Kathy Herman books in order

CNA Sally Cox is about as happy to be at Walnut Hills Nursing Center as the patients are. But it’s work or starve, now that her husband has found a younger companion. 

Sally’s new crowd skews toward the elderly—ninety-year-old Elsie Rigsby, for instance, whose dementia comes and goes with her gold-digging son and grandson’s visits. Elsie’s not going to tell those vultures where she stashed her money. Still, she’s not getting any younger, and someone besides her needs to know. Three deaths later, is anyone watching Sally?

The love of money…

Poor Mrs. Rigsby gets so confused. But she’s Sally Cox’s favorite patient at Walnut Hills Nursing Center . It’s too bad her only relatives are her insensitive son, Harry, who’s always badgering her about money, and a charming but unreliable grandson.

…is a root…

Harry Rigsby is retired, but these years aren’t exactly golden for him. He’s been reduced to eating ketchup sandwiches when his Social Security check doesn’t stretch to cover the whole month. It just isn’t fair. He has long suspected his mother of rat-holing money, but she won’t admit it. Trouble is, if he doesn’t find out before her mind goes, he’ll never see a penny of it.

…of all kinds of evil.

Sally Cox is drowning in debt and resentful that her job at the nursing home doesn’t pay enough. When Mrs. Rigsby tells her and a coworker that she’s hidden money from her greedy son, the coworker devises the perfect scheme to end Sally’s financial woes—and opens a door to something evil!

When a bizarre houseboat explosion rocks the close-knit community of Baxter, firefighters, friends, and neighbors stand powerless as the McConnells' blazing hull sinks to the bottom of Heron Lake. Grief turns to outrage as new evidence proves there was one survivor -- and points to murder, something this sheltered community has never faced in its hundred-year history. 

In a race with the FBI, Jed sets out to track down the sole survivor, coping meanwhile with his own painful marital struggle. Baxter's mystery and Jed's dilemma are ones only God can solve in this suspenseful, surprising story of redemption amidst despair in small-town America.

One man's hatred sets off a community crisis in a chilling page-turning read that is also startlingly inspirational. Textile magnate G. R. Logan lays off a thirty-year employee who dies weeks later, and the man's son means to make Logan pay.

Sinister messages threaten the lives of two teenage girls while the citizens of Baxter struggle to cope with the evil that plagues this once-peaceful town. How will they react when they learn who's responsible? Can anything break their cycle of bitterness?

Furious that his girlfriend chose to bring twin babies to term, Dennis walks out of Jennifer's life. And now the Centers for Disease Control have quarantined Jennifer, along with 200 others who attended the reception for a missionary couple bearing a deadly virus. Is Jennifer at risk? Does Dennis even care what will happen to the twins, separated from their mother at birth? 

Fear takes hold in the town as violence erupts, and Baxter experiences an outbreak deadlier than any virus. Still, woven through the tale of violence and victims is another story: one of divine love and purpose.

Eighteen-year-old Angie Marks, tattooed and pierced, shows up in the small town of Baxter without a place to stay. When eccentric millionaire Patrick Bailey hires her to be his housekeeper, and then when Angie risks her own safety to help Mr. Bailey get his twin great-grandsons out of a rattlesnake's strike zone, she finds herself fully at the center of the town's curiosity. At Monty's Diner they say she might be involved with Billy Joe Sawyer, using rattlers to intimidate the key witnesses in his upcoming trial. Is she? Or does Angie Marks have her own agenda?

Baxter residents fear upheaval when a regional tire plant announces it's coming to Baxter. Rumor says mayor Charlie Kirby's signature on the deal was influenced by an affair with the tire company's corporate attorney - who dies suddenly after the agreement is finalized. 

Charlie, a pillar of the community and a father of seven, faces the court of public opinion and the biggest moral dilemma of his life. Meanwhile, newspaper editor Ellen Jones goes looking for a feature story, collides with the brick wall of the late attorney's past - and is stalked by someone pursuing the same track!

Her Sister Couldn't Be Alive...Could She?

