Edna Buchanan books in order

What do a menacing housewife, a kinky bad girl, a shy child, and a cold-blooded killer have in common? Veteran Miami homicide detective Rick Barrish sets out for the answer as he investigates a series of seemingly unrelated murders in his own neighborhood and hunts down an elusive killer in a case that will hit closer to home than he ever expected.

In South Florida, everyone wants to get a head. But not just any head. A very famous human head--severed and snugged away in a cryonic container. A head that could spark a revolution and change the course of history.

Everybody wants a piece of the noggin: rotund gangster Big Joey G., a 102-year-old environmentalist, hard-boiled Miami reporter Britt Montero, lawyer Jake Lassiter, and a would-be dictator in exile--with ex-president Jimmy Carter and a lovable manatee named Booger thrown in for good measure.

With bodies piling up it's anybody's guess what will happen from one chapter to the next, as an all-star line-up of Florida's finest writers take turns at taking this outrageously original novel to the limit--and beyond.

NB: Co-authored with Brian Antoni, Dave Barry, Tananarive Due, James W Hall, Vicki Hendricks, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Paul Levine, Evelyn W Mayerson and Edna Standiford.

With the perfect wife, two beautiful daughters and a successful business, Frank Douglas had everything to live for. But someone else had to die first.

If Daniel Alexander had not committed suicide, Frank Douglas would never have lived to see his forty-fifth birthday. Alexander's heart now beats strong and sure in Douglas's chest. The donated organ has given the successful Miami businessman a second chance but it gives him no peace.

Disturbed by nagging feelings of guilt and uncertainty, Frank sets out to discover all he can about the benefactor whose death gave him life. His search leads him to Rory Alexander--Daniel's beautiful, enigmatic wife-and to troubling questions and shocking revelations about the late man's affairs. Why, for example, have the profits from Alexander's seemingly successful business ventures mysteriously vanished? And why is Rory so unshakably certain that her husband was murdered?

A numbers man, Frank Douglas needs to have the figures add up--and that need is drawing him and a seductive, distraught widow across the length of a nation, and deep into something corrupt and twisted and deadly. And suddenly the new life he was granted is in serious peril, threatened by secrets, lies, human savagery and greed. . .and by the true dark nature of the heart that is now pumping the lifeblood through his body.

U.S. Marshal Michael Venturi of the Witness Protection Program relocates a mobster, now a government witness, to a small rural town after creating a new identity for him. The man proves to be a monster unleashed on an unsuspecting community. The results are tragic. To make amends Venturi leaves the Marshals Service and assembles a team of close confidants to secretly create new identities for innocent men and women whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own -- people who really deserve fresh starts in new lives. But before they are relocated and reborn, each must change a lifetime of habits and actually become someone else, with new traits, tastes, and personalities.

A century ago, when Indians and alligators roamed frontier Miami, the legendary John Ashley was accused of murder and sentenced to hang. He insisted he was innocent and went on the run with his sweetheart, Laura Upthegrove.

John and Laura became the most notorious, colorful, and compelling figures in Florida’s violent outlaw history. Their sensual and dreamy saga is juxtaposed with the taut and suspenseful story of their fictional descendants who share the same love and dangers a hundred years later. 

In today’s Miami, Homicide Sergeant John Ashley investigates a millionaire’s spectacular murder and instantly recognizes a stunning model linked to the case as the girl who has haunted his dreams since childhood. Her name is Laura, and the lightning-fast attraction is supernaturally mutual.

The homicide case goes bad, Ashley is falsely accused of murder just like his ancestor, and the new lovers go on the run as history repeats itself. The question is, how powerful is the past? Do the present-day renegades stand a chance? Can we change our own destiny? Or must the end always be the same for dangerous people in dangerous times?

A crime reporter for a major Miami newspaper, Cuban-born Britt Montero practically sleeps with a police scanner by her bedside. When a high-speed police chase leads to the death of a black football hero, Britt discovers that what seems like an open-and-shut case is actually an intricate web of racially charged violence.

As the city she loves explodes into a major riot, Britt is caught up in life-threatening events that bring the case to a final shocking twist.

