Joseph Boyett, PhD.
Read the Hilary Thompson Mysteries in Order
Every Hilary Thompson mystery stands completely on its own — pick up any title and you'll be able to follow the case from page one. But readers who read the series in order tell us something else happens along the way: the cast starts to feel like family. Character arcs, running jokes, and long-simmering relationships pay off across the five books.
Start anywhere. Just don't be surprised if you end up wanting to read all five.
1.The Sullivan Papers
2.The Geechee Deception
3.An Unconditional Promise
4.The Blackbeard Island Conspiracy
5.The Secrets of Blood Mountain
Secrets Have a Way of Surviving
The Hilary Thompson Mysteries follow a determined woman whose search for truth repeatedly draws her into crimes rooted in family, history, ambition, loyalty, and betrayal. What begins as a question rarely stays simple—and some answers have been waiting decades to be uncovered.
Set against distinctive Southern landscapes—from the mountains of North Georgia to the marshes and barrier islands of the Georgia coast—the series blends contemporary mystery with long-buried secrets and the human consequences of bringing them into the light.
THE HILARY THOMPSON MYSTERIES
Volume 4 — The Blackbeard Island Conspiracy
Pirate legend, a decades-old grave, and a mystery with a wicked sense of humor
A discovery on a remote Georgia island opens the door to a secret someone believed was safely buried. Hilary’s search leads through old evidence, hidden motives, and a conspiracy whose roots run deeper than anyone first suspects.
On an island shaped by isolation, history, and rumor, every new clue raises the same troubling possibility: the past is not finished with the present.
JOSEPH H. BOYETT & JIMMIE T. BOYETT.
Step into the world of the Hilary Thompson Mysteries — five novels set across Georgia, from the Gullah-Geechee coast to the north Georgia mountains. But the mysteries are only half the reason readers keep coming back. It's Hilary, her husband Will, their son JR, their best friends Sam and Janice, a scene-stealing Cajun aunt, and a border collie named Charlie who make these books feel less like a series and more like catching up with old friends — friends who grow, change, and surprise you a little more with every visit.
WHY READERS LOVE THIS SERIES
Plenty of mystery series give you a puzzle to solve. Fewer give you a family to belong to.
Across all five Hilary Thompson novels, the people at the center of the story don't just reappear from book to book — they grow. JR, Hilary and Will's son, ages from a toddler of four to a curious eight-year-old, and the small, ordinary details of that growth — the questions he asks, the things he's ready to hear about family history, the size of the dog he wrestles with in the yard — are handled with the same care as the mysteries themselves. Sam and Janice's own story unfolds alongside Hilary's: a courtship becomes a marriage, a marriage becomes a family, and by the time their daughter arrives, readers who've been along for the ride feel like they were at the wedding. Even Charlie the border collie ages in real time, right down to the stiffness in his hips by book five — and his puppies, born between books, feel like family additions rather than plot devices.
Then there are the characters who surprise you. Aunt T — Sam's fierce, funny, endlessly quotable Cajun aunt — walks into book four and steals every scene she's in, kitchen included. And Helen Farber, a forensic pathologist first introduced as a cold, dismissive rival to Hilary's amateur instincts, becomes one of the most quietly devastating characters in modern cozy mystery fiction by book five, when the reasons behind her contempt are revealed to be something far sadder — and far more human — than anyone expected. It's the kind of long-game character work you don't often find in a series built for comfort reading, and it's a big part of why longtime readers say the fifth book hit them harder than they expected.
This is a series where the running jokes matter as much as the reveals — where an old bet over a Georgia-Alabama football game, a standing rivalry between an amateur sleuth and the professionals who resent her, and a well-worn kitchen table at Aunt T's house do as much to keep readers turning pages as any clue does. Read one book, and you'll meet an appealing cast.
Read all five, and you'll realize you've watched a family grow up.
MEET THE FAMILY
Hilary Thompson Mathews
A former pharmaceutical executive turned reluctant amateur sleuth, Hilary is tenacious, warm, and constitutionally unable to walk away from an injustice — even when the powerful people standing in her way would very much like her to. Across five books, she goes from proving herself in a boardroom to proving herself, again and again, in the field — all while raising a family and refusing to let anyone else write the ending.
