Below is the complete list of Charlaine Harris’ The Cemetery Girl Trilogy books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of The Cemetery Girl Trilogy Books
with Christopher Golden
- The Pretenders (2014)
The Pretenders was published in 2014 and is listed as book #1 in the The Cemetery Girl Trilogy series. - Inheritance (2015)
Published in 2015, Inheritance is listed as book #2 in the The Cemetery Girl Trilogy series. - Haunted (2018)
Haunted is a 2018 release and appears as book #3 in the The Cemetery Girl Trilogy series.
About The Cemetery Girl Trilogy
Charlaine Harris’s The Cemetery Girl Trilogy is a graphic-novel mystery series co-written with Christopher Golden and illustrated by Don Kramer. It stands apart from Harris’s better-known prose series such as Sookie Stackhouse, Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, and Midnight, Texas, though it shares her long-standing interest in death, secrets, supernatural perception, and women caught between ordinary life and strange abilities. The trilogy begins with The Pretenders, continues with Inheritance, and concludes with Haunted.
The central character is a young woman who wakes in Dunhill Cemetery with no memory of her real name, her past, or the person who left her there. She names herself Calexa Rose Dunhill, taking identity from the cemetery around her because she has nothing else to claim. That act gives the series its emotional foundation. Calexa is not only solving a mystery about what happened to her; she is trying to build a self from fragments, fear, instinct, and the strange new connection she has to the dead.
The Pretenders introduces Calexa’s life in hiding. Rather than go to the police or return to a world she cannot remember, she remains in the cemetery because it feels safer than the unknown. The setting gives the trilogy its gothic mood without turning it into a traditional horror story. Dunhill Cemetery is lonely, dangerous, and haunted by more than memory, but it also becomes Calexa’s shelter. Her ability to see spirits and receive impressions from them pulls her into the mystery of another death, forcing her to decide whether survival means staying hidden or helping someone else find justice.
Inheritance deepens the questions around Calexa’s identity. By this point, she has made fragile connections outside complete isolation, but she still does not know who tried to kill her or why. The title points toward more than property or family history. Calexa’s inheritance is tied to whatever changed inside her when she nearly died. Her connection to spirits is not a simple gift; it is frightening, intrusive, and tied to the larger mystery of her past.
Haunted brings the trilogy toward its resolution, as the danger surrounding Calexa becomes harder to avoid. Someone is still searching for her, and the truth about her identity can no longer remain buried. The final book gives the series a stronger sense of confrontation, with Calexa forced to face not only the person who wants her dead, but also the meaning of the power that has made her life in the cemetery impossible to leave behind.
The Cemetery Girl Trilogy works best as a compact supernatural mystery in graphic-novel form. Its appeal lies in atmosphere, visual storytelling, and the slow uncovering of Calexa’s past. Harris and Golden use the cemetery setting to explore fear, identity, loneliness, and justice, while Don Kramer’s artwork gives the story a shadowed, cinematic quality. The series is not a sprawling urban fantasy universe. It is a focused three-part story about a girl without a name, a cemetery full of the dead, and the truth waiting beneath the silence.