Deborah Coonts books in order

OIL, THE KEY TO WORLD POWER

Patrick Donovan, Texas wildcatter, has tapped into a vast reservoir.

A senior Senator from Texas is presumed dead.

Sam Donovan, Patrick's daughter, finds herself in the bullseye of a world scramble to gain control of her father's well. A helicopter pilot operating between the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Sam knows how the game is played.

But this time, the stakes are life and death.

In Texas, football isn't all fun and fanatics...it can be fatal.

Two years ago, I’d married for love.

Little had I known I was marrying into a threesome.

Now my wannabe ex is dead, and everybody thinks I did it.

Worse—I inherited everything…including the Roughriders, the NFL franchise the locals follow with a religious fervor bordering on a cult-like fanaticism.

Imagine, in Dallas, a woman, and worse, a Northerner, running their sainted team?

My name is Brinda Rose, and I’m a Jersey girl caught in the net of Southern pretense, privilege, and back-stabbing, with nary a rule book to guide me.

The whole city seems out for my blood.

But the NFL gave me 90 days to solve my pesky little legal issues and prove I am up to the task of running an NFL franchise. Big of them.

My pal, Lucky O’Toole sent reinforcements in the form of a long, tall, drink of Texas charm named Paxton Dane, although he’s as clueless as I am in the kind of voodoo needed to fend off the coffee-klatch of bored, bitter wives of the power brokers in town.

Intent on protecting their positions (even if it means defending the scum they married) they feast on newcomers with a piranha frenzy.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, I keep seeing flashes of a guy tailing me who looks a lot like my ex.

Could he be alive? The thought has me sleeping with a handgun and doubting my sanity.

With a fortune on the line and everyone from players, to coaches, to investors, to even my former father-in-law, hiding secrets and working angles, 90 days seems an impossibly short amount of time to solve my problems, and an impossibly long amount of time to stay alive.

In Texas, football isn't all fun and fanatics...it can be fatal.

From the bestselling author of the Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series, a new story of mischief, mayhem, and romance.

In 90 Days to Score, suspicion falls on a Jersey girl adrift in the Southern “sensibilities” of Texas, when her ex turns up dead in the parking lot of the Butts Up Club. Yet her biggest crime just might be assuming her ex’s place at the helm of the local NFL franchise. Little did she know, football can be fatal. A fun romantic mystery.

This novella is Part Two and includes all of August’s daily installments.

In Texas, football isn't all fun and fanatics...it can be fatal.

From the bestselling author of the Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series, a new story of mischief, mayhem, and romance.

In 90 Days to Score, suspicion falls on a Jersey girl adrift in the Southern “sensibilities” of Texas, when her ex turns up dead in the parking lot of the Butts Up Club. Yet her biggest crime just might be assuming her ex’s place at the helm of the local NFL franchise. Little did she know, football can be fatal. A fun romantic mystery.

This novella is Part Three, the conclusion, and includes all of September’s daily installments.

In Napa Valley, he who has the best grapes wins. And in the pursuit of perfection, dreams and hearts can be crushed.

Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? 

Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.

Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. 

In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.

When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.

When two hot, haute heroines team up to solve a murder, neither can afford to be fashionably late. No one expected to find a dead girl in the Royal Suite at the Babylon’s posh London club. Who would kill her? And why? With little to go on and no friends to rely on, Lucky O’Toole, the Babylon’s Chief Problem Solver, is dispatched to…well, to solve the problem. But she needs to be in Paris. Her fiancé—and, worse, his mother—are counting on her presence at a party in her honor in seventy-two hours, more or less. 

With a personal-life time-bomb ticking, Lucky hopes for a quick solution. A mystery woman, seen leaving the Royal Suite just before the girl’s body is discovered, attracts Lucky’s attention. She has to be the key…On loan to the CIA, assassin Donna Stone Craig and her crack black-ops team have stepped into a viper’s nest. First, they darn near get out-bid and overwhelmed at an auction to acquire a vintage purse hiding some critical intel its lining. Then a very important source Donna is to meet at the Babylon London Club winds up dead. And the young woman’s intel—bearing incredible global consequences—is encrypted. She was the only one who could give Donna the cipher, and she’s dead. 

