Below is the complete list of Linda Castillo books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Kate Burkholder Books
Publication Order of Kate Burkholder Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Kate Burkholder Short Story Collections Books
Publication Order of High Country Heroes Books
Publication Order of Lights Out Books
Publication Order of Operation: Midnight Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
- The Perfect Victim (2002)
In the Standalone series, The Perfect Victim is book #4 and was published in 2002. 
Publication Order of Family Secrets Books
About Linda Castillo
Linda Castillo is an American crime and suspense writer best known for the Kate Burkholder series, a long-running body of mysteries set in Ohio’s Amish country. Her career, however, began well before she created the former Amish woman who becomes chief of police in the fictional town of Painters Mill. Castillo first built a substantial bibliography in romance, romantic suspense, and standalone thrillers, developing the combination of danger, emotional conflict, and tightly controlled pacing that later became central to her most successful work.
Castillo grew up in small-town Ohio, a background that gave her familiarity with the rural landscapes she would eventually transform into fictional territory. She has explained that she did not grow up with deep knowledge of Amish life; her serious interest developed later, as she researched the culture while conceiving the novel that became Sworn to Silence. The distinction is important to her work. Rather than presenting herself as an insider, Castillo has emphasized research and the need to depict Amish communities without reducing them to stereotype. Her fictional setting draws its power from the boundary between a relatively closed religious culture and the institutions of the wider world.
Before Kate Burkholder, Castillo published numerous books across several branches of commercial suspense. Works such as The Perfect Victim, The Shadow Side, Fade to Red, and A Whisper in the Dark belong to the darker side of her bibliography, while other titles combine crime or danger with stronger romantic elements. This earlier period established her as a writer comfortable with violent stakes, vulnerable protagonists, law-enforcement characters, and plots driven by buried secrets. It also explains why the later Burkholder novels often feel closer to hard-edged crime thrillers than to gentle village mysteries.
The decisive shift came with Sworn to Silence in 2009. The novel introduced Kate Burkholder, who was born Amish but left the community and later returned to Painters Mill as police chief. Kate’s position gives Castillo an unusually productive narrative perspective: she understands the language, customs, and beliefs of the Amish population but no longer fully belongs to that world. She must also operate within modern law enforcement, creating recurring tensions involving trust, silence, family history, and the limits of institutional authority.
Castillo expanded that premise through novels including Pray for Silence, Gone Missing, Among the Wicked, and The Burning. Although each book presents a major investigation, the series develops an accumulating personal history around Kate, her police work, and her relationship with investigator John Tomasetti. The fictional landscape also remains flexible. Painters Mill is the emotional center, but cases can lead Kate into other Amish communities or force her to confront events rooted in her own past. Castillo’s shorter Burkholder fiction adds another layer to the bibliography, with several stories later gathered in collections rather than functioning as full-length numbered novels.
Her writing is distinguished by the contrast between pastoral surfaces and severe crimes. Farms, buggies, close communities, and traditions associated with simplicity coexist with murder, coercion, domestic conflict, and long-hidden wrongdoing. Castillo uses that contrast for tension, but her strongest recurring theme is more complicated than innocence invaded by evil. The novels repeatedly examine divided loyalties, the consequences of leaving a community, the vulnerability created by secrecy, and the difficulty of investigating people whose relationship with outside authority may be cautious or strained.
The first Kate Burkholder novel was adapted as the television film An Amish Murder, with Neve Campbell playing Kate, extending the character beyond the books. Castillo’s work has also received major crime-writing recognition, including an Edgar Award and the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. She lives in Texas and has maintained a strong personal interest in horses, while continuing to expand the series that transformed her career. Her bibliography is therefore best viewed in two broad phases: an extensive foundation in romance and suspense, followed by the sustained crime-fiction achievement of Kate Burkholder, where Castillo found the setting, protagonist, and moral tensions most closely associated with her name.