Gail Bowen Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries Series Books In Order

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Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries Books In Order

Gail Bowen’s beloved mystery series features Joanne Kilbourn, a political science professor who investigates crimes in Saskatchewan, Canada. Joanna is someone who passionately advocates for crime victims, which drives her to uncover the truth and pursue justice.

Readers grow to admire and become well-acquainted with Joanne and her family, feeling as if they are old friends as the series progresses. This is partly because Bowen made the conscious decision to have Joanne age throughout the series. As a result, Joanne’s successes, failures, and relationships become more intimate for readers.

Fans recommend reading the books in order to fully enjoy the connections between characters as they develop from book to book. The last two books in this series have recently been announced. “The next book in the series, The Solitary Friend, will be published in the fall [2024], and Homecomings, the final novel in the series, will be published in 2025.”

Gail Bowen will be 83 years old when Homecomings is published. A wonderful run, an excellent mystery series, and a well-deserved retirement for this talented writer. We will add the last two books to this list as soon as they are formally announced.

1. Deadly Appearances

Andy Boychuk is a successful Saskatchewan politician – until one sweltering August afternoon when the party faithful gather at a picnic. All of the key people in Boychuk’s life – family, friends, enemies – are there. Boychuk steps up to the podium to make a speech, takes a sip of water, and drops dead.

2. Murder at the Mendel

As a child Joanne was friends with Sally Love and her parents, but the friendship languished after Sally’s father died and she moved away, eventually becoming a very controversial artist.

3. The Wandering Soul Murders

Murder is the last thing on Joanne Kilbourn’s mind on a perfect morning in May. Then the phone rings, and she learns that her daughter Mieka has found the corpse of a young woman in an alley near her store.

4. A Colder Kind of Death

When a prisoner is shot to death in the exercise yard of a Saskatchewan penitentiary, Joanne Kilbourn finds herself haunted by a part of her past she wished had never happened.

5. A Killing Spring

Reed Gallagher, the head of the School of Journalism at the university where Joanne Kilbourn teaches, is found dead in a seedy rooming house.

6. Verdict in Blood

In Verdict in Blood, Joanne’s good friend Hilda McCourt is visiting her in Regina, Saskatchewan, when Judge Justine Blackwell’s corpse is found sprawled across one of the limestone slabs of the Boy Scout memorial

7. Burying Ariel

Joanne Kilbourn is looking forward to a relaxing weekend at the lake with her children and her new grandchild when murder once more wreaks havoc in Regina, Saskatchewan

8. The Glass Coffin

Brimming with the Gail Bowen’s characteristic empathy for the troubled, The Glass Coffin explores the depth of tragedy that a camera’s neutral eye can capture – and cause.

9. The Last Good Day

Joanne Kilbourn, on holiday at a cottage borrowed from a lawyer friend, one of a cluster of summer homes owned by lawyers from the same prestigious firm. When one of them kills himself the night after a long talk with Joanne, she is pushed into investigating

10. The Endless Knot

The tenth novel in the highly acclaimed Joanne Kilbourn series features the murderous fallout of a tell-all book on the troubled adult children of Canadian celebrities.

11. The Brutal Heart

The bestselling Gail Bowen returns with a gripping story of marriage, politics, sex, and murder.

12. The Nesting Dolls

Just hours before her body is found in a car in a parking lot, a young woman hands her baby to a perfect stranger and disappears. The stranger is the daughter of Delia Wainberg, a lawyer in the same firm as Joanne Kilbourn’s husband.

13. Kaleidoscope

Very bad things happen very close to home, and Joanne may never be quite the same again.

14. The Gifted

Jo and Zack are both proud and a little concerned when their youngest daughter Taylor – whose birth mother was a brilliant but notorious artist – has two paintings chosen for a major fund-raising auction.

15. 12 Rose Street

Joanne’s husband Zack is the leading progressive candidate in a neck-and-neck race, with the existing mayor, for Regina’s top job. The tough campaigning is well underway when a disturbing threat disrupts the celebration

16. What’s Left Behind

The latest novel in the Joanne Kilbourn Shreve series opens in the month of May, a time of beginnings when all things seem possible.

17. The Winners’ Circle

As Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their soon-to-be seventeen-year-old daughter, Taylor, rush through the rain from their cottage to their car

18. A Darkness of the Heart

When, at the age of sixty, Joanne learns that Douglas Ellard, the reserved general practitioner whom she had grown up believing to be her father was, in fact, the best friend of her biological father

19. The Unlocking Season

On a Saturday bright with harbingers of spring, Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their family prepare to celebrate the season. Joanne’s life is full, and at 60, she has been given the chance to understand a part of her history that for years was shrouded in secrecy.

20. Image in the Lake

A dark secret threatens the future of the Shreve family.

21. What’s Past Is Prologue

When Libby Hogarth, the go-to lawyer for the rich or famous who have committed heinous crimes, comes to Regina to deliver the prestigious Mellohawk Lecture, she is met with a torrent of hostility and misinformation.

22. The Legacy

When Joanne Shreve’s former student, Val Masluk, writes the biography of acclaimed novelist Steven Brooks, Val once again becomes part of Joanne’s life.