What’s Next for the St. Augustine Mysteries After the Angels Trilogy

When I began the St. Augustine Mysteries, I didn’t set out to write a trilogy about angels. I didn't set out to write a trilogy at all. Instead, I wanted to write a crime novel grounded in place, conscience, and consequence—a story where faith, doubt and love exist side by side, and where the real battle is not spectacle, but choice.

The Angels Trilogy grew naturally from that impulse. It asked hard questions about responsibility, corruption, loyalty, and love—and it followed those questions where they led. Even more importantly, to me at least, was that Mark and the others kept having something to say. Crazy as it may be, they are real to me . . . and their story isn't told until it's told completely.

Now that the trilogy is complete, many readers have asked the same thing:

What comes next?

The Short Answer: The Story Continues—But It Changes Shape

The Angels Trilogy is a closed arc. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that matters. I’m not interested in reopening it simply to keep it going.

But the world of the St. Augustine Mysteries is larger than any single arc.

What comes next is not “more of the same,” but a widening of focus—new cases, new pressures, and new moral terrain, still rooted in the same city, the same atmosphere, and the same belief that evil rarely announces itself loudly.

A Shift from Revelation to Consequence

The Angels Trilogy is about exposure: what happens when hidden forces—spiritual, institutional, personal—are brought into the light.

What follows is about consequence.

How do people live after truth has been uncovered?What does faith look like when certainty is gone?What does justice cost when there are no clean victories?

Future St. Augustine Mysteries will lean more heavily into:

• Cold cases that refuse to stay buried

• Crimes shaped by long memory rather than sudden violence

• Moral pressure rather than overt supernatural presence

The spiritual dimension doesn’t disappear—but it recedes into the background, where it often belongs.

Familiar Faces, New Roles

Readers can expect to see familiar characters again, but not frozen in time.

People age. Marriages deepen. Parenthood changes priorities. Old decisions echo longer than expected.

Some characters will step forward in ways they couldn’t before. Others will recede—not because they matter less, but because their story has already been told.

This next phase is less about origin stories and more about endurance, although you shouldn't be surprised to see some history creep in, as well. After all, we are in St. Augustine.

Why St. Augustine Still Matters

St. Augustine remains the heart of the series—not just as a setting, but as a metaphor.

It’s a city built on layers: history beside present, ruin beside beauty, faith beside commerce.

That tension hasn’t been exhausted.

There are still stories here that can only be told in this place—stories about legacy, inheritance, silence, and the cost of belonging to a city that never quite lets you go.

Alongside this next phase of the St. Augustine Mysteries, I’ll also be writing the Savannah Mysteries—a separate series set in a different city, with a different rhythm, but shaped by many of the same concerns: memory, place, and the quiet ways the past insists on being heard. You've already been introduced to John Mitchell, the intrepid Savannah detective who can never quite let things go, and often makes very unpleasant discoveries as a result. You'll also meet Kate Gallagher, the heart of the series and an ambassador of Savannah itself. For those of you who don't know the city, be prepared: as my sister loves to say, Savannah is full of characters.

One Last Thing

The Angels Trilogy asked whether evil must always be confronted directly. What comes next asks something quieter—and harder:

What does it mean to keep choosing the good when no one is watching, and no revelation is coming?

That’s the question I want to explore now.

And I hope you’ll keep walking these streets with me.

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If you’re new to the series, the Angels Trilogy begins with In the Shadow of Angels and concludes with In the Dreams of Angels. The next chapter of the St. Augustine Mysteries is already taking shape—and I’ll share more when the time is right.