Carolyn G. Hart Books In Order

Publication Order of Death On Demand Books

Publication Order of Henrie O Books

Publication Order of Bailey Ruth Books

Publication Order of Nela Farley Books

Publication Order of Carolyn G. Hart Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Carolyn G. Hart Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Carolyn G. Hart Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Carolyn G. Hart Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Harlequin Gothic Romance Books

Publication Order of Bibliomysteries Books

Chronological Order of Bibliomysteries Books

Publication Order of Bed-and-Breakfast Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

If there were ever noble terms to describe authors, one author by the name Carolyn G. Hart would be worthy of all those terms.

Carolyn Gimpel Hart, born August 25th, 1936 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is an American mystery writer who specializes in traditional mysteries, also known as cozy mysteries. One may describe her as a real life Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote fame.

In 1958, Hart graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Journalism. But her career as a writer and journalist started much earlier. By the tender age of 11, she had already decided that she would be a newspaper reporter when she grew up. While at Cleveland Elementary, Taft Junior High and Classen High School, she worked on school newspapers and other publications.

She met her husband Philip while travelling through Europe during her junior year. Right after graduation, while Philip attended law school, Hart became a reporter for The Norman Transcript. However, her career as a reporter was short lived. She quit the job and the business with the birth of her son, Philip Jr. In 1964, after the birth of her daughter Sarah, Hart entered and won a writing contest for a mystery novel intended to attract adolescent girls to the genre. Propelled with this win, she went on to write several novels for teenage and young adult audiences between 1965 and 1972.

She wrote nine stand-alone mystery and suspense novels between 1972 and 1987 geared towards a more main stream audience. Unfortunately these works only had modest success primarily because America was still not ready for female mystery writers. Only after publication successes by Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton did publishers start paying attention to female mystery writers. In 1987 Hart had her break through success with Death on Demand series.
She reached the height of her career in 1987 with the publication of the first novel in the Death on Demand series. Since then, she has published 36 novels as part of three series (Death on Demand, Henrie O and Baily Ruth Raeburn) and an additional 20 non-series, stand-alone novels. She has averaged two books published each year since 1987. She has only one non-fiction book to her credit. Written in 1980 with Charles F. Long, The Sooner Story, 1890-1980 is a history of Oklahoma.

Hart was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her stand-alone novel about the World War II era: Letter from Home. The nomination came from the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at her rival, the Oklahoma State University at Tulsa. Hart has twice appeared as a featured mystery writer at the Library of Congress Book Festival in 2003 and 2007.

Hart has been recognized for her successes as a writer and has won numerous awards including the Mystery Writers of America, Grand Master in 2014. She has been nominated nine times for the Agatha Award and won it three times. She has won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original twice after being nominated five times. She has won the Macavity Award for Best Paperback Original twice. The Ridley Pearson Award for significant contribution to the mystery field. She is also a member and past president of the Sisters in Crime, global organization with 3,600 members in 48 chapters offering networking, support and advice for female mystery writers. Ms. Hart is not only well decorated and awarded, she is also very well connected and respected among her peers. She is also a member of the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, the International Crime Writers Association, the International Thrillers Association, and the American Crime Writers League. She gave back to her university and her professional when she taught professional writing at the University of Oklahoma, School of Journalism from 1982 to 1985.

Hart’s first novel of the Death on Demand series is called Death on Demand. The series features Annie Laurance, owner of the Death on Demand bookstore. This shop is located in a fictional South Carolinian island community called Broward’s Rock. The setting of the novels in a bookstore allows Hart and her main character Annie some opportunities for plots and mysteries. As part of an ongoing theme, visitors to the bookshop have a chance to win any book in the shop if they can identify the mystery five mysteries represented in a painting hanging in the shop. The series consists of 24 novels of which 13 books have the work “Death,” “Dead” or “Die” in the title.

Hart’s second series Henrie O features Henrie O’Dwyer Collins, a retired newswoman in her 70s as she travels across the country and around the work. She solves crimes and mysteries which seem to follow her to her next destination. The character seems to be a little autobiographical and harkens backs to her days as a new reporter. Also, there are similarities to Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote. The first book in the series, Dead Man’s Island, published in 1993 was turned into a TV movie in 1996 staring Barbara Eden (I Dream of Jeanie) and William Shatner (Star Trek). This series has seven novels in it.
Hart’s new protagonist is Bailey Ruth Raeburn. This character also seems to reflect some part of Hart in her as she is a native Oklahoman from the fictional town of Adelaide. The story goes that Bailey was killed at sea and her ghost returns to earth to help her hometown. She takes the “Rescue Express” down to earth and must adjust to her special powers while on earth and not to violate the Percepts for Earthly Visitation. This series seems to harken back to the television series featuring Michael Landon called Highway to Heaven.

It seems like Ms. Hart has not slowed down with age. If anything, it seems the exact opposite. She has increased the frequency and volume of her writings and publications in recent years. Her career is not over yet, she is still writing and adding to the genre of traditional or cozy mysteries. This seems only fair, I suppose, the publishing world did not allow her to see success until Death on Demand which was published in 1987. Hart was 51 at the time. Here career is relatively young if you think about it that way.

