Nicole Graves Mysteries Books in Order

The Nicole Graves Mysteries follow a Los Angeles woman who is pulled into danger before she settles into work as a private investigator. The series begins with Nicole Lewis, the name she uses in The Swap, as someone hoping for a summer trip with her husband, not a criminal case. A home exchange sends her to London, where the couple meant to use her Los Angeles condo disappears and strangers demand information she does not have.

That ordinary travel plan becomes anything but ordinary.

Nicole's first case puts her in a city she has dreamed of visiting, but the streets, homes, and countryside around London quickly feel unsafe. She has to rely on her own judgment when her husband is distracted and the police are not convinced she is in danger. The pressure comes from uncertainty as much as direct threats, since Nicole must work out why the missing homeowners matter and what they may have left behind.

Later books bring the action back to Los Angeles, where Nicole is caught up in cases involving law firms, wealth, media attention, and people with influence. In The Bequest, the death of a firm's in-house investigator and an unexpected inheritance put her under suspicion. Liar Liar moves into the strain of a high-profile rape trial when Nicole agrees to watch over a witness whose story does not add up. These cases test her instincts and show how quickly a private problem can become public news.

Nicole becomes a private investigator as the series continues. In The Ransom, a violent kidnapping case reaches close to home and forces her to decide how much she can trust the police. The Los Angeles setting matters throughout, from office towers and expensive neighborhoods to canyons and the worn edges of Hollywood. Boyarsky uses the city's mix of glamour, ambition, and hidden risk as a practical backdrop for Nicole's work.

The cases don't stay in California. The Entitled sends Nicole back to London to bring home a teenager studying abroad, only for the girl to be charged with murder. In The Moscow Affair, Nicole accepts a short MI6 assignment aboard a luxury riverboat on the Volga, where a surveillance job turns into a murder and espionage problem.

These are brisk mysteries with a resourceful heroine at the center.

The books combine personal stakes with investigations that grow more dangerous as Nicole learns who is lying and why. Reading from The Swap onward lets readers follow her move from an unexpected amateur sleuth to a working investigator, though each title opens with a clear new case and a fresh setting.