Daco S Auffenorde Books in Order

Daco S. Auffenorde was born at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. She later earned a B.A. and an M.A.S. from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, followed by a J.D. from Cumberland School of Law.

Even her first name has a story.

On her official bio page, Auffenorde explains that her father, a physicist, built the name Daco from a formula linked to acceleration and the speed of light. That mix of science and imagination feels fitting. She has also said that he encouraged her to do what made her happy and never treated ambition as something off-limits because she was a girl. In interviews, she has said she started writing as soon as she could hold a pencil, first as a child making stories and sketches, later in letters, poetry, and eventually adult fiction.

Before books became her public identity, law was a big part of her working life. She practiced in Huntsville and later trained as a civil mediator. When she stepped away from law practice to focus more seriously on writing, she bought herself a desk with a world map inlaid on top, a reminder that the world is a fascinating place. Her professional life still sits close to the page, alongside memberships in groups such as International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, the Authors Guild, and the Alabama State Bar.

Her fiction moves across several kinds of suspense. The Pisces Affair sends CIA operative Jordan Jakes into a terrorist plot in Dubai, while Cover Your Tracks strands a pregnant traveler and a former Army Ranger in the Rockies after an avalanche destroys their train. Cover Your Tracks helped introduce many readers to her work, landing on Suspense Magazine's Best of 2020 list and later winning Action Thriller of the Year in the Best Thriller Book Awards.

She likes to put people under pressure.

That is clear in The Forgotten Girl, a psychological thriller about a woman called Blue who wakes in a hospital after a fall from a hotel window with almost no memory of who she is. The novel turns identity into the mystery itself, and Blue has to recover the truth while staying alive long enough to use it. The book went on to win Book of the Year in the 2023 Best Thriller Book Awards.

Then came The Medici Curse, which shifts from city danger to Gothic unease. Set around a Tuscan villa, it follows Anna de' Medici Rossi as she returns to the house where her mother died and a valuable necklace vanished. Art, family history, old suspicion, and broken memory crowd the novel. Across Auffenorde's work, certain interests keep returning: isolated settings, hidden agendas, women thinking their way through fear, and the nagging question of who can really be trusted.

Off the page, Auffenorde has spoken about painting in watercolor, visiting museums, listening to symphonies and opera, hiking, golf, lap swimming, birdwatching, and travel. Those interests help explain why art, atmosphere, and place show up so often in her fiction. These days she remains based in Huntsville, Alabama, where mediation and fiction sit side by side, and where a talkative Balinese cat named Kiki sometimes keeps her company.