Marcia Talley Books In Order

Publication Order of Hannah Ives Mystery Books

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Chesapeake Crimes Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Marcia Talley is a multiple award-winning American mystery author best known for the “Hannah Ives Mysteries”, a collection of short stories and two collaborative novels. Before she became a full time writer in 2000, she worked as a librarian. Talley was born in 1943 Cleveland to career US Marine Corps officer Thomas Chester and registered nurse Elizabeth Tuckerman. She went to Oberlin College from where she graduated with a bachelors in 1965, before she got a job working for the Bryn Mawr School as a librarian. Three years later she moved to Annapolis to work for St John’s College as a cataloguer. In 1981, she went to the University of Maryland for her masters and thereafter worked for the US Naval Academy Library, the US General Accounting Office, the American Bankers Association, and TeleSec Library Services.

Professionally, Talley is a member of the UK Crime Writers Association, the Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime and the Mystery Writers of America. Marcia is an Anthony and Agatha award-winning novelist with the “Dead Man Dancing” and six previous novels that feature her most popular protagonist Hannah Ives, a breast cancer survivor and amateur sleuth. She is also a collaborative author of “I’d Kill For That” and “Naked Came the Phoenix”, two novels set in an exclusive gated community and popular health spa respectively. Her short stories have been featured in numerous collections including “Safety First” and “Marjorie Ann”. One of her stories has also been featured in “The Dangerous Bride and 21 of the Years Finest Crime and Mystery Stories”. She currently lives in Annapolis with her US Naval Academy Professor Barry, who has been her husband for years. When she is not writing she loves to spend her time sailing or traveling with her husband through the Caribbean on their 37 foot sailboat.

Growing up Marcia Talley cannot remember a time when she did not write given that she had written her first mystery “Enchanted Forest” when she was barely ten. She had written and illustrated the book herself and her father had typed it out for her. Through most of her childhood, and she spent most of her time devouring the likes of “The Bobbsey Twins”, “Judy Bolton”, “Cherry Ames”, the “Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew”. As a teen, she graduated to the likes of Daphne Dumaurier, Josephine Tey, Dorothy L Sayers, Marjorie Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Agatha Christie the golden age of mystery queens. However, it was not until the 1980s that she decided to write for herself after working for several years in a variety of libraries. It was in the 1990s that she got into the Sewanee Writers Conference which paved the way for a successful writing career that started with the publishing of “Singing It To Her Bones”. John Casey who was one of the most respected authors at the conference being a National Book Award winner, mentored her through the process of writing and publishing her novel. The novel was chosen for the Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, which opened the doors for Marcia Talley to finally get an agent. It was not long before she signed a publishing deal with Bantam, Dell and the rest is history.

Hannah Ives is the lead character of the Hannah Ives mysteries series of novels by Marcia Talley. When we are first introduced to the lead, she is a breast cancer survivor still recovering from chemotherapy and living in Southern Maryland, on her sister-in-law’s farm. She had lost her job in Washington when her company retrenched hundreds of employees, leaving her feeling unloved and unlovely. She gets into amateur sleuthing when she goes on a walk and drops her hat into a well. Her efforts to retrieve her hat result in a shocking discovery. Inside the well is the body of girl that had gone missing several years past. Suddenly she has found the perfect distraction from her mundane life as she desperately wants to solve the murder. She is married to US Naval Academy Professor Paul who she loves with all her heart. They live on a quiet street in a suburb of Annapolis near the military academy. Emily is their estranged daughter who has hardly been visiting her parents though together with her husband Dante and their three children, they gradually come into the old couples’ lives over the course of the series. Ruth a feng shui practitioner and new age shop owner and Georgina a house wife from Baltimore also make appearances in the series helping Hannah with her mysteries.

“Sing It To Her Bones” is the first novel of the “Hannah Ives Mysteries” that introduces the protagonist. Hannah had lost her job and nearly her life in a fight against breast cancer. Now with most of her hair gone having undergone chemotherapy, she is working hard on herself trying to be brave and facing the world that had seemingly rejected her. But trying to find relaxation in Chesapeake Bay town leads her to one of the most intriguing of discoveries – the body of a girl that had gone missing five years ago deep inside a well. She is suddenly deep into the world of investigations and is asking the solid and good citizens of Pearson’s Corner hard questions about the days leading up to the disappearance of the girl. The fact that the girl would be about the same age as her own daughter Emily and had disappeared on one of her most important nights, her homecoming night, makes Hannah even more determined. Highly successful at prying the most dangerous of secrets form the most unsuspecting of persons, she finds her groove lifting her spirits as she gets closer to a vicious killer hiding among the town’s peaceful residents.

“Unbreathed Memories” takes more of a psychological twist as Hannah Ives struggles to dig deep into a patient’s mind in trying to solve a murder. Ives knows that she should be minding her own business having just come back from reconstructive surgery and started life afresh by redecorating her Annapolis home. She has everything she could ever need with Georgina her sister finally agreeing to therapy for her depression and her parents having moved close by, where she can take care of them. But Georgina’s therapist throws everything into a tailspin when he allegedly jumps to his death from a balcony. Georgina is the lead suspect leaving Hannah with no choice but to investigate and get her sister off. The clues could lie in some vague memories that Georgina can hardly get back, and an appointment book she just got hold of. But given that the consequences of conviction are so high, Hannah finds it hard to keep a clear head making it almost impossible for her to enter the twisted mind of the killer.