Below is the complete list of Maddie Day books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Cece Barton Mystery Books
Publication Order of Country Store Mysteries Books
Publication Order of Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries Books
About Maddie Day
Maddie Day is the pen name of American mystery writer Edith Maxwell, an Agatha Award-winning author whose fiction ranges from culinary cozies and book-club mysteries to wine-country crime and historical suspense. Under the Day name, Maxwell is best known for the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. Although these series occupy very different parts of the United States, they share her interest in close communities, capable amateur sleuths, food, local culture, and crimes that disturb otherwise familiar everyday routines.
Maxwell holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Indiana University and followed an unusually varied path before becoming a full-time novelist. She worked in software technical writing, freelance journalism, and medical editing and had earlier experience as an organic farmer, childbirth educator, and doula. She left the technology industry in 2013 to concentrate on mystery fiction. Those experiences later supplied practical material for several of her fictional worlds rather than remaining merely background details in her biography.
The Maddie Day identity became especially prominent with Flipped for Murder, which launched the Country Store Mysteries in 2015. The series follows Robbie Jordan, owner of Pans ’N Pancakes, a restaurant and vintage-cookware shop in fictional South Lick, Indiana. Maxwell had lived in southern Indiana for five years, and her familiarity with the region influenced the setting, speech, food, and community surrounding Robbie. The books became the longest-running branch of her work as Day, developing Robbie’s business and personal life alongside successive murder investigations.
The Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries shifted the setting to fictional Westham on Cape Cod. Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida runs a bicycle shop and belongs to a mystery-reading group whose members repeatedly find themselves discussing real murders as well as fictional ones. Maxwell drew inspiration for the setting from her regular writing retreats on Cape Cod, giving the series another region with which she had a personal connection. Unlike a protagonist working alone, Mac frequently has the collective curiosity of the Cozy Capers group behind her investigations.
Day later moved west with the Cece Barton Mysteries. Cece manages a wine bar in California’s Alexander Valley, bringing vineyards, tasting rooms, family relationships, and the business of wine into the cozy framework. Maxwell is a fourth-generation Californian, and the location was partly inspired by time spent around the wine country near her uncle’s home in Geyserville. Murder Uncorked established Cece as the principal sleuth, while later mysteries continued developing her place within the community.
The Day name has also extended beyond contemporary cozies. A Case for the Ladies moves into historical crime, pairing fictional private investigator Dorothy Henderson with a young Amelia Earhart in 1926 Boston amid Prohibition, organized crime, anti-immigrant violence, and restrictions placed on women. The novel shows Maxwell using the pseudonym for a more historically grounded form of mystery while retaining her preference for determined women solving crimes within strongly realized communities.
Maxwell also publishes other mysteries under her own name, including the historical Quaker Midwife series and the Local Foods Mysteries. The distinction makes her bibliography easiest to understand by author name and series: Maddie Day primarily represents her contemporary cozy and related historical mystery work, while Edith Maxwell identifies another substantial branch of the same writer’s career.