Liberty Speidel Hardt
Home · About · Books · Contact · All my linksUrban fantasy mysteries, including the Darby Shaw Chronicles.Start with The Mentor, a free prequel novella.
AboutLiberty Speidel Hardt (formerly Liberty Speidel) is an urban fantasy mystery author from the Kansas City area, best known for the Darby Shaw Chronicles. Her characters are so persistent they literally won't shut up until their stories hit the page, and her books blend supernatural elements with gritty crime-solving in stories that refuse to look away from darkness but always point toward hope. With her husband and co-author, Joshua Hardt, she wrote Wave of Disruption (2025), a Cold War superhero mystery set in the Darby Shaw world. When she isn't plotting, Liberty drives a city bus, where she does some of her best people-watching. She's also an avid D&D player, knitter, and Star Wars nerd. Now happily empty nesters, she and Joshua have a house that's a lot quieter these days, apart from a rowdy cat and an equally rowdy dog. Follow along in her monthly newsletter, The Hardt of Liberty.
ContactQuestions, press, or a quick hello? Send a note. For the monthly letter, subscribe to The Hardt of Liberty on Substack instead.
© 2026 Liberty Speidel HardtThe Hardt of Liberty
BooksUrban fantasy with a procedural heart, a Cold War origin story, a mystery among the stars, a cyberpunk anthology, and a little romance on the side.
The Darby Shaw ChroniclesUrban fantasy. In a Kansas City where supers are real, Darby Shaw can revive the murdered, and every life she brings back has a price.Listed in reading order.
The Mentor
Newsletter-exclusive prequel novellaA Darby Shaw prequel novella you can't buy anywhere. It's free when you subscribe to my monthly letter, The Hardt of Liberty.
Emergence
The Darby Shaw Chronicles, Book 1Officer Darby Shaw is good at her job and not ready for the night a murdered woman gasps back to life under her hands. Now the cameras want a miracle, the agencies want a weapon, and Darby just wants to keep her badge, her squad, and whatever's left of normal.
Retaliation
The Darby Shaw Chronicles, Book 2A year to the day after Darby's first resuscitation, the killer from that case turns up dead in his jail cell, withered like an old man, and everyone thinks Darby did it. Now the Department of SuperHuman Affairs wants her under lock and key, and it will go further than she ever imagined to get her.
Capitulation
The Darby Shaw Chronicles, Book 3Two months after surviving a kidnapping, Darby takes a case that looks like overkill: a man poisoned, strangled, and stabbed through the heart. But after the resuscitation, all hell breaks loose, and she's unprepared for what her power does next, or what it does to her.
The Darby Shaw Chronicles: Books 1–3
Collection: Books 1–3, plus the bonus story PursuedEmergence, Retaliation, and Capitulation in one volume, plus Pursued, a story found only in this collection: a cop-killer flees to Costa Rica, and Darby and Mark follow him far outside their jurisdiction. Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
Omission
The Darby Shaw Chronicles, Book 4When an agent of the Department of SuperHuman Affairs turns up dead in her jurisdiction, Darby has to work alongside the agency she trusts least. Meanwhile her partner, Mark, is still reeling from the secret she kept from him for two years.
The Last First Date
A Darby Shaw Chronicles novella. Read after Omission.Two weeks after Omission, Darby and Mark finally go on their first date, and it starts going wrong almost immediately. Can they get past the disasters, or will this be their last first date?
Retention
A Darby Shaw Chronicles novella. Read after The Last First Date.Darby and Mark have discovered they can share thoughts, a link that needs careful training. Then one slip sends a memory Mark never meant her to see straight into Darby's head, and her closest friendship may never recover.
Escalation
The Darby Shaw Chronicles, Book 5A deadly game. A secret society. A detective clinging to her badge. The young man found frozen stiff in a Kansas City November has no fingerprints and no name, and as the case drags Darby and Mark into a secretive superhuman group, working side by side may cost one or both of them the badge.
Coming soon
Darby and Mark will return in Separation.
Superhuman: OriginsBefore Darby, there was the Disruption. Set in Darby's world in 1962, and co-written with my husband, Joshua Hardt.
Wave of Disruption
Superhuman: Origins · by Liberty Speidel Hardt & Joshua HardtIn Kennedy's Cold War America, a military plane crashes in flames near Colorado Springs, shattering a local school. A Korean War vet turned P.I., an Army psychologist with uncanny abilities, and a British officer with powers of his own race to find the truth behind the crash before the next target falls.
Standalone
Echoes in the Void
A standalone novelWhen the city's wealthiest woman hires down-on-his-luck detective Bridger Heidemann to find her missing best friend, the trail leads off planet. The catch: Tamryn insists on coming along, and she's bound and determined to make him break his number-one rule about clients.
Short fiction
Eon City Burnout: A Cyberpunk Anthology
Multi-author anthology · Interstice Books · featuring my story "Fractured," plus one by Joshua HardtNine authors explore Eon City, a glittering megacity under an energy shield where Axoprime Corporation wants everyone to believe they're safe. Their stories follow regular people caught up in the same sinister conspiracy, who have to decide whether to look out for themselves or risk everything to uncover who's behind an attack that threatens the whole city.
Ozark River Romance — written as Liberty Nelle PenningtonI also write small-town romance on Missouri's Ozark rivers under the pen name Liberty Nelle Pennington.
Love's Current
Ozark River Romance, Book 1Claire Davenport's canoe rental on Missouri's Current River is the one thing she's never had to doubt, until Rhett Buchanan walks into her store with Oklahoma charm and endless questions. But Rhett is a developer hunting for the perfect spot for a high-end resort, and he's found it.
No Accounting For Love
Ozark River Romance, Book 2Two years after an icy January night left her a widow with three small kids, Emily McNew is finally ready to date again. She never expected two men to want the job: park ranger Andrew Ramsland and Brock McNew, her late husband's younger brother.
Loving a Fractured Heart
Ozark River Romance, Book 3Staff Sergeant Emma Lou Jamison survived Afghanistan, and she came home to Eminence, Missouri, to heal, not to fall in love. Then she meets easygoing park ranger Andrew Ramsland, who's packing for a transfer to Colorado in a couple of months.