Sandy Dengler Books In Order

Publication Order of Australian Destiny Books

Publication Order of Church Choir Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Heroes of the Misty Isles Books

Publication Order of Jack Prester Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Mirage Mysteries / Valley of the Sun Books

Publication Order of New Sugar Creek Gang Books

with Pauline Hutchens Wilson

Publication Order of Serenade Saga Books

with Kathleen Karr, Elaine L. Schulte

Publication Order of The Daniel Tremain Adventures Books

Publication Order of West Texas Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Where in the World Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Sandy Dengler is an American author who has always enjoyed the outdoors and considers them a big part of her life. As a child, she would spend a lot of time exploring the outdoors near her parent’s home in Sidney, Ohio. As a child she had ADHD and her mom had trouble channeling her energy so she set her loss in the wild and that was ultimately where she felt the most comfortable. She carried early dreams of digging up fossils, but in the 1940s and 1950s it was so unlikely for women to be paleontologists. Had she grown up in another era, she very well may have been.

Her love of nature grew as she got older and influenced her life in a multitude of ways. She headed to Bowling Green State University in 1961 and ended up finishing college at Arizona State where she earned her Master’s degree in desert ecology. The course work at college required her to study one of the major deserts of the world and she decided to choose Australia. The more she studied and the more she learned about Australia, the more she grew to love it. Ultimately, this lead to her writing the Australian Destiny series of books.

While in graduate school, she met Bill Dengler and married him ten weeks after they met. The two were together nearly 52 years before he passed away at the age of 75. Her husband was also a lover of nature and spent 36 years in the National Park Service. The two nature lovers fit well together as he was a naturalist and she was a lifelong lover of nature.

Sandy and her husband Bill had two girls and this is when Sandy turned to writing. She was an at-home mother for her daughters and she figured she could develop her career as a freelance writer at home. Even better, it did not tie her to any one location. That last part was important when her husband worked as a national park ranger naturalist which basically required him to move with each advancement in his career.

As a writer, she had over forty years of success. When her husband retired, they lived in Oklahoma where she was able to somewhat achieve a childhood goal. She volunteer to help build the Ancient Life gallery displays in the brand new Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and got to work alongside paleontologists. This work inspired her and she decided to go back to college and earned her PhD in paleontology. She actually received her PhD on the same month that she signed up for social security. Sandy is a great example of why it’s never too late to give up on your dreams and she was able to officially become a paleontologist at an age when most people are retiring.

She took her newfound skills and combined them with her old skills and became the publication editor for the Journal of Paleontology, a peer-reviewed journal. She did that for a number of years before giving it up, feeling her goals were accomplished, and decided to pick writing back up again.

She is perhaps best known as the author of the Australian Destiny series, but the Jack Prester series has a ton of fans as does the Valley of the Sun series.

Code of Honor is the first book in the Australian Destiny series and takes place in turn-of-the-century Australia. Samantha Connolly is looking to head to Australia to escape her bleak future in Australia. Her and her sisters are indentured to sugar planter Cole Sloan who becomes embroiled in economic issues while trying to keep the plantation afloat.

Samantha’s middle sister has found love with the local preacher while Samantha finds herself drawn to Sloan. She worries that his callous and unethical dealings may have sullied him. Or maybe it’s just that past and present circumstances have made him their victim. Samantha lives with a code of honor and is only focused on doing what’s right. While Sloan is more focused on personal gains.

Dengler is also the author of the Valley of the Sun series and the first book is called Cat Killer. The book follows Sgt. Joe Rodriguez and his partner Tom Flaherty of the homicide department of Phoenix Metro’s Police Department that are given the case of Cat Dubois. Cat was blown up in a car bomb explosion and there are a lot of questions about why that happened.

Cat was a member of a successful evangelistic group and suspicion is quickly put on the members of her team, but in particular on its evangelist, Dr. Persis Magen. The Dr. is a dedicated and effective minister and her blowing up her assistant seems like a terrible idea, but her other assistant may be a suspect. The lovely Marie is a sweet and caring person, but she also has a past. Joe is drawn to her, but he has his own demons in his life that are holding him back. Marie swears that God has forgiven her, but how can he believe her when she’s his top suspect?

The Jack Prester series is another popular one by Sandy Dengler and one of the most popular books is called Mount Rainier. The book sees two hikers finding a body on the great Mount Rainier in Washington State. The victim is John Getz and many people believe he was killed by Bigfoot. That becomes the best theory of all early as there is no murder weapon and no suspects. There is an intersting cast of characters here like an environmentalist who wants a special path built for wheel-chair bound individuals to be able to go to the top of the mountain, druid named Jay, Eerie Elroy (who claims his dog was killed by Bigfoot), and the park workers who are always at each other’s throats. Who did it? You need to read to find out.