Annapolis Wharfs & Whispers Cozy Mysteries
A cozy mystery series set in the living, tidal, historically layered city of Annapolis, Maryland
Annapolis is not a backdrop. It’s a character. The city breathes - through its 18th-century streets and marina-side clamor, through its Naval Academy traditions and its ghost-tour whispers, through the way locals speak about old families as if they’re still in the room. It is exactly the kind of place where a woman with sharp eyes and a newly quiet life might start noticing things. Evie Simmons arrived in Annapolis fifty-one years into a life that had stopped fitting. She bought a crumbling Victorian on a cobblestoned street, turned it into a shop named Three Sisters, and told herself she was done with complications. Annapolis had other ideas.
Before the Whispers: Prequel Novella - Available Now
Some houses keep their secrets longer than others.
When Evie Simmons trades her corporate career for a Victorian fixer-upper in Annapolis, she’s looking for a quieter life - strong coffee, opinionated dogs, and the slow art of building something that matters. What she finds is a locked cabinet that won’t open, a draft of cold air rising from beneath the floorboards, and a story her new home has been waiting to tell.
In Annapolis, the past is never quite past. Three sisters once built something quietly extraordinary here - a refuge, a community, and a love story shaped by the times they lived in. With the help of a sharp-tongued event planner, a theatrical bookseller, and a Naval Academy historian with kind eyes, Evie begins to uncover what her house has been holding back. Some stories don’t end. They simply wait for the right person to find them.
But Spring in Annapolis carries more than blooming gardens and harbor light. As Evie settles into the rhythm of her new life, the present begins to whisper too - and not every story is ready to be put to rest.
Coastal mysteries. Second acts. Women who refuse to fade quiety.
Shadows on the Water: Annapolis Wharfs & Whispers Book One
Coming Fall 2026
Secrets surface. Nothing stays buried for long.
Five months after a careful waterman drowned where careful watermen don’t, a second body surfaces on Annapolis brick. The connection between them is unmistakable. What Evie has quietly suspected since May is no longer hers alone to carry.
Evie Simmons came to the Chesapeake to run a Victorian bookshop, home-decor boutique, and cafe - and to tend a moody old house. She is finding, instead, that a town with this much memory does not let a woman stand at its edge for long. An artifact older than this country in a tin no one has touched in months.
A developer with a charm offensive and a leveraged book of LLCs. Glimpses of a woman in a long coat at the season’s turn, near water that glimmers with shadows.
And on Halloween night, while the harbor walk burns with hundreds of candled pumpkins and the historic district glows, Evie walks toward the Back Creek channel at low tide.
Some things the water hides. Some things the season returns.
Books 2 & 3 Coming in 2027
Check back for more info.
Each book in the Wharfs & Whispers series is set in a different season of Annapolis: the fog-wrapped fall, the candelight winter, the rebirth of spring, the regatta summer. Same city. Same community. The layers keep going deeper.
If you’re new here, start with Before the Whispers. It’s where Evie begins.
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