JoAnn Chaney Books in Order

If you want the serial killer aftermath story: What You Don't Know
If you prefer toxic marriage suspense: As Long as We Both Shall Live
If you want the clearest intro to her work: What You Don't Know → As Long as We Both Shall Live

JoAnn Chaney writes thrillers that care as much about fallout as they do about the crime itself. Her books are full of broken trust, bad marriages, damaged investigators, and the ugly fact that catching the monster does not fix what the monster broke.

She is a graduate of UC Riverside's Palm Desert MFA program, and she lives in Colorado with her family. Her novels sit comfortably in the suspense aisle, but they do more than chase clues. Again and again, Chaney goes after the human mess left behind.

That is clear from What You Don't Know, her 2017 debut. The novel begins with the arrest of Jacky Seever, a respected Denver businessman whose house hides a horrifying secret, then jumps forward to show what that case did to the people around it. Detective Paul Hoskins is wrecked by it. Reporter Sammie Peterson wants her old life back. Gloria Seever, the killer's wife, is still stuck carrying the stain of his crimes.

Aftermath is her thing.

What You Don't Know was longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's New Blood Dagger Award, and it was also named one of Book Riot's best mysteries of the year. Readers who click with Chaney usually respond to the same mix: quick pacing, shifting points of view, dark humor, and characters whose flaws are never neat or easy. Even when the books are built like thrillers, they are just as interested in guilt, obsession, and self-deception.

Her second novel, As Long as We Both Shall Live, came out in 2019 and shifts from serial killer fallout to a marriage in full collapse. A husband says his wife fell during a hike. The police are not so sure. From there, Chaney builds a tense story about competing versions of the truth, old suspicions, and how dangerous intimacy can become when love curdles into resentment.

Nobody gets off easy.

Chaney has said the first spark for As Long as We Both Shall Live came from a real crime in Colorado, then she let fiction take over. That says a lot about how she works. She starts with something concrete, then worries at it until it opens into a bigger question about people, power, and what we do to each other behind closed doors.

In interviews, she has been refreshingly direct about what she wants from thrillers. Pace matters. Short chapters help. But characters matter just as much, maybe more. She has said she does not want a book that is only action and noise. She wants readers to care about the people in trouble, even when those people are making terrible decisions. You can feel that on the page.

She also likes surprise. While working on As Long as We Both Shall Live, she talked about rewriting the opening so readers would reach the end, smack their foreheads, and want to go back to see the clues. She has described herself as old school too, someone who grew up with a landline and no internet, and she finds modern information culture both fascinating and unsettling. That tension shows in her fiction. Her stories keep returning to closeness, secrets, and the fear that the people nearest to us know exactly where to press.

From Colorado, where she continues to live with her family, JoAnn Chaney has built a compact body of suspense fiction with a clear identity. If you like thrillers that care about psychology as much as plot, and that keep asking what happens after the headline fades, her books are an easy place to start.