Nicole Lundrigan Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Nicole Lundrigan is a thriller, mystery, and crime fiction author from Toronto, Canada. She grew up in the Upper Gullies area of Newfoundland with her parents Nancy and John Lundrigan, and her five siblings. As a child, she went to Queen Elizabeth Regional High School in the neighboring town of Foxtrap. When she was a final year student in high school, she got into an exchange program and spent one semester living in the Chateau de Prouzel in Amiens France with a Baron and Baroness. She currently lives with her husband and children in Ontario, Canada.

Once Lundrigan was done with high school she went to the University of New Brunswick where she graduated with a bachelor’s in science. After graduating from college, she spent some time living in Morawhanna, a small town in Guyana where she assisted on a sea turtle conservation program, volunteered at a doctor’s practice, and together brought essential health care to far-flung villages. She also helped refurbish the schoolhouse. Once she was back home in Canada, she decided to go back to college and studied anthropology graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s University Halifax. During her time living and studying in Halifax, she got a job working on an archeological dig site. She was involved in the digging up of some skeletal remains from the ancient Little Dutch Church after which she analyzed the remains as part of her internship program. In 1996, she moved once again this time to Toronto from where she went to the University of Toronto and graduated with a Masters in Science in physical anthropology. She majored in analyzing the conditions that cause DNA to become degraded in the skeletal remains of the dead.

Once Nicole Lundrigan graduated from the University of Toronto, she got into freelance writing and was good enough that her writings were featured in a variety of publications. Some of the publications where her work appeared include the “Halifax Daily Herald,” “Reader’s Digest,” “Law, and Order: Police Management,” and “Mothering: The Natural Family Living Magazine.” She wrote her debut novel “Unraveling Arva” in 2003 and by 2020 had written six titles in “Hideaway,” “Thaw,” “The Substitute,” “The Seary Line,” “The Widow Tree,” and the “Glass Boys” in addition to her debut. Lundrigan’s fiction has been critically acclaimed and earned an honorable mention for the Sunburst Award, made the long list for the Relit Award, and was a top ten pick by “Now Magazine,” “Mail and Globe,” and a top 100 title on Amazon Canada. Her writing has been compared to the likes of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn, even though she has asserted that she came into the domestic noir genre without any prior planning. When she started writing “Unraveling Arva” her debut novel and told her family, her mother said that she would only read it if it had a murder mystery. Since she always loved the darker side of fiction and had been reading true crime since she was little, it was not something that was hard to do. Moreover, she was interested in the psychology that drives divergent behavior within the framework of small communities and families. She has been writing in the genre ever since.

“Hideaway” by Nicole Lundrigan is the story of Gloria Janes, a self-absorbed materfamilias of a dysfunctional household. She is a master manipulator that manages to control Telly, the husband she is separated from, Rowan her thirteen-year-old son, and Maisy her seven-year-old daughter. She had always blamed Rowan for making his father leave her and one dark night with the storms threatening to tear off the roof, she had locked him out of the house. Since he could not spend the night outside in such a storm, he had run off and found refuge with a homeless man named Todd who lived with his dog in the woods. The tale is told from the perspective of Jane’s two children and alternates between the manhunt for Rowan and his adventures with his new friend Carl. In the meantime, Gloria lives on in her nonchalant way, stalking her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. She is also using Rowan’s disappearance to further her own ends while manipulating Maisy at the same time. Jane believes that Rowan and Telly will both return so that they can once again be one happy family. Then someone comes to town with a report of a man fighting a boy in a boat and then coming ashore alone. With the tension building, secrets come to light and someone will be forced to make some difficult choices.

Nicole Lundrigan’s “Glass Boys” tells the intriguing story of two families that have been linked by bloodshed and secrets for more than fifty years they have been living in Knife Point, a small town in Newfoundland. When Eli Fagan finds some lewd pictures that had supposedly been taken by Garrett his eleven-year-old step son, he erupts in a rage and unintentionally kills Roy Trench who tried to protect the boy. Years later, Lewis who is the brother to the slain man still lives in the same town with the people that killed his brother. But Lewis’ sons are oblivious of what happened between the Fagans and the Trenches and do not know about Garrett’s secret. Garrett has grown into a mentally disturbed adult that spends much of his time near the elementary school looking for odd and impressionable boys with their dirty fingernails of innocence. When Lewis’s son Toby and Melvin find themselves facing off with Garrett, the violent history between the Fagans and Trenches threatens to erupt once again. But through the darkness, there are moments of hope such as the fledgling romance between Angie Fagan and Toby Trench, which suggests that they could put the past behind them.

“The Widow Tree” by Nicole Lundrigan is a novel set in 45 CE. A Roman soldier thad accumulated a bit of money over the years that he then puts in a jar and buries at camp before he is killed by a Pannonian bandit. Two thousand years later in 1953, Janos, Dorjan, and Nevena who are Yugoslav teens uncover the treasure trove. Nevena who has been brought up to always think of the legal thinks they should turn over the treasure to the government. Janos thinks very little of the government since his father had been victimized by it and believes they should take the gold to enrich themselves and get away from the lonely village. While they are still discussing what to do, Janos decided to up and leave with the treasure, leaving his friend and his widowed mother worried about what ha happened to him. But they will soon have a grim answer to their questions. The Widow Tree is a sympathetic tale of the troubled heritage of the Balkans. The divisions between he youths that had once upon a time been fast friends and the conspiracy of silence among the adults clearly show the tensions that would, later on, result in the splintering of the region.