On the police beat for her Miami newspaper, Cuban-born Britt Montero has a lot on her hands. She’s investigating a series of bizarre deaths involving sex, electrocution, and freshly poured concrete. As if that isn’t enough, there’s the long-unsolved murder of a young girl that may implicate the frontrunner in the governor’s race. And at the same time, she’s on the trail of a serial rapist—who targets her in retaliation for her stories . . .

A mother and child are the recent victims of a carjacking followed by a fatal hit-and-run. Miami crime reporter Britt Montero witnesses the tragedy—and relentlessly pursues the story. But at the same time, trouble lurks in the newsroom. A new, ambitious reporter covets Britt’s job, and Britt begins to suspect that her rival’s “breaking news” stories may not be what they seem.

As she investigates, Britt herself becomes the prime suspect in a shocking murder. Faced with losing more than just her job, Britt is left fighting the most desperate deadline of her life.

When Miami crime reporter Britt Montero reports a missing teenager, she discovers that the case may be related to a string of unsolved disappearances. As Britt delves into the baffling case, an old mystery opens new wounds: she unexpectedly meets two men who knew her deceased father—who was executed long ago in a Cuban jail.

Through them, Britt learns that he left a diary identifying the man who betrayed him. But the diary isn’t easily possessed: Anyone who finds it seems to be marked for murder. At the height of a terrifying category five hurricane, Britt needs to face the man who betrayed her father in order to uncover more than one truth, but her hunger for justice may turn her into the next victim.

Crime reporter Britt Montero had to shoot a man to save her own life, and the memory of it is tormenting her. So when a major Hollywood actor strides into the newsroom, hoping to do research for the character he portrays, the seemingly cushy job is given to Britt in the hope that it will help her recover from her traumatic experience.

But the assignment turns out to be not so much fun: An obsessed madwoman stalks the star, and mysterious mishaps, accidents, and deaths push him and Britt closer together. Both are menaced by the stalker—or perhaps, by someone else who is determined to sabotage the film and murder its leading man ...

While attempting an arrest, a sheriff is slain by an enigmatic young woman who promptly vanishes into the northern Florida landscape. As the story comes over the wire, reporter Britt Montero is intrigued. Few copkillers escape so easily.

The murders continue. Men are lured into sex by the same woman, their lifeless bodies dumped half-naked in ditches, woodlands and along the road, their cars, cash, and valuables gone. The murderer, who leaves lipstick traces on the bullets she uses-slugs that blossom into flower-shaped blades designed to maim-is swiftly dubbed the Kiss Me Killer.

Tracking the killer's path, Britt senses it will lead to Miami, sweltering through the hottest summer on record. When a top politician tastes the killer's kiss of death, leading to a media frenzy, the story belongs to Britt and quick reader reaction comes-from the killer. They open a chilling dialogue, and the body count mounts as the bad and beautiful serial murderer decimates the hard partying South Beach scene. 

The mutual fascination between killer and reporter builds into an explosive face-to-face meeting that turns deadly as Britt begins a terrifying odyssey through the Sunshine State's dark heart, in the company of the murderer. On the road, on the run, a young father is brutally slain, his small child is kidnapped, and the truth behind this bloody spree is exposed in a shocking revelation. The question is: will Britt survive to write it?

While attempting an arrest, a sheriff is slain by an enigmatic young woman who promptly vanishes into the northern Florida landscape. As the story comes over the wire, reporter Britt Montero is intrigued. Few cop killers escape so easily.

What was the nude, recently slain body of Kaithlin Jordan doing spoiling the pristine turquoise waters of Miami Beach -- especially when the dead socialite's convicted killer husband is sitting on Death Row for having murdered her...ten years ago! Reporter Britt Montero lives for this kind of story. But she may die for this one as well. Because each question raises many others -- and every hard-won answer reveals secret passions and explosive truths that could doom an overly inquisitive journalist with a tendency to leap before she looks.

A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of reporter Britt Montero forever. The encounter is at Miami's morgue, where the unidentified stranger lies dead. His unusual old scars capture her curiosity-the dead man clearly had a tale to tell. This thief, who was accidentally electrocuted, may be the key that unlocks the long-sought secrets of a sensational cold murder mystery unsolved for more than fourteen years.