Surely someone else would know. But, who? It’s easy to see why Acme’s prime suspect is the tall brunette who acts like she owns the place. Lucky O’Toole shows up at the wrong time, and in the wrong place. But before Donna and Lucky can find the right answers, they’ll need to overcome their reservations and resolve their differences. But can they learn to trust each other before the real killer gets away? They have to. Their lives—and world peace—depend on it.

Twenty million in diamonds missing.

Kate Sawyer, a cop in witness protection, holds the key.

If she could only remember.

Early-onset Alzheimer's clouds the past. Stem cell therapy is working to clear it.

But time is running out for Kate.

One night she finds a dead man in her bathtub with a note stuck in his pocket.

I know what you've done.

Her cover blown, Kate runs, the clock is ticking. People close to her are being killed.

Shadowy memories tease her. Some she recognizes. Others don't seem familiar at all.

Running from people she can't remember, dogged by a past lost in the haze, Kate discovers no one is who they appear to be, perhaps not even herself.

On the best day of Dr. Rita Davenport’s life, she jumps in front of a speeding London Underground train.

The police think suicide.

Dr. Davenport’s team in Portland, Oregon thinks otherwise.

On the day she died, Dr. Davenport presented a paper highlighting a medical breakthrough that would change the treatment of Alzheimer’s. The breakthrough would undercut the billion-dollar Big Pharma business model, taking money from the grant writers, researchers, doctors and huge pharmaceutical companies who have made their life’s work developing drugs that don’t work.

To Dr. Davenport’s team, that is motive for murder.

They turn to Detective Kate Sawyer, one of their own—a participant in their study who is battling her own genetic form of Alzheimer’s. With her lover, Detective Beck Hudson; Dr. Davenport’s right-hand man, Thea Janeway; and Thea’s romantic nemesis and respected denizen of the Dark Web, Carter Livingston, Kate gets pulled deeper and deeper into the secret places where those on the fringes of synthetic biology ply their trade…for good and for ill.

The killer threatens to kill another of Dr. Davenport’s study participants unless Kate backs off…and he’ll keep killing until she stops.

With lives in the balance, Kate can’t stop…not until the last man falls.

But who will be next?

Everyone Has a Hidden Talent

For Lucky O’Toole it’s murder…solving it.

Surviving in Sin City takes cunning, a pair of five-inch heels, and a wiseass attitude. Lucky has mastered them all and has a pair of legs she uses to kick butt and turn heads.

As the Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon, Las Vegas’s most over-the-top destination, mischief is in her job description.

She’s good at her job.

She’s less good at life. But who has time for a life when there’s a killer on the loose?

WANNA GET LUCKY?

A woman falls from a tour helicopter to the horror of the 8:30 Pirate show crowd.

Was it suicide? An accident? Could she have been pushed?

Lucky’s day began with the invasion of the Adult Video Awards and Trade show convention.

It got more hectic when the spouse-swapping annual event checked in.

And if adding a body to the mix wasn’t enough, Lucky’s got a new suitor. Her best friend, Teddie, a female impersonator who is pressing to take their relationship to the next level.

Can she really date a man who looks better in a dress?

What happened to the woman over the pirate show?

Will her sleuthing skills catch the killer and save her job?

Someone fed Numbers Neidermeyer to the tiger shark in the tank at Mandalay Bay resort.

Lucky’s friend, the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock, is suspect Numero Uno.

Miss P, Jeremy’s squeeze and Lucky’s partner in crime, is in a tailspin.

A tractor-trailer full of honeybees jackknifes on the Strip in front of the Babylon, spilling its load.

