Grace Topping Books In Order

Publication Order of A Laura Bishop Mystery Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Grace Topping is an American author of fiction.

She used to be a technical writer as well as an IT project manager. As such she was used to writing documents that are not only lean but boring too. Once she took a break from all of that and let her hair down writing fiction, she found that she was drawn to murder mysteries as well as taking out characters in her stories that may or may not have reminded her of people that she had to unfortunately deal with when this was her career.

She enjoys taking out her own personal version of fictional revenge and also has been able to use her career for good detailed inspiration for her work. She used to help friends to stage their homes and now is channeling that experience into writing fiction, in particular her mystery series featuring the character of Laura Bishop. The first book in this series focuses on a woman that decides to begin a new career for herself in the middle of her life working staging homes.

Grace serves as the vice president of the Chesapeake Chapter of the writing group Sisters in Crime. She also belongs to the SINC Guppies group as well as the Mystery Writers of America group.

She is married and resides in the northern region of Virginia along with her husband.

Grace Topping is the creator and writer of the Laura Bishop Mystery series. The series began in 2019 with the publication of the first novel, Staging Is Murder. The second book came out in 2020 and is titled Staging Wars.

Staging Is Murder is the debut novel to come out in the Laura Bishop Mystery series. If you have been looking for a fun mystery story to check out that isn’t too dark, you are in the right place!

In this book, readers get to meet main character Laura Bishop for the first time. Laura has just started up her own business, and things are going great. She’s already been able to get the very first gig for the business lined up, and this decorating commission is huge. She’s going to be staging a mansion from the nineteenth century for sale.

The house may not have been updated for quite a long time, but she’s excited to take on a new challenge. Everything’s going according to plan until something happens that isn’t in the plans at all. A lifeless body falls out of the laundry chute at the house, something that Laura did not expect. It’s a horrifying event to happen in the first place, and now Laura is completely distracted from the idea of carrying out her duties.

Still, the show must go on. Laura soon finds that she’s going to have to do some work of her own if she wants to clear her assistant’s name. She’s also determined to save her new business and find the person responsible for this. If she can track down a killer, she can get on with her life and with the help of her young assistant too.

While staging and renovating a mansion are difficult tasks, she’s starting to find out that solving a murder isn’t all that easy either. There are even handsome men getting in the way of her doing so, of all things. There’s the police detective, who’s now doing all of the official work since he’s been assigned the case. then there’s a real estate agent that is doing their best to try and keep this stately manor house from going into foreclosure.

Laura’s doing her best to try and crack this case, but things are proving challenging. Then there are others that are looking to meddle into affairs that could make all of this worse. From a friend to a grandmother and even the funeral director in town, Laura is worried that they’re all going to end up compromised from this case and end up being targets themselves.

Can this business woman get to the bottom of a murder? Read this book to find out!

Staging Wars is the second novel in the Laura Bishop mystery series. Laura is back in an all new mystery novel that will have the readers turning pages until they reach the conclusion!

Laura just started a new business in the last story, and now her home staging startup is starting to flourish. It’s not only getting more popular, she’s getting more jobs too. Even though Laura’s happy to be doing well, she has reasons to suspect that her nemesis may be messing with her in more ways than one.

That would be a woman named Monica. Monica Heller is an interior designer, and Laura is ready to bet that she is doing all that she can to keep her company from lifting off of the ground. She also suspects that she’s in the middle of an affair with her former husband. Regardless, Laura knows that she has no friend in Monica and she definitely can’t trust her.

Monica lives a life that is nearly as sleek as her personality, full of chic style and comfort, right down to Egyptian cotton bed sheets with a high thread count. Then everything goes wrong for her when she’s spotted at a murder scene. Hearing of this, her nemesis Laura is just a little bit delighted. It’s nice to think of Monica being in some cell and having to live a little below her means for once.

However, Laura’s happiness at her foe’s bad luck doesn’t last long. They’ve been fighting for so long, since elementary school, that it’s tough to envision their dynamic ever changing. But she’s going to have to try and help figure out what’s going on if she wants to clear her friends from being suspects in the case.

Who knows, perhaps solving the crime will prove that Monica is guilty after all. But Laura has to try if she wants her friends to go free. Can she catch a killer or find enough evidence to get to the bottom of what happened? Read the second book in this fun mystery series in order to find out!