Sunny and Ricky, teenagers on a Christmas Eve first date, were abducted, a shocking crime that was never solved despite a gigantic manhunt, a huge reward, and an outraged community. Frustrated police called the lack of leads eerie. Unnatural. Against all the laws of homicide and human nature. Now Britt wants the story, and she isn't the only one seeking answers.

Sunny survived, the lone witness to that terrible night so long ago. But the reclusive Ice Maiden, now an artist and sculptor estranged from her wealthy family, is not talking and the killer's trail vanished long ago, like footprints in melting snow.

Cold Case Squad Sargeant Craig Burch wants the killer. But as the Miami News reporter and the veteran homicide cop investigate the old outrage, they learn that sometimes the cost of justice is too high.

When you start to turn over rocks, something ugly sometimes slithers out. Monstrous evil from the past emerges to overtake a whole new generation of innocent victims as deadly passions are reawakened and mortal fears resurface.

For Burch, whose elite unit breathes new life into cold murder cases, the investigation strikes too close to home, reigniting his own private obsessions. And Britt, in the wake of national tragedy, is haunted, both awake and asleep, by the persistent ghost of a doomed, lost girl, perhaps a warning of a new tragedy to come. Britt meets the Ice Maiden, nearly freezes to death, and then the trail heats up as the sins of the fathers begin to strike down the innocent.

"Where the hell is Britt Montero?"

So says Sgt. Craig Burch of Miami's Cold Case Squad at the end of the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's first-rate mystery, Love Kills. So have readers been wondering since reporter Britt Montero vanished after her lover, homicide cop Kendall McDonald, was killed three books ago in Buchanan's The Ice Maiden. When a bulldozer in the Everglades unearths the skull of an infamous kidnapper, the Cold Case Squad is brought in to investigate. Britt was the last person to see him alive, and the detectives have questions only she can answer. 

On a remote desert island where she has sought solace, Montero finds a camera on an isolated beach. The film inside yields photos of a happy young couple on their honeymoon. Soon after, Britt is shocked to learn the newlyweds were lost at sea. When only the groom is rescued, the connection between the reporter and the new widower astonishes her—and Britt is even more astonished when she finds out the truth. Ultimately, her search for the bridegroom's secrets and the Cold Case Squad's search for the kidnapper's killer collide. Britt finds herself desperate and in danger, and only one person can help—Cold Case Squad Lt. K. C. Riley, McDonald's childhood sweetheart. The two women must confront their differences in order to survive and to protect the life of someone they both care about deeply.

NB: This is the ninth book in the Britt Montero Series and the third book in the Craig Burch Series.

"Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman..."

And so begins the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's Cold Case Squad, a new suspense novel that features a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases.

A man and a woman are shot dead at a strip club in Miami Beach. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage rocks a child's birthday party and burns a father of three to death. The murders go unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident.

But was it an accident? Twelve years later, a blonde walks in to the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad -- which Buchanan fans will remember from The Ice Maiden -- and complains that she's been seeing her husband everywhere she goes. Trouble is, he's been dead for twelve years. In Buchanan's characteristic voice, "Some guys just don't know when to let go."

As the Cold Case Squad unearths the details of the strip club deaths and the dead or missing father -- as well as the unsolved killings of a series of little old ladies -- readers get to know the three cops and their boss: veteran homicide detective Sergeant Craig Burch, whose marriage has turned into a case he can't solve; Detective Sam Stone, for whom the past will always be a mystery; Detective Pete Nazario, airlifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s; and Lieutenant K. C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow cold.

"The wide front door hung open, a seductive invitation to a dark interior veiled by dust motes that glittered in the spectral greenish glow..."

The Shadows is a historic 1920s house that inspires preservationists' dreams -- and developers' schemes. Built during Prohibition by a notorious rumrummer who vanished at sea, it was inherited by his son, a local athlete and war hero who lived down his father's wild reputation. He served a successful term as Miami mayor and raised his four young children at the Shadows -- until a shotgun ambush on a hot summer night forty-four years ago. His murder was never solved. Since then, only secrets and whispers have inhabited the Shadows.