The district attorney—apparently the odd man out in a threesome—is hiding in the buff in a laundry room.

And Lucky’s mother decides to auction a young woman’s virginity.

Can Lucky get Jeremy out of the hot seat, handle the new hot French chef and her mother…and restore order in her life?

Lucky O'Toole, the Vice President of Customer Relations for the Babylon, one of Las Vegas' most over-the-top strip properties, is seriously regretting booking a reality television show, The Forever Game, into the small theater at her hotel. One thing she knows for sure: Vegas does NOT need a dose of reality.

The four couples competing in The Forever Game add their own mischief to the incendiary mix normally available in Sin City while competing for a Las Vegas wedding extravaganza. The host of the show, Trey Gold, appears interested only in keeping the spotlight on himself while the contestants run-wild sampling all Vegas has to offer, threatening to blow the whole show out of the water.

Not only must Lucky keep the couples from killing each other, killing their relationships, or ending up on the front page of the Review-Journal, she has to navigate the rocky road to love herself. Teddie, her live-in lover is leaning more-and-more towards chasing a new dream as a singer, leaving Vegas...and Lucky behind. And a new French chef who seems determined to muddy the murky waters of love even further.

Then there's Lucky's mother, Mona, who never could leave well enough alone...

Renowned magician, Dimitri Fortunoff apparently dies while trying to pull a Houdini.

Then his body actually disappears.

Lucky is less than amused. She has enough problems already.

Paxton Dane, a handsome Texan long on charisma, short on history, is pressing for an opening.

And the new French chef is equal parts charm and venom, seasoned with a dash of irresistible.

But Lucky can’t shake the question: did Fortunoff really die or is this some elaborate hoax?

With his connections to the UFO convention in town, outlandish theories abound.

Love, laughter, and a few evil spirits from the Great Beyond or the Great Void—

Having a blast on the 4th of July in Vegas takes on a whole new meaning for Lucky O'Toole, head of customer relations for the Babylon, a major Strip property, when she discovers a bomb in a friend's restaurant and narrowly escapes becoming part of the "explosive entertainment." And this wasn't the first time. 

Years ago, when Lucky was small, she'd had another narrow escape. Could the two be related? Missing dynamite, an old grudge, whispers from the past, force Lucky to delve into dark secrets best left alone. And when her father disappears, things become personal.

Las Vegas, the City of Reinvention.

No one knows this better than Lucky O'Toole, VP of Customer Relations at the Babylon, Vegas's newest, most over-the-top Strip property. As the daughter of one of the men responsible for shaping Vegas from its ignominious Mob beginnings to its full current glory, Lucky has witnessed the constant rebirth. So, when the time comes to implode her father's first hotel, The Lucky Aces, she feels the angst, but moves on.

Until skeletal remains are found in the foundation and her father is implicated in a murder.

Then it is a race to uncover the long-buried past. A past no one wants revealed, least of all the killer, who has tried to kill Lucky once before. Lucky must unravel the twisted knot of lies, Mob hits, Vegas power plays, passions, and corruption.

Her father's life hangs in the balance.

And when Lucky discovers a key to the puzzle is locked in her own memory, she becomes a target herself.

Tonight, someone turned a young woman, a Jimmy Choo embedded in her carotid, into a hood ornament for the latest Ferrari in the Babylon’s dealership.

And one of the big-name players in a huge poker tournament ends up dead.

Are the two deaths related?

Lucky starts making connections putting her in the crosshairs of a killer.

Her former lover, Teddie, comes back from his rock tour to deliver a bombshell.

Then life deals another major complication to her personal life…and it’s not going to be pretty.

Can Lucky handle the fallout and catch a killer?

Lucky’s former lover, Teddie, shows up, hat in hand.

A gaggle of egomaniacal chefs appear for a televised cook-off.

And Lucky’s current lover, Jean-Charles, stops answering his phone.

