Lucy Arlington Books In Order

Publication Order of Novel Idea Mysteries Books

Lucy Arlington
Lucy Arlington was conceived originally by Sylvia May and Ellery Adams, a writing team and two friends that worked together on an idea that became “A Novel Idea Mystery” Series.

Together, they wrote the first three books of the series. Due to their own personal writing workloads increasing, the pair chose to pass the series on to Susan Furlong, who is another wonderful writer.

Sylvia May writes women’s fiction with characters that approach life with determination, pluck, and at times, foolhardiness. Along with writing, she is an artist, a musician, and a photographer. She believes that tapping into our own creativity fulfills us in a way nothing else is able to.

Sylvia lives with her husband, who is her largest supporter. She has three grown kids and a precious grandchild.

Sylvia’s first novel, “The Unraveling of Abby Settel”, received an Honorable Mention in the 2011 Reader Views Literary Awards.

Ellery Adams, a New York Times bestselling writer pens, the “Books by the Bay Mysteries” series, the “Book Retreat Mysteries” series, “Secret, Book, & Scone Society” series, and the “Charmed Pie Shoppe Mysteries” series.

Ellery grew up close to a beach close to the Long Island Sound. Since she spent her adult life in many landlocked towns, she holds dear her own memories of violent storms, open water, and the smell of the ocean. She has held many jobs, which include retail clerk, teacher, car salesperson, caterer, tutor, and tech writer, all as she wrote novels, poems, and books for kids. She writes full time from her home in Virginia.

Susan Furlong, in addition to writing novels as Lucy Arlington, pens “The Georgia Peach Mysteries” series, the Pippi O’Brien Mysteries”.

During her writing career, she has worked as an academic writer, a freelance writer, and a novelist. Her short fiction work has appeared in many national publications like Woman’s World magazine.

“Buried in a Book” is the first novel in the “Novel Idea Mystery” series and was released in the year 2012. Lila Wilkins, after she lost her job as a journalist when she is forty-five, takes an internship at A Novel Idea, which is a thriving literary agency in North Carolina.

Getting paid to read seems to be perfect to Lila, but it is tough with her quirky co-workers and stacks of query letters. However one penniless aspiring writer drops dead in the agency’s waiting room and Lila finds a series of threatening letters that she is determined to find out that wrote him off.

Fans of the novel loved Lila’s strength and enjoyed the quirkiness of each and every one of these characters. The showdown she has was both exciting and dangerous with the cops able to intervene at just the proper time.

“Every Trick in the Book” is the second novel in the “Novel Idea Mystery” series and was released in the year 2013. Lila Wilkins returns and has just been promoted to a full time literary agent. However new great writers are not the only people that she is attempting to catch.

She has it all: the home of her dreams in Inspiration Valley, North Carolina (a charming town), a brand new job that she adores, and a perfect police officer boyfriend. At the Book and Author Festival, which the Novel Idea Literary Agency is sponsoring, Lila expects she will find some talented new writers, however what she finds instead is the corpse of one editor to whom she bears a spooky resemblance to.

The editor’s death, to making things more troubling, is not the only literary murder. A blossoming writer, coming right on the heels of the first murder, also meets a grizzly end. Suspicious about these two killings being connected, Lila starts hunting down the dark figure that is responsible, and realizes that one hidden manuscript could have the clue. If Lila is able to live long enough to start reading it.

“Books, Cooks, and Crooks” is the third novel in the “Novel Idea Mystery” series and was released in the year 2014. Lila Wilkins sets up a delicious cookbook fair. However the tension that is in the kitchen is ready to boil over.

Inspiration Valley bubbles with excitement for the Taste of the Town festival, and Lila is in the center of it all. Lila, along with her coworkers from the Novel Idea Literary Agency, organizes one grand celebrity chef event, which features food television’s biggest stars. It will be complete with cookbook giveaways, cooking demos, and even the culinary writing contest.

However right when the celebration is set to begin, the demonstration kitchen is blown up, and taking one of the star chefs along with it. With all of these explosive egos of the chef’s colleagues, it is tough to find somebody that did not have their own motive to take out the competition. Now Lila is going to need to scramble in order to figure out which of her clients is the killer, before somebody else ends up burned.

“Played by the Book” is the fourth novel in the “Novel Idea Mystery” series and was released in the year 2015. Lila, a “murder magnet” and literary agent, plans a book signing garden party. However things do not come up roses when she is forced weed out one dangerous murderer.

The Novel Idea Literary Agency’s owner is incredibly thrilled when Damian York (a former local boy and a popular television show host) comes back to Inspiration Valley to release his new book about gardening. However Lila is less than thrilled about all of the hubbub once she sees her growing to-do list. Between sprucing up her yard for a separate event and planning out York’s gala, she is spread much too thin. Even after she locates a skull buried in one of her flower beds.

While Lila’s macabre find leads to some other secrets that are hidden within Inspiration Valley’s past, one member of the local garden club is discovered murdered, slumped over her own prize roses. Now Lila’s job is to dig through some old mysteries and some new clues to locate a killer before somebody else is discovered pushing up daisies.