Carolyn Hart is an accomplished American author who has published more than 50 mystery novels. All her novels are based on the Mystery and Thriller genres. Carolyn is considered as a master of mystery considering the fact that all her novels have been widely popular. Her novels are particularly famous in the cozy mystery category. She was born on August 25, 1936 as Carolyn Gimpel Hart in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, The United States. She was brought up in the same city and still continues to live there. Carolyn completed her schooling from the Classen High School. Before that, she attended the Cleveland Elementary School and the Taft Junior High School. When she was 11 years old, she wanted to become a newspaper reporter.

Carolyn used to frequently work on her school papers starting from her grade school. She continued with her hobby in her college too. After her college studies got over, she went on to graduate from the University of Oklahoma in Phi Beta Kappa. She majored in journalism and was hoping to become a journalist. On one of her trips to Europe in her junior college, she met her husband Philip, who was studying law at that time. After her graduation, Carolyn began working as a reporter for The Norman Transcript. Carolyn gave up her job as a reporter after the birth of her son. She was looking for some exciting work to do instead of sitting idle in her home. Hence, after the birth of her daughter, Carolyn tried her hand at writing a mystery novel at a writing competition. She won the contest, which was organized by Dodd, Mead publishing house.

Emerging as a winner in the contest motivated her to write more young adult and teenage mystery novels. Her initial stint as a professional writer saw only moderate success. The publishers at that time were less interested in publishing mystery novels written by female authors. Only the famous ones were lucky enough to get their mystery writings published. As a result, the initial 9 standalone novels written by her did not see much success. However, it was in the year 1987 when her novel series, Death on Demand did wonders for her and turned her life upside down. The success of the series brought a lot of name and fame to her writing career. This encouraged her to write more mystery novels over the years.

Being a well-known author, Carolyn appeared at the National Book Festival of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C as one of the featured mystery authors for two times. Her stand-alone novel based on the World War II won her the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In her four decade long career as an author, Carolyn Hart has won a number of awards and nominations. The list of the awards includes the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, the Anthony Award as well as a few others. Other than these achievements, Carolyn has also been a member and one of the past presidents of the Sisters in Crime association.

Carolyn has written a number of mystery novel series, including the Death on Demand and Bailey Ruth series. The Bailey Ruth series consists of six different novels featuring the main protagonist Bailey Ruth Raeburn, who is a ghost. She was killed near the sea and has returned to Earth with the help of a fictional rescue express and is not allowed to violate the laws of Earth. It takes her some time to adjust to her powers. The novels of the series were published over a period of six years from 2008 to 2014. The first novel of the series was titled ‘Ghost at Work’ and was published in the year 2008 by the William Morrow publishing house. The plot of the novel is set in Adelaide, Oklahoma, United States.

The main protagonist, Bailey Ruth Raeburn had a specialty in solving mystery cases before her death. However, nothing has changed by her death only that she has become more efficient as a ghost in solving the crimes. She can now be helpful to everyone and wishes to be seen or not on her own choice. One such needful person is the pastor’s wife Kathleen. The pastor is about to get arrested as a suspect of a murder in her house. The dead body is lying on Kathleen’s porch, who does not want it to get discovered in order to save her husband. Being a member of the Department of Good Intentions of Heaven, Bailey Ruth returns to earth to help Kathleen in the dire situation. She is not allowed to bend the rules of the earth and if anything such thing happens, Wiggins is the one to take care of it and see to it that everything is set right in the end.

The second novel of the series was published in the year 2009 by the William Morrow publishing house. It was titled ‘Merry, Merry Ghost’. The second novel too continues to showcase the ghost life of Bailey Ruth, whose spirits have not been lowered by her death as she has become even more eager to solve the mysteries on earth. It is the time of Christmas holiday when everyone is busy in making preparations for the festival. A wealthy woman in Adelaide, Oklahoma is about to embrace family and giving. On discovering that she is blessed with a grandson, the woman decides to change her will in favor of her grandson. She decides to give the most of her fortune to her grandson, leaving only a few for the rest of her family. All the members of her family seemed to be shocked and furious at her.

One of her heirs wanted her not to sign the will. Soon, she is discovered dead and the life of her grandson also seems to be in danger. Bailey Ruth is once again given the job serving the justice. She is ordered by Wiggins and the Department of Good Intentions of Heaven to return back to earth and protect the little boy from the murderers of his grandmother. Bailey Ruth decides to find the murderer using her investigative skills and save the Christmas from getting spoilt. She seems to be confused between the family members of the woman as everyone of them had the motive of killing her. However, she determined to find that one person from the whole family who has committed the murder for the lust of her fortune.

3 Responses to “Carolyn G. Hart”

1. Kathy Snow: 5 months ago

   I bought and read the first 5 or 6 Death on Demand books starting in the late 80’s/early 90’s and loved them. I had my daughter in the late 90’s and wasn’t able to keep up with the series. But, now I’m retired and I’m starting to buy the rest of the series since I have time to read again!

   Reply
2. Natalie Peters: 2 years ago

   Nice website. It’s come up a couple times when I’ve googled some mystery writers. Good job giving bio information with personal life information, not just dry facts, and written work summaries readers (and I’m sure many aspiring writers) are interested in.
   So interesting that Carolyn G Hart only had success at 51 and had a very active career after that. Inspiring.

   Reply
   • Graeme: 2 years ago

     Thank you 🙂

     Reply