David Handler Books in Order

Thirteen-year-old Danny Levine comes of age in 1962 Southern California, surrounded by friends, family pressure, and constant embarrassment. Funny and painful by turns, it follows the small battles that shape a boy's sense of himself.

Danny Levine is twenty-three now, back in the family orbit and not nearly as grown up as he hoped. Work, love, and ordinary Los Angeles life press in as he tries to become someone steadier than the boy he was.

Once a literary star, Hoagy takes a ghostwriting job for a washed-up comedian and heads to Hollywood with Lulu. He expects sunshine and stories, but finds a corpse and his own name circling the case.

Rock idol Tristam Scarr summons Hoagy to the English countryside to ghost his memoirs. Scarr insists an old bandmate was murdered, and digging into the past proves almost as hazardous as surviving the music business.

Hoagy is hired to manage the story of Cam Noyes, a very young literary sensation already drowning in fame, drugs, and expectation. The closer he gets to Cam's glamorous life, the more dangerous it becomes.

A dead novelist's promised sequel is finally being written by her increasingly unstable daughter at the family Virginia estate. Hoagy arrives to sort out the literary chaos and finds old blood and fresh murder waiting.

Hollywood boy-wonder director Matthew Wax hires Hoagy as his vicious divorce turns into a public war. When the wife's savage lawyer ends up dead, Hoagy and Lulu are pulled into a glossy world with a rotten core.

A wholesome sitcom star's public fall leads him to hire Hoagy to ghost his side of the story. Behind the smile is a volatile man, and it is only a matter of time before television farce turns into real bloodshed.

Hoagy is trying to live quietly in Connecticut with Merilee and their baby when an old mentor arrives in full scandal mode. Ghosting the man's defense of his affair with his stepdaughter proves dangerous almost at once.

Hoagy receives a manuscript that describes a murder before the crime appears in the paper. To stop the self-styled Answer Man, he must follow the letters, trust his instincts, and avoid becoming the next chapter.

Widowed New York film critic Mitch Berger takes a Connecticut assignment and rents a cottage on a private island outside Dorset. When a body turns up in his landlady's garden, he meets the formidable Desiree Mitry and stumbles into murder.

Mitch's odd new friendship with reclusive Hangtown Frye turns tragic when Frye's daughter dies in a car explosion. Des and Mitch are drawn into a murder investigation tangled up with family pain and town politics.

Mitch is starting to fit into Dorset, at least on the surface, when a member of an early-morning walking group is found dead. The case opens a dark pocket of hidden cruelty inside the town's polished social world.

A film legend's return to Dorset turns into a trap when a snowstorm strands a small guest list inside a faux castle. Then the guests start dying, and Mitch and Des have to solve the case before the storm closes in completely.

Dorset is already tense with feuding families, fresh ex-cons, and a forbidden romance when a brutal killing shakes the town. Des hunts the truth while trying to decide whether she can really build a life with Mitch.

Sour Cherry Lane is unraveling, with a missing professor, a drug-soaked children's author, and a teenager throwing wild parties. As murder closes in, estranged partners Des and Mitch are pulled back into the same dangerous orbit.

A dying former child star wants journalist Hunt Liebling to expose the truth behind an old Hollywood massacre. The story could wreck a presidential campaign, and fresh killings soon make Liebling a hunted man instead of a byline.

Mitch's childhood past collides with his Dorset present when an old neighbor's family prepares for a lavish engagement. After a retired cop turns up dead, Mitch and Des uncover theft, social ambition, and buried resentment.

A suspended NFL star lands in Dorset and rattles the town before his pregnant sister-in-law is found bloodied on Mitch's beach. Des faces a racially charged case with pressure coming from every side.

A blizzard-bound Dorset looks festive until an overdose, a crash, and a string of stolen mail point Des toward a prescription drug racket. The holiday setting is cozy, but the case quickly turns cold and dangerous.

Young Manhattan private investigator Benji Golden is hired to find a missing college student from a powerful family. What starts as a search case turns into murder and a tour through the city's rich and dangerous corners.

Roadwork on Dorset Street uncovers a body buried beneath the pavement for more than forty years. Mitch and Des dig into old-money secrets and discover that one missing man helped hold up a town's most comfortable lies.

Broadway producer Morrie Frankel is depending on a billionaire backer to save his latest musical, until the man disappears. Benji Golden takes the case and finds a world of showbiz nerves, money trouble, and murder.

An old Dorset grudge turns deadly when a beachfront bar burns and Hubie Swope's remains are found in the rubble. Mitch and Des sift through family feuds, local history, and a widower's secret love life to find the killer.

Hoagy heads to Hollywood when a vanished literary legend suddenly wants to tell his story. A damaged family reunion, an old love, and an inevitable murder make the comeback case anything but simple.

A charity performance at a village playhouse is already burdened with blackmail and bad weather before murder stops the show. Hoagy and Lulu step in as old scandals and backstage tensions spill into the open.

While trying to finish his long-delayed second novel, Hoagy is asked to find a vanished assistant who may have stolen a bestselling manuscript. The search takes him into publishing warfare and a string of connected murders.

Short on money and long on ambition, Hoagy goes after the explosive diary of dead movie star Anna Childress. Studio bosses want the journal buried, which makes Lulu's latest Hollywood scramble far more dangerous than it looks.

Hoagy heads to Connecticut for a quiet writing break and instead lands in the orbit of an unstable billionaire with too many enemies. When the man is murdered after kidnapping Hoagy and Lulu, nearly everyone looks like a suspect.

A sweet elderly neighbor is found dead after a Halloween party in Merilee Nash's Central Park West building. Hoagy and Lulu start asking questions and find that Muriel Cantrell had a much darker past than anyone guessed.

In 1989, reality star Nikki Dymtryk hires Hoagy to ghost a sexy novel built from her own family drama. A death threat, old Hollywood egos, and a rising body count turn the job into something far more lethal.

Hoagy thinks his new novel might finally restore his literary standing, until editor Norma Fives starts receiving threatening letters. He and Lulu head into the publishing world to stop a stalker before the warnings turn deadly.

In 1982, newly famous Hoagy returns to his Connecticut hometown after the murder of the town librarian who once mattered deeply to him. The trip becomes the first real case for Hoagy and the young Lulu.

Newly married Hoagy and Merilee tour a townhouse they might buy from Merilee's cousin after a bitter divorce. The house looks perfect, right up to the moment they find the ex-husband dead inside it.