Paws and Claws Mysteries in Order: All 10 Books (Krista Davis)

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Wagtail, Virginia, is a mountain town that has quietly reorganized itself around animals. Golf carts have mostly replaced cars, the restaurants keep a second menu for four-legged guests, and the Sugar Maple Inn — run by Holly Miller together with her grandmother, who also happens to be the town’s mayor — takes its bookings with the pets in mind. It is a shamelessly comfortable premise, and Krista Davis has been staging murders in it since 2013.

This is the complete Paws and Claws Mystery reading order: all ten novels with their publication years, a spoiler-free line or two on each, where to start, and what else Davis has written. (Her publisher styles the series “Paws & Claws”, so you will see both spellings on bookshop shelves.)

Paws and Claws Mysteries in Order: All 10 Books

The years below are taken from Penguin Random House’s own page for each title, and every one of the ten was published by Berkley. The schedule has never been annual: there is no Paws and Claws novel in 2016, 2018, 2020 or 2023, while 2017 carries two.

1. Murder, She Barked (2013). Holly is between jobs and driving back to Wagtail after a worrying phone call about her grandmother, with a scruffy Jack Russell terrier she has only just acquired making a ruin of the car. She arrives to find a calico kitten named Twinkletoes deciding that Holly belongs to her, and one of the inn’s employees dead in what the town would much prefer to call a hit-and-run. Recipes for people and for dogs at the back.
2. The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer (2014). A ghost-hunting television crew books in for Halloween, drawn by an old Wagtail legend, and the publicity is the last thing the inn needs when Trixie and Twinkletoes find a young woman drowned in the town bathhouse. The most atmospheric book in the series, and the one to try if you like a thin layer of frost on your cozies.
3. Murder Most Howl (2015). Wagtail stages a murder mystery weekend in January, a snowstorm closes the roads, and Holly is running the inn alone while her grandmother is away. One of the townspeople playing dead turns out not to be playing.
4. Mission Impawsible (2017). Holly’s grandmother has organized a matchmaking weekend for single pet owners, a plan that works beautifully right up to the moment a man is found dead with one of her letters in his pocket.
5. Not a Creature Was Purring (2017). Christmas in Wagtail, a well-liked local businessman dead, and — as a seasonal bonus — the fiancée of Holly’s ex among the guests. The holiday entry in the series and a sensible December read.
6. The Dog Who Knew Too Much (2019). A famous dog comes to Wagtail for an appearance, he and Trixie find a body between them, and a stranger arrives insisting that Trixie is his. It is the second thread, not the first, that does the damage here.
7. Big Little Spies (2021). A pet detective — yes, that is a real job in this town — is killed days before a charity ball, which leaves Holly with a guest list that doubles rather neatly as a suspect list, and more of those guests in danger than she realizes.
8. A Good Dog’s Guide to Murder (2022). Wagtail’s gingerbread house contest is in full swing when an old oak comes down outside the convention center and a body is found inside the hollow trunk. A good pick for readers who like a cold case under the tinsel.
9. The Dog Across the Lake (2024). A dog Holly does not recognize keeps turning up wherever she is, and the attempt to return him takes her to her cousin’s lakeside campsite, where one of the campers is dead in a tent.
10. The Wagtail Murder Club (2025). Holly finds a black Labrador abandoned in a cage at the roadside, a note on his collar asking whoever finds him to take good care of him, and brings him back to the Sugar Maple Inn. Days later her ex-boyfriend checks in with a group of attorney colleagues who are all under the impression that he and Holly are still together, and one of them dies in a fall that was no accident. Published on 4 February 2025, and the first Paws and Claws to arrive in hardcover.

Who is who in Wagtail

Holly Miller narrates, and co-manages the Sugar Maple Inn with her grandmother, who is also Wagtail’s mayor — a double role that explains how Holly keeps ending up closer to the investigation than an innkeeper strictly should. Trixie, the Jack Russell terrier from book one, and Twinkletoes, the calico cat who adopted Holly rather than the other way round, do a good deal of the actual finding. Mr. Huckle, the inn’s elderly butler, is the quiet pleasure of the series.

If animal sleuths are what brought you here, our lists of cozy mysteries with dogs and cozy mysteries with cats both have more, and the Magical Cats reading order is the obvious next series for anyone who wants the cat to be a little more involved than usual.

Where to start

Start at the beginning. Murder, She Barked does the introductions properly — Holly, the inn, the grandmother, the two animals, the town’s peculiar rules — and nothing later quite replaces that. The mysteries themselves are self-contained, so you will not be lost if you begin elsewhere, but the parts of the series that keep readers coming back are the running ones: the inn’s finances, Holly’s family, and a romance that takes its time.

If you would rather sample one first, pick by season. The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer is the Halloween book, Not a Creature Was Purring the Christmas one, and A Good Dog’s Guide to Murder opens on a gingerbread contest. We have fuller seasonal lists of Halloween cozy mysteries and Christmas cozy mysteries if you are shopping for a particular week of the year.

Krista Davis’s other series

Davis has been writing cozies since 2008, and Paws and Claws is the second of her long-running series. The Domestic Diva Mysteries came first: nineteen books about Sophie Winston, an event planner in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, beginning with The Diva Runs Out of Thyme in 2008. They are the closest in tone to Paws and Claws — same warmth, same entertaining-and-recipes streak, no inn.

The Pen & Ink Mysteries started in 2018 with Color Me Murder and are the lighter, craftier of the three. If the recipes are a large part of the appeal for you, our roundup of cozy mysteries with recipes covers the series that do it best.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to read the Paws and Claws Mysteries in order?

No, but it is better. Every murder is introduced and solved within a single book, so any of the ten works on its own. What does not reset is everything around the murder — who is living at the inn, who Holly is seeing, what state the business is in — and reading out of sequence gives away developments that the books take several volumes to earn. Publication order is the right order.

How many Paws and Claws books are there?

Ten novels, published between 2013 and 2025. Penguin Random House’s series page lists all ten and no more; the only thing that can inflate the count is large-print and audio editions being shelved separately by some retailers.

Will there be an eleventh Paws and Claws mystery?

Nothing has been announced. The Wagtail Murder Club (February 2025) is the most recent, and as of October 2026 neither Berkley nor Krista Davis has named a book eleven. The series has not been declared finished either, so the honest answer is that it is quiet rather than over — and Davis published a new Domestic Diva novel in May 2026, so she is certainly still writing.

Why is The Wagtail Murder Club a hardcover when the rest are paperbacks?

Books one to nine came out as mass-market paperbacks. Berkley moved book ten up to hardcover for its February 2025 release, which is usually a sign of confidence in a series rather than a change to it; a trade paperback edition has since followed, so you no longer have to pay hardcover prices to catch up.

More reading orders like this one live on our cozy mystery series in order hub, and if you are new to the genre our guide for beginners is the place to start. For a new series put in order every week — plus a certain amount of arguing about which fictional inn we would most like to check into — come and join us at The Teacup Sleuth on Facebook. Tell us there: Trixie or Twinkletoes?