Publication Order of Tess Monaghan Books
| Baltimore Blues | 1997 |
| Charm City | 1997 |
| Butchers Hill | 1998 |
| In Big Trouble | 1999 |
| The Sugar House | 2000 |
| In a Strange City | 2001 |
| The Last Place | 2002 |
| By a Spider’s Thread | 2004 |
| No Good Deeds | 2006 |
| Another Thing to Fall | 2008 |
| The Girl in the Green Raincoat | 2011 |
| Hush, Hush | 2015 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Every Secret Thing | 2003 |
| To the Power of Three | 2005 |
| What the Dead Know / Little Sister | 2007 |
| Life Sentences | 2009 |
| I’d Know You Anywhere / Don’t Look Back | 2010 |
| The Most Dangerous Thing / The Innocents | 2011 |
| And When She Was Good | 2012 |
| After I’m Gone | 2014 |
| Wilde Lake | 2016 |
| Sunburn | 2018 |
| Lady in the Lake | 2019 |
| Dream Girl | 2021 |
| Prom Mom | 2023 |
| Murder Takes a Vacation | 2025 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Hardly Knew Her | 2008 |
| Seasonal Work | 2022 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| My Life as a Villainess | 2020 |
| Summer of Fall | 2023 |
About Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman is an American crime novelist and former newspaper reporter, best known for the Tess Monaghan series about a Baltimore reporter turned private investigator. She has also written a run of standalone novels, among them “What the Dead Know” and “Lady in the Lake”.
Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on 31 January 1959 and raised in Columbia, Maryland. Her father, Theo Lippman Jr., was a writer at The Baltimore Sun and her mother, Madeline, was a school librarian in the Baltimore city school system. She graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1977 and studied at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She then worked as a reporter, first at the San Antonio Light and later at The Baltimore Sun.
The first Tess Monaghan novel, “Baltimore Blues”, was published in 1997 and eleven more followed, the latest being “Hush, Hush” in 2015. The early books were paperback originals and collected a string of genre prizes: “Charm City” won the Edgar and Shamus awards for best paperback original, “Butchers Hill” won the Agatha and Anthony awards, and “The Sugar House” won the Nero Award.
“Every Secret Thing” was her first novel without Tess Monaghan. It won the Anthony and Barry awards for best novel and was filmed in 2014 with Diane Lane. “What the Dead Know” (2007), published in the UK as “Little Sister”, was her first New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger. Later standalones include “After I’m Gone”, “Wilde Lake” and “Sunburn”. “Lady in the Lake” (2019) was adapted as an Apple TV+ miniseries starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, which premiered in July 2024.
In 2014 Lippman received the first Pinckley Prize for a Distinguished Body of Work. Her short fiction is collected in “Hardly Knew Her” and “Seasonal Work”, and she published a memoir, “Summer of Fall”, in 2023. Her most recent novel is “Murder Takes a Vacation” (2025). She lives in Baltimore.
Photo: Mark Coggins, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).