Since trouble comes in threes, Lucky is sure this is the extent of tonight’s trouble.

As usual, she’s a tad optimistic.

A prized Alba truffle disappears from Jean-Charles’s restaurant.

A young chef is murdered in Jean-Charles’s food truck.

Jean-Charles still isn’t answering his phone.

And when Lucky’s path crosses the killer’s will her goose be cooked?

You want to know…I know you do.

Love, laughter, and mischief Vegas-style.

Lucky O’Toole, Vice President of Customer Relations at the Babylon Resort, one of the premier properties on the Vegas Strip, is back. This time she wises-up and sends her down-and-dirty best friend, investigative reporter “Flash” Gordon on the trail of Johnny Pismo. 

Pismo, a washed-up-never-been singer shows up at the Babylon singing a song about a ring of thieves stealing Vegas’ music memorabilia. They replace each piece of Vegas’s music history with a fake, selling the originals on the black market. Pismo even claims to have the prize piece in Lucky’s father’s collection—a large diamond ring given to the Big Boss by Liberace himself.

Lucky is shocked to learn he’s telling the truth.

Teddie, Lucky’s former lover, offers a few choice pieces of his memorabilia collection as bait. Of course, Lucky must join the chase to protect Teddie’s treasures.

But can she protect her heart from him in the process?

Holt Box, a beloved country singer on the comeback trail is killed in Lucky’s lover, Jean-Charles’s, kitchen.

Mr. Box dies in Lucky’s father’s arms.

Her former lover, Teddie, is accused of the murder.

A heavy-hitter in the Macanese underworld is working over Lucky’s father.

An old nemesis salivating for revenge gets out of jail on a technicality.

Lucky’s mother is ramping up an ill-advised political campaign.

And the holidays are racing to a crescendo.

And then things get really messy…

A light, funny, romantic mystery p

Facing a murder indictment, Lucky’s first love, Teddie, has flown to Macau on the heels of the real killer.

A powerful figure in the Macanese underworld has Lucky’s father and his empire over a barrel.

Lucky’s own hotel is days away from opening.

And her engagement is very new.

So, there’s only one thing for Lucky to do…

Take a trip to Macau.

She has five days to catch a killer, save Teddie, and rescue her empire from financial ruin.

Piece of cake for someone with Lucky’s superpowers…

Right?

Who would want to kill a clown?

Lucky O’Toole, Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon Hotel, the primo property on the Las Vegas Strip, isn’t in any mood to find out.

For one, it’s New Year’s Day and Lucky’s birthday.

And she hasn’t caught her breath after a chase to the death in Hong Kong and Macau.

Her French chef is pushing to set the wedding date.

Her former lover, wounded in the China chase, needs TLC.

A young woman, in town with the rodeo, shows up at her office with a secret that could blow the lid off Lucky’s life as she knows it.

And Lucky’s mother starts acting like the secret could be true.

Could it?

What if everything Lucky thought she knew about her family was built on a lie?

And why would someone kill a clown?

If Lucky O’Toole, Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon, Vegas’ primo Strip property, knows one thing—where money goes, trouble follows.

So, when the NFL announces it’s moving a team to Vegas, Lucky is left on the fence until the trouble she feared lands in her lap.

Nolan Ponder, one of the key players in the negotiations to get the NFL to Sin City, staggers into the Babylon covered in blood and holding a knife.

With the mountains of money and careers on the line, Lucky figured someone would try to kill the deal.

But murder?

Chasing down a murderer is the last thing she needs.

Teddie, her former live-in lover, is exploiting every angle to get back into her heart.

Jean-Charles, her fiancé, is planning a trip to France to introduce Lucky to his family.

Mona, her mother, still hasn’t named her twins.

Lucky’s life is quickly becoming a game of murder and mayhem.

She just hopes this game won’t go into overtime.

Death by future mother-in-law.

It’s a thing.