Will Mathews
Hilary's husband, a former investigative journalist with his own past to outrun. Will is the series' quiet heart — and its most reliable source of a running joke, thanks to his habit of swearing off writing every book or two, only to pick the pen back up when the family needs him to.
JR Mathews
Hilary and Will's son, who grows from a four-year-old chasing the family dog to an eight-year-old old enough to be trusted with pieces of the past his parents once hoped to shield him from. Watching JR grow up in real time, book by book, is one of the series' quiet pleasures.
Sam and Janice LaPetite
Hilary and Will's closest friends, whose own love story — courtship, marriage, and a new baby — unfolds in the background of every mystery, giving the series a second family to root for. Sam's own complicated history, including an estranged father, becomes a mystery of its own in book four.
Aunt T (Terencina Jennings Barré)
Sam's forceful, hilarious, endlessly protective Cajun aunt, who arrives in book four and never lets you forget she's in the room. Equal parts comic relief and fierce protector, she's become one of readers' favorite additions to the cast.
Charlie The Mathews family's border collie, who ages, slows down, and has puppies of his own right alongside the humans he loves — because in this series, even the dog gets a real story.
Helen Farber A forensic pathologist who first appears as Hilary's dismissive professional rival — until her story deepens into one of the most affecting character arcs in the series, revealing the very human cost of never getting the credit you believe you deserve.
Mary Lee Cooper The undisputed queen of north Georgia real estate who can sell snow cones to penguins. Mary Lee never advertises and rarely sits still in her own office; she's too busy making sure there isn't a soul in five counties she doesn't know. That makes her one of Hilary's most valuable off-the-books sources — if a deal happened, a family feuded, or a secret got buried in the mountains, Mary Lee already knows, and all Hilary has to do is ask. Mary Lee is proof that in this series, even the supporting cast has a story worth telling.
STEP INTO THE WORLD OF
HILARY THOMPSON
Volume 3 — An Unconditional Promise
A mother’s promise has no conditions. Someone else’s doesn’t either.
When Hilary’s son is threatened, the case becomes intensely personal. Her promise to protect him has no limits—but she is not the only person willing to cross moral boundaries for a child.
As competing promises drive desperate choices, Hilary faces a mystery in which love, fear, science, and obsession collide. The question is no longer simply what someone will do for a child, but what they believe they are justified in doing.
THE HILARY THOMPSON MYSTERY SERIES
COMING SOON ON AMAZON
Volume 2 — The Geechee Deception
A mystery of murder, stolen recordings, and a secret that has survived for decades.
A trail of old recordings and interview transcripts carries Hilary into a mystery rooted in Georgia’s coastal past. What begins as an investigation into missing evidence becomes a confrontation with stories that have been edited, hidden, And protected for years.
Against the haunting beauty of the Lowcountry, Hilary must decide which voices can be trusted—and why someone is so determined that one particular story never be heard.
ABOUT THE SERIES
The Hilary Thompson Mysteries are written by the husband and wife writing team of Joseph H. Boyett and Jimmie T. Boyett. Across the series, Hilary’s investigations connect present-day crimes with buried histories, family loyalties, corporate secrets, old recordings, forensic evidence, and events that refuse to stay confined to the past.
Readers who enjoy character-driven mysteries, Southern settings, historical secrets, forensic puzzles, and stories in which solving the crime is only part of discovering the truth will find each book offers a new mystery while continuing Hilary’s larger journey.
Volume 5 — The Secrets of Blood Mountain
Some mysteries are solved by evidence. Others are solved only by faith. And some are never solved at all.
Severed feet appearing in the North Georgia mountains draw Hilary into one of her strangest investigations yet. Forensic evidence points in one direction, local history in another, and a Cherokee story from the era of removal refuses to remain safely in the past.
As the mystery deepens, Hilary is forced to confront a question at the heart of the series: what happens when the evidence explains only part of the truth.
Volume 1 — The Sullivan Papers
A mystery of murder, buried secrets, and a relentless search for the truth. This is where it all begins.
When a death and a set of confidential papers raise questions that powerful people would rather leave unanswered, Hilary Thompson is drawn into a search that reaches beyond a single crime. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the past—and may be willing to do so again.
The first Hilary Thompson Mystery introduces a world where evidence, memory, and motive collide—and where uncovering the truth can be more dangerous than keeping a secret..
Five mysteries. Buried secrets. One relentless search for the truth.