It had to be Riley Jo. She was certain...wasn't she? But when Abby Cummings tells her mother she thought she saw her sister at the store, her mother quickly dismisses the idea. After all, Riley Jo and their father had been missing for years. Presumably dead. Yet Abby cannot ignore her intuition. 

Telling her friend J. D., they investigate. But J. D. may know more about the disappearance than he's telling, or even realizes. And as they work to uncover what happened, all they have to go on is blind faith. Will it be enough...especially considering what the truth might be?

Is Liam Berne a loving son—or a murderer?

A man who loses everything learns he must die to find life.

After much agonizing, Liam Berne takes his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, to the Sure Foot River and drowns her. A mercy killing, he tells himself, to spare her years in a nursing home. And getting his inheritance early isn’t a bad thing either.

Dixie Berne’s body is recovered and the coroner cannot find any sign of foul play, though Liam’s sister isn’t convinced. Then Liam hears rumors that a twelve-year-old boy has witnessed the drowning. Terrified that he will be discovered, Liam sets out to intimidate the boy into silence. Little does Liam know that someone else suspects him—someone who intends to make him pay.

When twenty-four-year-old Hawk Cummings wakes up by Beaver Lake at sunset, all he remembers is a dream about a spider that spewed venom. Then he realizes that Kennedy--the young woman he broke every vow to have an affair with--is gone. He rushes to her house only to find it empty. No furniture. No pictures. No sign that anyone lived there.

Ashamed and confused, Hawk decides not to report anything to the sheriff. Then Hawk realizes that someone else in town knows what happened to his lover. He begins to fear for Kennedy's life--and his own.

Can You Ever Escape Your Past?

At eighteen, popular Ivy Griffith likes nothing better than getting stoned with her boyfriend, Pete, and his basketball buddies–until one afternoon when a nightmare unfolds. Ivy watches in horror as her boyfriend and his friends murder a teammate and bury his body in a remote location. The four friends make a pact to keep the killing quiet, and Ivy flees her parents’ Colorado home for college and never looks back.

Now, after ten years of numbing her guilt with drugs, she’s finally clean. The single mom of a seven-year-old son, Montana, Ivy returns home to the tiny town of Jacob’s Ear, hoping for courage to reveal the shocking truth of her past and be rid of this baggage forever.

But when disaster strikes at her high school reunion, she’s the only one left alive who witnessed that fateful night so long ago…Or is she? Who else could’ve known about the pact and who would want Pete and his co-conspirators dead? As the investigation heats up and the death toll rises, Ivy is forced to decide if confessing the truth is really worth risking her own life.

Forgiveness is one thing, but who really forgets?

Ivy Griffith has been released from jail after serving time for covering up the strangulation death of a high school classmate ten years earlier. She’s paid her debt to society. Kicked her drug habit. She’s making a fresh start.

Problem is, everyone in her hometown of Jacob’s Ear, Colorado, knows what she did. And her seven-year-old son, Montana, won’t stop probing about the father he has never met–the man Ivy was too stoned to even remember.

Plagued by her own shame and her little boy’s cries for male affirmation, Ivy is thrilled when Rue Kessler takes an interest in Montana and her. Maybe, just maybe, he’s the answer to prayer she’s been waiting for.

But Rue has a shadow hanging over his past and is suspected in a rash of bizarre, brutal beatings. He denies any involvement, and Ivy believes him–until she discovers he and Montana have kept a secret from her.

At a loss for what to believe or where to turn, Ivy’s on the verge of despair and wonders if even God has given up on her. Or is something bigger at play here–something being orchestrated outside of her control that’s about to bring down the curtain on everything including her past?

Envy is a deadly poison. Faith is the antidote.

Things couldn’t be better for Rue Kessler. He just married the mother of his eight-year-old son, Montana, and finally has the family he’s always dreamed of. Not only that, his father-in-law hired him to be the new construction supervisor on a big condo project. He’s been sober for eighteen months. He’s finally plugged in at church. And he’s building his wife Ivy the house she’s always dreamed of. Life is good.

Then with no warning, Rue and his wife and son become the target of someone’s cruel and frightening attacks. What reason would anyone have to dash their hopes and dreams? What will it take to stop it? What defense is there against an enemy he can’t see?

