# Jeffrey Rittenhouse

> Jeffrey Rittenhouse is a writer from southeastern Pennsylvania who writes cozy mysteries, small-town humor, family saga, romance, thrillers and children's books. 110 books in 13 series plus standalones. Audiobooks (MP3 downloads) are sold direct from the author on this site for $2.99, and ebooks and paperbacks are also sold on Amazon (Kindle and paperback), Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and through IngramSpark.

Jeffrey Rittenhouse is a writer from southeastern Pennsylvania. He is drawn to stories about ordinary people carrying extraordinary secrets, and the quiet places where love and sacrifice meet: a small-town library where a key comes back on Christmas Eve, a hunting cabin in the Maine woods, a cruise ship that refuses to behave, a third-floor apartment where a woman sews coral silk by lamplight. His books range from the warmly comic Grumpy Old Man series and the cozy Lost and Found Library Mysteries to The Cabin by the Deep Lake, a wilderness novel, and The Good Girl, a story about hidden beauty, the courage to leave, and a love that holds without gripping.

Contact: the form at https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/#contact. Author talks, school and library visits, book clubs and media requests are welcome.

## Series, in reading order
- [The Lost and Found Library Mysteries](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/lost-and-found-library-mysteries/): Every librarian finds things in returned books. Margaret Hale is the one who gives them back. In Millbrook, Pennsylvania, a Berks County steel town where the mill closed years ago, a pawn ticket, a recipe card and an old key each lead to a secret somebody kept for decades. Gentle, small-town, no murders. Reading order: Rose's Ring; Rhoda's Recipe; Vivian's Key.
- [Vera Crus Funny Cozy Mysteries](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/vera-crus-funny-cozy-mysteries/): Walt Brubaker spent forty years as an accountant making other people's numbers add up. Now he is retired in Vera Crus, Pennsylvania Dutch country, his wife wants him out of the house, and the town keeps handing him mysteries. Clean, funny and full of fire company carnival gossip. Reading order: The Hobby; The Jackpot; The Opener; The Write Off; The Stitch; The Lights.
- [Ray Landis](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/ray-landis/): Ray Landis is a retired welder out of Bucks County, three years a widower, and nobody's idea of an investigator. He is not police. Pennsylvania hunting-season mysteries that start over bad coffee and end somewhere in the woods. Reading order: Full Draw; Old Sign.
- [The Grumpy Old Man](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/the-grumpy-old-man/): A clean, warm comedy series about a man who would rather not. He goes on a cruise ship. He moves into a 55+ community. He writes down his rules for everything, against his will. Reading order: The Grumpy Old Man; The Grumpy Old Man Goes On A Cruise Ship; The Grumpy Old Man Moves in; The Grumpy Old Man’s Rules for Everything.
- [The Pickled Egg](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/the-pickled-egg/): Everyone calls her the Pickled Egg. She will tell you so herself and she will not explain it. Seventy, a widow of one year, and the most cheerful woman on her street. A novel, a little book of pocket wisdom, and a cookbook for cooking for one, or two. Reading order: The Pickled Egg; Serves One, Plus Whoever Knocks; Pickled Egg Pocket Wisdom.
- [Bluestem](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/bluestem/): Four generations of women on the same Kansas farm, from the prairie fire of 1891 through the 1980s, and what a piece of ground becomes when the people on it refuse to give it up. Six novels and a family cookbook. Reading order: Where the Bluestem Grows; Where the Bluestem Bends; Where the Bluestem Stands; Where the Bluestem Holds; Where the Bluestem Unites; Where the Bluestem Returns; The Bluestem Kitchen.
- [Sofia and Ethan](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/sofia-and-ethan/): A Christian teen romance in eight books. Sixteen-year-old Sofia Singleton's quiet, faith-centered life changes in a single moment, and Ethan is there for what comes after. Faith, healing and first love. Reading order: A Quiet Heart, A Fragile World; When Shadows Follow; Where the Quiet Breaks; When the Waiting Ends; Where Faith Holds Fast; When Faith Is Tested; Where Promises Take Root; When Faith Stands Guard.
- [I](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/i-supernatural-thriller/): Something has been sitting in a small Vermont lake for a hundred years, watching the people who live around it. A man touches the water with an oar and is gone. No splash. No ripple. A supernatural thriller in two books, I and WE. Reading order: I; WE.
- [The Silent Visitor](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/the-silent-visitor/): John Carter went into the Pennsylvania mountains to hunt. He found a crashed ship and a wounded visitor named Xylar who is calm, curious and nothing like the movies. A first contact story told from the ground, in three books. Reading order: The Silent Visitor; THE SILENT VISITOR When Silence Is Shared; THE SILENT VISITOR When Patience Is Inherited.
- [Cold Iron](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/cold-iron/): Four hundred years ago he answered the wrong prayer. Book one of the Cold Iron trilogy. Reading order: Cold Iron Halo.
- [PIP](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/pip/): Small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, old enough to have slept in cathedral walls and the roots of ancient oaks. Pip is an ancient, glowing creature who wakes when children start wondering again. Read-alouds about love and kindness, plus an ABC book. Reading order: PIP and the Mistake; Pip and the Forgetting; Pip and the Boy Who Stopped Building; Pip and the Heart That Forgot How to Bloom; PIP and the ABCs.
- [Crossword Puzzles of the States](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/crossword-puzzles-of-the-states/): Crossword puzzle books for ten states, from Maine to Florida. Each one is packed with the places, landmarks and local favorites of a single state. Collect them all. Reading order: Crossword Puzzles: State of Maine, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of New Hampshire, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Vermont, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Massachusetts, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Rhode Island, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Connecticut, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of New York, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Pennsylvania, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Georgia, Places and Things; Crossword Puzzles: State of Florida, Places and Things.
- [Humorous Adult Coloring Books](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/series/humorous-adult-coloring-books/): Funny coloring books for adults and teens. Relaxing designs paired with the things you hope your doctor, your boss or your wife never says. A good gag gift. Reading order: Doctor, Please Don’t Say That!; Boss, Please Don't Say That!; Wife, Please Don't Say That!.

