Aurora Teagarden — everyone calls her “Roe” — is a small-town librarian in Lawrenceton, Georgia, with a habit of stumbling into murder investigations. Charlaine Harris (better known today for the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood books) wrote her first, and the series is where the cozy-mystery reading experience really started for a lot of us.
If you’ve watched the Hallmark “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries” movies with Candace Cameron Bure, the books are a little different — same amateur sleuth energy, but with Harris’s dry Southern wit and a few sharper edges. Here’s the complete reading order.
The Complete Aurora Teagarden Reading Order
- Real Murders (1990) — Roe belongs to a true-crime book club that reenacts famous murders for discussion. Then one of the members turns up dead, staged exactly like a real historical case.
- A Bone to Pick (1992) — A former boyfriend leaves Roe his entire estate — including a human skull hidden in a tureen in the attic.
- Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (1994) — Roe’s new real estate career gets off to a grim start when she finds a body in a house she’s about to show.
- The Julius House (1995) — Roe and her new husband move into a house with a history: a family vanished from it years earlier, without a trace.
- Dead Over Heels (1996) — A dead body literally falls out of the sky onto Roe’s patio, and her ex-fiancé is the detective assigned to the case.
- A Fool and His Honey (1999) — Roe’s father’s new stepdaughter arrives in town — and so does a murder that puts the whole blended family under suspicion.
- Last Scene Alive (2002) — A film crew shooting a movie in Lawrenceton turns the town upside down, and then one of the actors is murdered.
- Poppy Done to Death (2003) — Roe’s sister-in-law is found dead in a recycling bin, and the suspects all turn out to be closer to home than expected.
- All the Little Liars (2016) — After a 13-year gap, Harris brought Roe back for a darker story involving her teenage son and his friends.
- Sleep Like a Baby (2017) — The most recent entry finds Roe adjusting to life as a new mother while an old case resurfaces.
Do You Need to Read Aurora Teagarden in Order?
Mostly, yes — recurring relationships (Roe’s romances, her family, her circle of friends) build book to book, and a few plot threads from earlier books pay off later. The two big exceptions are the 13-year gap between books 8 and 9: All the Little Liars and Sleep Like a Baby read as a mini-sequel duo and work fine as a starting point if you’d rather skip straight to them, though you’ll pick up more of the emotional context if you’ve met Roe earlier.
Where Should I Start?
Real Murders is the obvious starting point — it’s the first book and sets up Roe’s whole world. If you came to the series through the Hallmark movies and want something that feels a little closer to that tone, Dead Over Heels is a fan favorite with a lighter touch.
FAQ
Is Aurora Teagarden connected to Sookie Stackhouse?
No — they’re both written by Charlaine Harris, but they’re entirely separate series with no shared characters or setting.
Is the series finished?
The most recent book, Sleep Like a Baby, came out in 2017. Harris hasn’t ruled out returning to Roe, but there’s no announced new book as of this writing.
Are the Hallmark movies based on the books?
Loosely — the Hallmark “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries” film series borrows the character and setting but tells mostly original stories, so the books and movies are worth experiencing separately.
Which Aurora Teagarden book is your favorite? Tell us in the comments below!