The Scrapbooking Series in Order

About the Scrapbooking series

Series Premise

The Scrapbooking series is a cozy mystery series centered on Carmela Bertrand, owner of Memory Mine, a scrapbook shop near New Orleans’s French Quarter. Carmela’s craft business brings her into contact with customers, social events, local shops, and murder scenes where personal keepsakes can become clues. The first book begins when her estranged husband, Shamus, becomes a suspect in a Mardi Gras murder.

Main Characters

Carmela Bertrand is the central character, a scrapbook shop owner who becomes an amateur sleuth when murder touches her customers, friends, or neighborhood. Ava Gruiex is her bold best friend and frequent partner in trouble, while Detective Edgar Babcock gives the series a recurring law-enforcement connection. Shamus Meechum, Carmela’s estranged husband, is also important in the early setup and occasional personal complications.

Setting

The series is set in New Orleans, with the French Quarter, Mardi Gras celebrations, cemeteries, restaurants, shops, and social events shaping many of the mysteries. Memory Mine gives Carmela a regular base where craft projects, customers, and gossip intersect. The city’s public festivals and private histories often create the circumstances for each murder.

Tone & Themes

The tone is cozy, lively, and craft-centered, with murder investigations balanced by food, friendship, local color, and scrapbook projects. Common themes include reinvention after divorce, loyalty, community reputation, and the way personal memories can hide evidence. The books often use events such as Mardi Gras, Halloween, Jazz Fest, or a market gathering to turn a celebration into a crime scene.

Is This Series Worth Reading?

The Scrapbooking series may appeal to readers who like cozy mysteries with a strong craft-shop setting and a recurring amateur sleuth. It is a good fit for readers interested in New Orleans atmosphere, scrapbook tips, recipes, boutique businesses, and murder cases solved through local knowledge rather than police procedure alone. Readers who prefer darker crime fiction may find the series lighter and more community-focused.

Content Warnings and Heat Level

The series includes murder, suspicion, danger, and occasional threats to Carmela or people close to her. Violence is generally handled in a cozy mystery style rather than with graphic detail. Romance is present as part of Carmela’s personal life, but the focus remains on the mystery, the shop, and New Orleans society.

For readers searching for the Scrapbooking series order, Keepsake Crimes is the best place to begin. The books are mostly standalone, but reading the Scrapbooking books in order gives more context for Carmela, Ava, Edgar Babcock, and Memory Mine. Publication order is helpful, but not required to follow each mystery.