## Start here
- [Rose's Ring: The Lost and Found Library Mysteries](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/roses-ring/) (The Lost and Found Library Mysteries #1): Every librarian finds things in returned books. Margaret Hale is the one who gives them back. On a rainy Monday in Millbrook, Pennsylvania, Margaret fishes a waterlogged copy of Great Expectations out of the library book drop. Tucked inside is a pawn ticket from 1987. Someone has written one word on it in pencil: Ring.
- [The Hobby: A Vera Crus Funny Cozy Mystery](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-hobby/) (Vera Crus Funny Cozy Mysteries #1): He spent forty years making the numbers add up. Now he's counting suspects.
- [Where the Bluestem Grows: A Story of Grief, Grit, and Second Chances](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/where-the-bluestem-grows/) (Bluestem #1): Some fires take everything. Others burn away only what was never meant to last. Kansas, 1891. Sarah Townsend has built her life on hard ground and harder work: a whitewashed farmhouse, twenty-six horses, five children, and a husband whose quiet love has carried her through every dry spell and every long winter night. Then a single bolt of dry lightning ignites the prairie, and in one terrible afternoon, everything Sarah believed was certain is gone. Left alone to keep the horses fed, the children safe, and the farm from slipping through her hands, Sarah does not know how she will make it through another winter, let alone another spring. Then a quiet stranger named Jacob Miller rides up the long dirt track with steady eyes and patient hands and offers her help she cannot afford to refuse, and a tenderness she is not ready to want. But the prairie is unforgiving. Town gossip spreads like wildfire. Horse thieves come in the dark. And Sarah must decide whether holding tight to the man she lost is worth turning away from the second chance the wind has carried to her door. A sweeping, tender novel of love after loss on the wide Kansas plains.
- [The Grumpy Old Man](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-grumpy-old-man/) (The Grumpy Old Man #1): The Grumpy Old Man is a warm, funny, and relatable storybook about an old man who has an opinion about everything, and none of them are particularly cheerful. From noisy mornings and grocery stores gone wrong to technology, traffic, holidays, and everyday modern life, he faces each day with a sharp eye, dry humor, and perfectly timed complaints. Told through short, story-driven chapters, each filled with simple scenes and memorable one-line sayings, this book captures the small annoyances everyone recognizes, but rarely says out loud. Grumpy, yes.Mean, no.Honest? Absolutely. As the days pass, the world doesn't change much, but something quietly shifts. Beneath the complaints is a man who notices more than he admits, remembers how things used to be, and keeps showing up anyway. Perfect for:
- [The Pickled Egg: Life is Good (Even When It Isn't)](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-pickled-egg/) (The Pickled Egg #1): This one is for anyone who has buried someone they loved and still puts the kettle on in the morning. The Pickled Egg is seventy, a widow of one year, and the most cheerful woman on her street. She is not pretending. Over a year of bridge nights, a rabbit that steals her lettuce, and a neighbor who has not smiled since 2004, she shows what paying attention can do. It is a gentle, funny book, and a good one to hand to your mother.
- [The Good Girl: From a Tortured Marriage to a Love Worth Choosing](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-good-girl/): “She had spent eight years putting beauty inside things.
- [The Cabin By The Deep Lake](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-cabin-by-the-deep-lake/): Every fall, six men return to a remote cabin deep in the woods of northern Maine. They come to hunt, to work, to sit by the fire, and to keep a tradition alive, one passed down not just through family, but through time spent on land that asks to be treated with care. What begins as another familiar season changes when a wounded deer leads one of them into ground that has been quiet for more than a century. Hidden in stone and shadow is a truth the land has protected through silence, human lives caught between hope and history, waiting where freedom once passed north. As the discovery unfolds, the men are faced with a choice: preserve the secret as it is, or allow the past to finally speak. What follows is not a rush toward answers, but a careful reckoning, with legacy, responsibility, and the difference between ownership and stewardship. This is not a story about hunting trophies or buried treasure. It is a story about restraint. About listening. About knowing when to act, and when to leave things exactly where they are. Blending wilderness realism with quiet historical mystery, The Cabin by the Deep Lake explores:
- [The Fixable Thing: Some things can be fixed. Some things can only be lived](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/the-fixable-thing/): One swerve to save a child, and nothing in Joseph Navarro's life stays the same.

## Optional
- [Complete book list](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/books/)
- [Full catalog with descriptions](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/llms-full.txt)
- [Frequently asked questions](https://rittenhousemanybooks.net/#faq)