What Doesn't Kill You

A fast-paced prequel mystery featuring all the kick ass What Doesn't Kill You female sleuths. It's five years before Katie runs away to the islands, and this time her travels take her closer to home: back to her law school reunion. With Emily as her plus-one and Michele rounding out the party, their evening at a murder mystery dinner theater goes awry with weird former classmates, too many cocktails, and - oh yeah - a real murder onstage before the cast finishes Act One.

Katie Connell is a high-strung attorney whose sloppy drinking habits and stunted love life collide hilariously during a doomed celebrity case in Dallas. She flees Texas for the Caribbean and escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and a wicked Bloody Mary habit, but ends up trading one set of problems for another when she begins to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents on the island of St. Marcos.

Sloppy drinking habits. Stunted love life. Professional humiliation in a doomed celebrity trial. It’s no wonder high-strung Texas attorney Katie flees for the serenity of a tropical island, even if it’s the one where her parents died in a tragic accident. But when she gets there, the accident looks a lot like murder, the island seems more sinister than serene, and there’s no one to save Katie from the bad guys, except for herself.

One unexpected and hotly fought-over little boy, two dead bodies, and a series of home vandalisms throw Texas attorney turned island chanteuse Katie Connell into a tizzy. Juggling all of this, Bloody Mary cravings, baggage, and the bad guys too, she waffles between the jumbie house that brought her back from the brink and the man she believes is the love of her life.

Katie s already on edge when a dead guy shows up at Estate Annalise and locals claim there are ghosts in the foundation, but when Nick doesn t come home to her and the kids one day after work, she's ready to lose it. A very cranky Katie launches a Caribbean-wide manhunt, calling on Kurt, her stoic, steady father-in-law, and Collin, her badass big brother, to help her search air, land, and sea for her husband, who may be in very big trouble indeed.

When her husband is killed in a hit-and-run bicycling accident, it takes all of Michele Lopez Hanson's strength not to burrow into their bed for the rest of her life. But their kids need her, and she promised herself she'd do the Kona Ironman Triathlon in Adrian's honor, and someone seems to be stalking her family, so she slogs through the pain to keep herself on track.

When a dead body swan dives from a balcony into the pool at a wedding, gossip about disgraced paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily - whose husband left her for a woman who's really a man - comes to a halt. Enter Jack, a secretive attorney who is a sexy mix of cowboy and Indian. She refuses to work for him until she learns about the disappearance of the six-year-old daughter of his notorious client, Sofia, the wedding shooter, who is also an illegal immigrant. Emily feels a strange affinity for the girl and launches a desperate search for her.

Paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily only wants two little things. The first is to adopt Betsy - the girl who has stolen her heart but could be deported to Mexico at any time. The other is a second chance with her boss Jack, a smolderingly hot and mysterious criminal defense attorney in Amarillo who runs his family's horse ranch in New Mexico on the side.

Big-haired paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily has her life back on track. Her adoption of Betsy seems like a done deal, her parents have reunited, and she’s engaged to her sexy boss, Jack. Then client Phil Escalante’s childhood buddy Dennis drops dead, face-first into a penis cake at the adult novelty store Phil owns with his fiancée, Nadine, one of Emily’s best friends. The cops charge Phil with murder, right on the heels of his acquittal in a trial for burglarizing the Mighty is His Word church offices.

Michele retreats to the country while her teens are away for the summer, to write the memoirs of her elderly neighbor, Gidget - a reclusive former Houston art gallery owner - and learn how to be alone in the wake of her husband’s death. But when Gidget dies unexpectedly, she leaves everything to Michele except a bequest to a daughter no one knew existed. Suddenly, Michele's country quiet is shattered, and half of Texas shows up: some to help, some to contest the will, and others to make sure the mystery daughter is never found alive.

A musical career in the making. A murdered childhood friend. One chance to catch the killer. Ava dreams of building a better life for her daughter through her island pop songs. Her new temp job leads to a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a record deal, but before she can pack her bags for New York, she discovers a dead body outside her office building. Horrified, Ava recognizes the murdered sex worker as her childhood friend. The single mother finds herself torn between pursuing her life’s passion or justice for her murdered friend. 

After battling breast cancer, island pop singer and single mom Ava thought she could handle anything her concert tour threw her way. But when tragedy strikes her album launch party, she realizes she may have underestimated the price she’ll have to pay for fame. The cost skyrockets when someone attempts to murder her headlining act. Still shaken by the alarming attack, Ava has little time to process the traumatic event before she’s caught up in a scandal worthy of the tabloids. Someone in her staff is leaking secrets to the paparazzi.