Micki Browning Books In Order

Publication Order of A Mer Cavallo Mystery Books

Micki Browning
Micki Browning worked in the field of municipal law enforcement for over two decades and she’s a graduate of the FBI National Academy. She retired as a division commander which provides wonderful fodder for her career as a full-time author.

She also writes nonfiction and short stories. Her work has appeared in anthologies, dive magazines, mystery magazines, and in textbooks.

“Adrift” won the Royal Palm Literary Award for best unpublished book of the year and best unpublished mystery and the 2015 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence. She has also won the silver medal in the popular fiction category of the Florida Book Awards and the Colorado Book Award for Mystery for “Shadow Ridge”, which she published under the pen name of M. E. Browning.

Micki’s a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America. A professional divemaster, she lives in Florida with her partner in crime along with a wide variety of scuba equipment that she uses for her “research”.

She got her Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval Studies, which she obtained as she worked full time. While Micki realized that the degree would not have a direct impact on her job, the classes still fascinated her. She learned about the importance of research and time management skills.

Each and every article or story needs research. The important trick is figuring out what details to include overtly, what to layer in discretely, and what facts should just be forgotten quietly. Now that she is her own boss, structuring her time has gotten that much more crucial.

Micki tries to take it easy on her muse, by just sitting at her computer and telling her stories. She’s found that inspiration will strike when she is already hard at work. She also enjoys the revision process. Unlike surgeons that absolutely need to get it right the first try, she can take as many opportunities as possible that she needs while writing a scene until it conveys precisely what she wants.

Micki’s not a disciplined writer that has a set schedule while writing, however. The very first thing that she needs to know is exactly how her villain went and committed the crime. Once that is determined, she tends to reverse engineer the whole story. In a nutshell, she’ll plot things out from her protagonist’s perspective. After that, it takes a copious amount of tea, a ton of time in front of her computer, and a fair bit of dark chocolate.

“Adrift” is the first novel in the “Mer Cavallo Mystery” series, and it was released in the year 2017. Meredith Cavallo, a marine biologist turned divemaster, is accused of a rather chilling rime after a dive goes wrong. However do the murky circumstances point to a murder, an accident, or a supernatural encounter of some kind?

Meredith believed that adjusting to living a laid-back life in the Florida Keys would just be a breeze. However when she rescues a floundering diver that claims he saw a ghost, she gets caught up in a storm of intrigue. The news of this encounter explodes all over social media, which attracts a group of ghost hunters that want to capture real proof that this greenish ghoul is haunting Key Largo’s famed USS Spiegel Grove shipwreck.

Mer knows this wreck both inside and out, and agrees to work as their safety diver. When the charismatic leader of this group, named Ishmael, disappears on a midnight dive, everybody except for Mer is convinced this ghost has went and claimed one more victim. Meanwhile, topside, the tenacious detective in charge of this investigation finds Meredith’s involvement in each of these incidents rather suspicious, and her enigmatic neighbor dredges up ghosts from Meredith’s own past.

Mer, while determined to figure out some kind of rational explanation, approaches Ishmael’s vanishing like any other scientist would. By gathering the necessary data, asking questions, and deducing the truth. However the victim’s life is just as shrouded in mystery as his own vanishing act is. Still, something had to have happened under the waters and before too long, she is in over her head. Somebody attempts to murder her, she knows she is close to getting the truth up to the surface. Quite possibly dead men do in fact tell stories after all.

Fans found this novel to have an outstanding lead character, suspense, mystery, and some surprising plot twists. Micki takes you down one path, just to twist and turn you onto another. Even if readers had never been to The Keys or been diving, they were never bored and never got lost while the technical elements and logistics were being woven into the story. Micki also does a great job of working in humorous dialogue and sarcasm without making it feel over the top.
“Beached” is the second novel in the “Mer Cavallo Mystery” series, and it was released in the year 2018. Meredith Cavallo, a marine biologist, uncovers some clues to this mysterious Spanish galleon, and soon learns that the ship could be legendary, however the danger that surrounds it is in fact real.

Mer’s life starts to unravel after she discovers this plastic-wrapped bundle that’s floating on the waves right off of Key Largo. Curious, she pulls it on board her dive boat and lands right in the middle of a storm of intrigue that involves one obscure legend, a modern pirate that will resort to murder in order to claim the treasure first, and an eighteenth-century shipwreck.

Thrown right into the hunt for this ship without any historical record, she plunges into the world of nautical archaeology. However, for a woman that has gotten used to dealing with the facts, deciphering these secrets turns out to be difficult, and everybody she encounters is harboring skeletons of their own. One sinister betrayal sends her reeling, and even getting help from a fiery professor, a crusty ex-marine salvager, and her buddies on the island, she’s in way over her head. While determined to outsmart the guy that wants her dead, she is only sure about one thing: treasure equals trouble.