanksgiving; The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss (book 9) is for February; The Diva Says Cheesecake! (book 15) and The Diva Hosts a Murderer (book 19) are high summer. You will be mildly spoiled on relationship developments if you jump, but no murder will be given away.

And if you are new to the genre altogether, our cozy mysteries for beginners guide puts this series next to nine others and tells you which first book suits which reader.

What the series is actually like

Three things define it. The first is the entertaining angle: Sophie is a professional event planner, so the books are full of practical detail about feeding thirty people, and each one ends with recipes and tips you can genuinely use. If that is what you want from a cozy, our round-up of cozy mysteries with recipes and our Goldy Schulz reading order are the obvious companions — Davis and Diane Mott Davidson are the two writers who do catering-and-crime best.

The second is Old Town Alexandria. The historic district across the Potomac from Washington is a real place, and the brick sidewalks, eighteenth-century houses and waterfront in the books are drawn from it; the murders and most of the shopfronts are invented. The third is Natasha. The rivalry is the series’ engine and its best running joke, and it gets funnier the longer you stay with it.

Content-wise these are mild: no gore on the page, no graphic violence, a little romance, plenty of food. Reliable comfort reading.

What else Krista Davis writes

Two more series. The Paws & Claws Mysteries are set at the Sugar Maple Inn in the (fictional) pet-friendly resort town of Wagtail, Virginia, and begin with Murder, She Barked; the most recent is The Wagtail Murder Club. Dog people should start there — and see our list of cozy mysteries with dogs. The Pen & Ink Mysteries began in 2018 with Color Me Murder, built around a bookshop and a line of colouring books.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to read the Domestic Diva Mysteries in order?

Not strictly. Each murder is solved inside its own book, so any one of them works as a standalone. But Sophie’s personal life, her business and the state of her house are a continuing story across nineteen books, and reading out of sequence will spoil developments the series takes its time over. Publication order is the right order.

How many Domestic Diva books are there?

Nineteen novels, published 2008 to 2026. Both publishers’ series pages list the same nineteen titles in the same order, so the count is not in dispute — though a paperback edition of book 19 is listed for June 2027, which sometimes makes retailers display that title twice.

Do the Domestic Diva Mysteries include recipes?

Yes — recipes and entertaining tips are part of the format and have been since the first book. They lean towards party food and holiday baking rather than weeknight cooking, which fits a heroine whose job is other people’s celebrations.

Will there be a book 20?

Nothing has been announced by Kensington as of October 2026. Davis has published a Domestic Diva book most years for nearly two decades and is still actively writing her other series, so a twentieth seems likely rather than certain — but we would rather say so than invent a date.

More reading orders like this one live on our cozy mystery series in order hub, and if you are planning your December shelf, our Christmas cozy mysteries list has room for both Diva holiday books. For a new series put in order every week — plus the occasional argument about stuffing — come and join us at The Teacup Sleuth on Facebook. Tell us there: whose side are you on, Sophie’s or Natasha’s?

Sources

For reading order and publication years on this page our source of record is Penguin Random House’s Domestic Diva Mystery series page. We checked the newest entries on this page against it on 27 October 2026. Books that are announced but have no confirmed release date are marked as such rather than given a year. We also cross-check Krista Davis’s own Domestic Diva index. If anything here is out of date, tell us in the comments and we will fix it.