While Rue’s head is still reeling, a man on his work crew is found half dead in Tanner Canyon. Are the attacks related? Is someone trying to put a stop to the condo project? Or is something more sinister afoot–something that will take all the faith he’s got to confront?

Ellen Jones, first introduced in the Baxter series, is enjoying a leisurely lunch at a Seaport restaurant when she overhears a private conversation at the table next to her—and disturbing accusations involving the husband of a woman she has recently befriended. But as Ellen digs through old newspaper articles and stumbles onto information too frightening to keep to herself, will she become enmeshed in speculation and gossip—or will she take the lead and become a catalyst for truth and healing?

Things Aren’t Always How They Appear!

Guy Jones is about to burst his buttons. He just won the biggest case of his career and is being hailed by his law partners. But his wife, Ellen, is consumed with her quirky, needy friends and misses his victory dinner. Little does she know that Kinsey Abbott, Guy’s pretty legal secretary, is more than happy to keep him company. 

Communication between the Joneses rapidly deteriorates when Ellen’s stubborn loyalty to an Iranian couple lands her in the FBI’s spotlight—and Guy’s bad graces. Guy soon discovers Kinsey’s dark side, which inevitably pulls him into a web of danger and deceit. He decides not to tell Ellen. But it’s going to cost him.

Who is my neighbor?

Guy Jones is about to burst his buttons. He just won the biggest case of his career and is being hailed by his law partners. But his wife, Ellen, is so consumed with her quirky, needy friends that she misses his victory dinner—and bright, beautiful legal secretary Kinsey Abbott is only too glad to keep him company.

When a fishing boat full of explosives is seized near Seaport, Ellen’s stubborn loyalty to her Iranian friends lands her in the FBI’s spotlight—and Guy’s bad graces. But when Guy encounters Kinsey’s dark side, a lot more than the Joneses’ marriage is threatened!

Amid danger, deceit, and violence, Guy and Ellen clash over a key issue: Who is worth befriending—and who deserves loyalty under fire?

The Past Is Back

Ellen Jones’s hands are full after she begrudgingly brings her aging father to Seaport. Lawrence’s memory is failing—though he can’t seem to forget what he’s been holding against Ellen for the past forty years. But when he’s diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Ellen realizes she never released her resentment and it’s too late for reconciliation. 

Then suddenly—literally overnight—her son, Owen, comes face-to-face with the consequences of his wilder days gone by. No one is prepared for the changes he, and the entire family, will have to make as a result. The past weighing heavily in the present, a clean start is out of the question for both Ellen and Owen. How can God heal their deepest wounds? Enter the least expected person of the bunch… Can secrets kill?

Ellen Jones gets a disturbing call from her elderly father’s neighbor and must face the fact that her father, Lawrence, is no longer safe living alone. Ellen resents that he forgets the simplest of details and yet remembers the one thing he’s held against her for the past forty years. Her being his caregiver is out of the question.

Ellen and her husband Guy pair up their fathers to share an apartment in a nearby retirement community. The setup seems ideal until Lawrence wanders off...right past the scene of a murder. Did he see something? He can’t quite remember... but the killer doesn’t know that!

Just when Lawrence is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Ellen realizes there’s no chance they’ll ever be reconciled, a shocking secret surfaces from her son Owen’s past that drops her to her knees. Ellen is desperate for a miracle. Will God intervene and erase the consequences of past mistakes—or does He have an even better plan?

In Search of Significance

Thirty-year-old Brandon Jones arrives at his parents’ doorstep burned out, jobless, and now fiancée-less. Ellen and Guy can provide a place for him to stay only until he figures out what to do with his life. When he takes a temporary job at a summer camp for disadvantaged kids, Brandon begins a turbulent relationship with a biracial adolescent named Caedmon. 

Somewhere in the midst of the chaos—caused by Caedmon’s disappearance just before a hurricane is predicted to hit Seaport, and by a group of racists who will not stop at arson or murder—Brandon begins to see that the pieces of his life are not by chance. If he has discovered his life’s purpose, can he live it?

