Jessica Strawser Books in Order

Jessica Strawser grew up in the Pittsburgh area and, by her own telling, spent a lot of childhood reading, rereading, and filling journals with words of her own. She attended Moon Area High School, where she co-edited the student newspaper and got an early taste of real reporting through a senior project with the Allegheny Times. Long before novels were her day job, books and deadlines were already part of the rhythm of her life.

Journalism came first.

At Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Strawser worked on The Post, edited Southeast Ohio magazine, and graduated in 2001 as the outstanding senior in the magazine sequence. She had already accepted a job at Writer's Digest by then, so graduation also meant a move to Cincinnati and the start of a long career in publishing.

She didn't stay in one lane. Early on she worked as an editorial assistant at Writer's Digest and then as managing editor of its sister magazine Personal Journaling. She later spent time in marketing and public relations at Xavier University, and then at Emmis Books, where she edited a mix of regional and commercial nonfiction titles. That editorial background shows in her fiction, which tends to be tightly built, emotionally grounded, and very aware of how people tell stories about themselves.

Then fiction stopped being a someday plan.

Strawser has said that being surrounded by writers, agents, and aspiring authors gave her a kind of crash course in storytelling. She got serious about her own novels while still working full time, and her debut, Almost Missed You, arrived in 2017. It landed on a Barnes and Noble Best New Fiction shortlist, and her next novel, Not That I Could Tell, became a Book of the Month bestseller. The books also set the pattern for much of what followed: women at a breaking point, secrets that refuse to stay buried, and suspense that grows out of ordinary life instead of cartoon villainy.

Her books are often called book club fiction, suspense, or domestic suspense, and all of that fits. Not That I Could Tell follows the fallout after a woman disappears from a tight-knit Ohio neighborhood. Forget You Know Me turns a late-night video call between old friends into a crisis neither can control. A Million Reasons Why uses a surprise DNA match to open up questions about family, illness, obligation, and forgiveness.

She also knows when to lean toward tenderness instead of pure tension.

In The Next Thing You Know, an end-of-life doula meets a musician whose illness has taken away the future he thought he had, and the result is one of her most openly emotional novels. That book was also picked by People. Later books like The Last Caretaker and Catch You Later bring back the mystery engine, but keep the same interest in women trying to rebuild a life while the past keeps tugging at their sleeves. Both became instant USA Today bestsellers. The Quitters Club pushes that even further, following four friends who decide that walking away can sometimes be the bravest move available.

Ohio matters in her work. So do friendship, marriage, motherhood, class, caregiving, and the private compromises people make to keep going. Her stories often unfold in familiar places, neighborhoods, small towns, road stops, nature preserves, and college communities, then ask what happens when the people around you don't know the full story, or maybe don't want to.

Today Strawser lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children. Alongside her novels, she has continued her long association with Writer's Digest, serving as editor-in-chief, then editorial director, and now editor-at-large. She was the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County's Writer-in-Residence in 2019, and the Ohio Arts Council honored her fiction with Individual Excellence Awards in 2024 and 2026. She still sounds like someone who loves both the writing life and the reading life, and, yes, she has also argued that french fries improve a salad.