Maggie Blackburn Books In Order

Publication Order of Beach Reads Mystery Books

Maggie Blackburn is an American published author.

It’s a pen name that is used by Mollie Cox Bryan. She is known (under another pen name) for writing the Cora Crafts mysteries as well as the Cumberland Creek mysteries. She also is the creator and the author of the Beach Reads Mystery series.

Her book shave been frequently picked for awards and recognition, such as the Agatha Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award, and a top ten beach reads through Woman’s World. The author has also made the short list for the Virginia Library People’s Choice Award.

Maggie is the mother to two young women who are currently going after their dreams and pursuing a career in the music business. The author resides in Waynesboro, Virginia, and works as a development associate at the University of Virginia.

Little Bookshop of Murder is the first novel in the Beach Reads Mystery series by Maggie Blackburn. If you have been searching for a light and fun murder mystery story to read, check this book out and see what you think!

A Shakespearean scholar gets a wonderful surprise when they end up inheriting a bookshop by the side of their beach. Little do they know that they may also be risking inheriting a murder mystery along with it.

Main character Summer Merriweather is not feeling positive about her career as a Shakespeare professor. Just like any other academic field, working at her Virginia university can sometimes feel too competitive and like you’re living among a pit of vipers.

Summer decides that she’s going to spend her summer in England. There she will be doing some research into a scholarly paper that will hopefully be the one to change everything. It will not only get published, impress the Dean, and make sure that her job is safe. But all of this feels in vain when her mother Hildy has a heart attack out of nowhere and suddenly is no longer on the mortal coil.

Now Summer is obligated to go back to Brigid’s Island in North Carolina for the funeral. Summer wants to settle the estate and just sell of her mom’s romance-themed bookstore Beach Reads so that she can continue the process of grieving while also being able to go home. But when she drops by the bookstore, she is shocked to find some threatening notes that were clearly sent to her mother that pressure her to sell the bookstore upon threat of death.

Now she knows that something is going on at this island, but she doesn’t know what. Summer is reeling from this new information, that her mother may have been threatened and even killed by someone who wanted her to fold and was incensed and made good on their threat when she refused.

The cops are saying that there just is not enough evidence there to get a murder investigation started. She decides to tackle this mystery herself and gets her Aunt Agatha to help her out. The two start their sleuthing and even have the assistance of Hildy’s book club in the matter.

But once they get started, the pair starts to find that there are a lot more suspects located on Brigid’s Island than they thought there would be. If Summer is not able to track down the murderer in this case, she wonders whether the killer will strike again. She’s determined to get justice for her mother and to even try and be a hero, but will she be successful? Read this book to find out!

Once Upon a Seaside Murder is the second novel in the Beach Reads Mystery series by Maggie Blackburn. If you liked the first mystery book in this series, be sure to check out the sequel and go along on even more twists and turns on a murder mystery ride that you won’t want to miss!

The holidays are coming back, and Summer Merriweather is now the owner of a romance bookstore. She was going to unload the store initially when her mother died, but decided to keep the Beach Reads store operating. It’s a nice gesture that seems to keep her mother alive.

When it comes to the holidays, as they say, there’s no place like home. For Summer, home is now the Brigid’s Island area, the sleepy town located beachside in North Carolina. During this holiday season, the town wakes up and takes in a bunch of tourists and shoppers, and Beach Reads gets to participate in this additional economic swell.

Summer Merriweather is excited to sell some books, but her holiday spirit quickly turns to fear when she finds out a secret that is about her recently deceased mother. It could end up being a secret that someone would kill to keep quiet.

The library in town puts on their own cozy mystery panel discussion, and through this process Summer finds out that one of the authors on the panel wrote their book based off the occurrence of a real-life murder that ended up surprising the town thirty-five years previously.

Even worse than this, Summer finds out that her mother took an interest in the case as well. She would collect clippings and kept a journal where she recorded details of all of the case and the dark doings. Summer remembers her mother as being cheery and so these discoveries conflict with the memories of her mom and are vaguely confusing.

Things get even worse when Summer finds out that her long-lost biological family was connected to the crime. She is even more dismayed when someone threatens the author’s life. She’s going to need the help of her mother’s book club if she wants to figure out what’s going on and help keep the author safe in the process.

Can she solve a murder case that goes back decades, and get back to celebrating and having a happy holiday season? Read this book from Maggie Blackburn to find out whether Summer will see her work pay off or whether getting involved ends up backfiring by grabbing a copy of Once Upon a Seaside Murder!