“Life is pointless. And if there’s a God, He’s asleep on the job.”

Brandon Jones didn’t know what he expected from the homeless man he met on the way out of town. Certainly not the angry words that haunted him.

But then, nothing happened the way he expected. Not his promising career, not his engagement to the “perfect” woman. All his certainty that God had plans for him, that he was meant to do something important—something significant—had amounted to a big fat zero. And now, here he was, thirty years old, no job, no fiancée. Living with his parents.

Maybe the homeless guy was right.

Then again…maybe not. Maybe Brandon has returned to Seaport for a reason. To face down a brewing disaster, steeped in hate crimes and danger. To survive against all odds. To learn, once and for all, that “many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Zoe Broussard loves the life she and her husband Pierce have built in her beloved Louisiana hometown - especially their popular brasserie Zoe B's, to which folks drive all the way from Lafayette for lunch or dinner. It seems like heaven.

But it's about to become hell. A series of anonymous notes is making her life a misery - because Zoe has a secret so terrible it could leave the business in shambles and tear her marriage apart. Can she find the courage to face her past?

When elderly Adele Woodmore moves to Les Barbes to be near the Broussards, she wants nothing more than a comfortable, quiet life. Employing men from Father Vince’s halfway house for the homeless to do odd jobs, she takes an interest in their lives and is delighted to be helping them get back on their feet. 

Now a series of murders has cast a pall over the town and one of Adele’s handymen becomes a person of interest to the police. But Adele continues to show the young men kindness and care, in spite of her friends’ concern. This time that kindness could kill her.

Sax Landry left home at seventeen to escape his father's abuse, leaving his mother and sister to fend for themselves. Now, twenty-eight years later, both parents are dead, and guilt compels him to find his sister and make peace. 

His search leads to Les Barbes, Louisiana, where authorities fear a bio-terrorist has injected cyanide into juice cartons and fresh produce at the grocery store. People are dead. It's not safe. Sax stays, fearing death less than living another day without peace. A divine appointment is about to change all that forever.

Brill Jessup would rather work than deal with the bitterness she feels about her husband Kurt's infidelity. They've made a fresh start with Brill taking a job as the new police chief in a small East Tennessee town. 

Kurt is genuinely contrite and making every effort to show his commitment to Brill. Meanwhile Emily, their nine-year-old, is being the perfect little girl, as if she can make everything okay again. So why can't Brill get over this anger? 

Work presents the perfect distraction as rumors and superstition are running rampant in the wake of the disappearances of seven people in seven days. As fear rises in the community, Brill works desperately to solve the mystery...until it threatens her family and she is forced to confront the real enemy.

When Vanessa Jessup returns home from her sophomore year of college, her mother, Police Chief Brill Jessup, is stunned to see that she's pregnant by one of her professors. Brill is glad Vanessa rejected the father's abortion ultimatum, but hurt that she ignored her upbringing and angry that the professor has disappeared without a trace.

But that's not all Brill's got on her plate. One of her detectives has been killed, and the attacker has threatened to come for her next. When a second cop is wounded, public criticism mounts as Brill attempts to stay alive long enough to catch the perp. And she's trying to find that deadbeat dad as Vanessa struggles to make decisions about her future. The killer seems to be everywhere and nowhere. How can a police chief and a mother do her job with her life on the line? In a show of grace under pressure, Brill will manage to have the last word, even if it kills her.

With information that could solve a series of murders but endangers the girl he loves, a college boy grapples with what to do--and whom to trust.

Ethan Langley is home for the summer, eager to renew his friendship with Vanessa Jessup and her infant son, Carter. And her parents, Police Chief Brill Jessup and her husband, Kurt, approve: Ethan is thoughtful, kind, hard-working, and ambitious.

Before Ethan is even settled, a series of random shootings leaves someone he loves dead. While police are scrambling for suspects, Ethan learns shocking details that could break the case--but it imperils the lives of those he's come to love. Going to the police with what he knows endangers Vanessa and Carter...yet not telling them is just as dangerous. He's been dealt a risky hand in a game for which he doesn't know the rules. Will he make the right call?