Lucky O’Toole is sure of it. What she isn’t sure of is how to deal with it. In Paris, far away from her Vegas home, Lucky is out of her element and out of ideas.

Especially when a fortune of rare wine is stolen from her fiancé’s family in a daring heist using the tunnels under Paris.

When an unsavory man from Lucky’s past shows up to implicate her in the crime, Lucky is left to debate the merits of a firing squad over a guillotine or…

She could find the wine and clear her name.

Easy…until people start showing up dead and everyone seems to want Lucky’s head on a pike.

Especially the lead police detective investigating the murder and the theft who happens to also be the torch-carrying flame of her betrothed.

Sensing an opening, Teddie, Lucky’s former lover, in Paris to open a musical review in Montmartre, gives her a shoulder to cry on.

A wise woman, Lucky runs, risking life and liver to find the wine and catch the killer before he kills again.

Then, and only then, will she be free to make a choice about her future.

Home: A refuge. An escape. Where the heart is.

After a high-body count trip through Europe, Lucky O’Toole, the Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon, Las Vegas’s most over the top Strip casino, is home and searching for peace, quiet and a quick fix for a broken heart.

She should know better.

Her father is failing in his fight to regain his health after taking a bullet to the chest.

Her mother, Mona, is increasingly desperate to be “useful” which usually results in her being anything but.

Her love life is in shambles.

The DEA is after her, but not giving a hint as to why.

The NBA is in town for their All-Star break extravaganza highlighting the new rookies.

Somebody got cute and put a Bugatti on top of her hotel.

And a dead guy turns up in delivery bay seven with his skull bashed in.

Not exactly the soft reentry Lucky had hoped for. But she can handle it.

Until her father, after checking himself out of the hospital, summons Lucky for a “family” meeting. A secret from his past puts the future of the Babylon and the family in jeopardy.

And he expects Lucky to fix it.

Worse, a financier who played cat-and-mouse with Lucky around the globe, striving to leave her holding the bag, could hold the key to her saving it all.

Can she trust him?

Does she have a choice?

Decay is unavoidable. It’s everywhere around us, physically, socially, spiritually. In our crumbling inner cities and foreclosure-ravaged suburbs. In the widening chasms of our politics. In the erosion of the social contract that once governed how we treat each other. In our own aging bodies and diminishing ambitions. 

Decay is a powerfully meaningful subject in the context of Las Vegas, a city devoted to gleaming surfaces, the glamour of youth and the thrill of the new. But it isn’t immune to decline, and in the ten essays collected here, a diverse group of the city’s best writers – novelists, journalists, scholars, critics – confront it head on. With refreshing candor, penetrating insight and plenty of wit, they probe the rot and look for ways to reclaim it, whether it’s in their community, our public life or within themselves. 

The writers who participated in this project, sponsored by the 2011 Vegas Valley Book Festival, are Stephen Bates, Deborah Coonts, Lynnette Curtis, Jarret Keene, Danielle Kelly, Andrew Kiraly, Rick Lax, Matthew O’Brien, Steve Sebelius and Stacy J. Willis. Scott Dickensheets served as editor. Woodcut cover illustration by Mary E. Hill.

Two best-selling authors. Two page-turning first-in-series books. And two hot heroines with murder on their minds.

IN BOOK 1: THE HOUSEWIFE ASSASSIN'S HANDBOOK:

Murder, suspense, sex--and some handy household tips.

Every desperate housewife wants an alias. Donna Stone has one—and it happens to be government-sanctioned.

But Donna earned it the hard way. Her husband was killed the day she delivered their third child. To avenge her husband's murder, Donna leads a secret life: as an assassin. But espionage makes for strange bedfellows, and brings new meaning to that old adage, "Honey, I'm home..."

Always on the lookout for pulp thrillers, romantic mystery suspense, Kindle thrillers, humour novels, or funny mysteries—with biting racy humor? You'll love the Housewife AssassinBooks comedy series.