Now, a resourceful young preservationist approaches the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad to help block a developer's plan to bulldoze the Shadows and build high-rise towers. The detectives visit the long-abandoned pioneer house, now surrounded by a wild and overgrown subtropical forest. They discover the rumrunner's secret limestone cellar, a tunnel to Biscayne Bay, and seven small, heartbreaking new mysteries -- a lost generation.

Cold Case Squad Lt. K. C. Riley and her detectives seek out the murdered man's widow and children for answers. All are evasive and paranoid, haunted by lies, guilt, and tangled pasts that each recalls differently. Ultimately the squad finds that the killer is still out there, and the old, cold case is hotter than ever.

"Where the hell is Britt Montero?"

So says Sgt. Craig Burch of Miami's Cold Case Squad at the end of the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's first-rate mystery, Love Kills. So have readers been wondering since reporter Britt Montero vanished after her lover, homicide cop Kendall McDonald, was killed three books ago in Buchanan's The Ice Maiden. When a bulldozer in the Everglades unearths the skull of an infamous kidnapper, the Cold Case Squad is brought in to investigate. Britt was the last person to see him alive, and the detectives have questions only she can answer.

On a remote desert island where she has sought solace, Montero finds a camera on an isolated beach. The film inside yields photos of a happy young couple on their honeymoon. Soon after, Britt is shocked to learn the newlyweds were lost at sea. When only the groom is rescued, the connection between the reporter and the new widower astonishes her—and Britt is even more astonished when she finds out the truth. Ultimately, her search for the bridegroom's secrets and the Cold Case Squad's search for the kidnapper's killer collide. Britt finds herself desperate and in danger, and only one person can help—Cold Case Squad Lt. K. C. Riley, McDonald's childhood sweetheart. The two women must confront their differences in order to survive and to protect the life of someone they both care about deeply.

NB: This is the third book in the Craig Burch Series and the ninth book in the Britt Montero Series.

Robert Frederick Carr III was clever and appeared friendly, the perfect lure to draw in his next victim. His crimes were unconscionable: he kidnapped fifteen people, raped and tortured most, and murdered four before being arrested. After confessing to his grisly crimes and leading police on a cross country grave digging trip to recover the bodies, Carr begged Edna Buchanan, the police reporter for the Miami Herald, to write about him, to help prevent future crimes like his. 

During long hours of interviewing him in his jail cell, Buchanan found Carr to be an instinctively intelligent sadist, a predator who abandoned his wife and children to pursue a five year odyssey of violence. Carr's story is a chilling look into the dark soul of a born killer.

For eighteen years, Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Buchanan had one of the most exciting, frightening, and heartbreaking jobs a newspaperwoman could have -- working the police beat for the Miami Herald. Having covered more crimes than most cops, Buchanan garnered a reputation as a savvy, gritty writer with a unique point of view and inimitable style. 

Now, back in print after many years, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face is her classic collection of true stories, as witnessed and reported by Buchanan herself. From cold-blooded murder, to violence in the heat of passion, to the everyday insanity of the city streets, Edna Buchanan reveals it all in her own trademark blend of compassionate reporting, hard-nosed investigation, and wry humor that has made her a legend in the world of journalism.

Set against the neon backdrop of the South Florida city where Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan covered the police beat for nearly two decades, this memoir collects true tales of both heroes and villains—from the heartbreaking to the heartwarming to the outright hilarious.

No other police reporter in America can rival Edna Buchanan, whose reputation for being first on the scene and first with the story is legendary.

In VICE she captures the lurid, bizarre, violent even hilarious happenings that make Miami America's hottest crime beat, stories that are by turns heartwarming, tragic and stomach-churning; the two-and-a-half year old boy framed for murder by his mother; the ninety year old bridegroom who battered his seventy-six year old bride to death with a hammer on their honeymoon; the runaways, arsonists and the drugs; the five-year old murderer, exposed by his six-year old cousin.

And then there are the heroes: the policemen and women; the firefighters; and families like the Southerlands, who watched as a father and three sons were one by one all struck down by the world's deadliest killer. Told in her inimitable, street-smart style - 'police reporters are generally as welcome among strangers as Freddy Krueger is in the girls' dorm' - Buchanan's saga of everyday life in Miami is like an explosive crime novel. Except that it's all true.