D M Buckley Books in Order

D M Buckley, Donna Marie Buckley, is a Florida writer who was born in Tampa, grew up there, and still calls the city home. Her published author bio says she lives in Tampa with her husband and three cats, which feels like a good match for fiction that mixes everyday messes, sudden danger, and a sly sense of humor.

As a kid, she was already building stories.

Buckley has described a childhood full of imaginary friends and made-up adventures. Sometimes those inventions spilled into real life, and she would blur the line between invented companions and actual playmates, telling people there were cousins visiting from Never-Never Land. By her own telling, her father loved the act and made the tales even bigger, while her mother looked horrified and her sister rolled her eyes.

Then life got in the way.

She started writing early, but adulthood pushed it aside for a long stretch. Raising a child, paying bills, and keeping business partners happy meant writing moved to the back burner. When life finally settled into something closer to normal, she came back to it, picked up the pen again, and created Lexi O'Malley, the character who anchors all of her published fiction so far.

That return gave Buckley a lane that suits her well. The Lexi O'Malley books mix mystery, comedy, danger, and a little romance, all built around a heroine who is smart, stubborn, and often in over her head. The series starts with Doggone in 2012, when thirty-two-year-old Lexi, broke and out of work, agrees to help her Aunt Scarlet search for a missing black Lab and ends up tangled in something much uglier than a pet hunt.

Buckley followed that with Twocan Sam later in 2012, where Lexi, now a newly certified process server, takes on a favor for Nick Romano and walks straight into explosions, gunfire, and another wild case. In Three Point Turn from 2014, a human bone, an estranged sister, and a risky assignment pile together in the kind of messy situation Lexi seems born to attract. Then came Carrefour in 2021, which sends Lexi after a kidnapped friend while she also chases down a slippery con artist.

What ties these books together is not polish. It is nerve.

Buckley's stories tend to begin with ordinary trouble, a missing dog, a favor for a friend, a family problem, and then widen fast until Lexi is dodging thugs, facing scammers, or stumbling into something far more dangerous than she expected. Readers who like amateur sleuths with attitude, comic timing, and a real sense of bad luck turning into grit will probably click with her work. Family obligation, stubborn survival, eccentric side characters, and the surprise of finding out what you are capable of all show up again and again.

Buckley has also been clear about one more thing, writing is fun for her. That matters. Even when her plots turn rough, there is an easy, unpretentious momentum behind them, as if she enjoys putting Lexi through one more impossible situation just to see how she talks her way out. For now, Buckley's public author profile still points back to Tampa, her husband, and those three cats, and that steady home base sits nicely beside the chaos she writes.