Josie Brown Books in Order
Browse Josie Brown books in order, with short summaries, series guides, and where to start across Housewife Assassin, Totlandia, and more.
Last updated: June 10, 2026
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Publication Order
47 books
Marriage Confidential
by Josie Brown
2003
Written with Martin Brown, this relationship guide answers blunt questions about marriage from both sides. It aims to be practical, candid, and useful rather than dreamy or polite.
Hollywood Hunk
by Josie Brown
2005
After her actor father's death leaves her broke and angry, Hannah takes a job as assistant to movie star Louis Trollope. He is vain, irresistible, and exactly the sort of Hollywood problem she should know better than to love.
Last Night I Dreamt of Cosmopolitans
by Josie Brown
2005
Part dream dictionary and part pop-culture companion, this nonfiction book decodes the symbols that show up after lights out. Brown gives modern relationships, work worries, and everyday anxieties a playful spin.
True Hollywood Lies
by Josie Brown
2005
Hannah knows Hollywood men lie for a living, but grief and money trouble pull her straight back into that world. Working for a famous leading man means surviving ego, scandal, and the risky pull between them.
Impossibly Tongue-Tied
by Josie Brown
2006
Nina and Nathan come to Hollywood chasing stardom and wind up in a mess of ambition, infidelity, and tabloid warfare. When Nina takes a secret phone-sex job to pay the bills, the scandal gets even more personal.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Finding Mr. Right
by Josie Brown
2009
This nonfiction guide tackles dating and partner-hunting with practical advice, humor, and a clear-eyed view of relationships. It is designed for readers who want straight talk more than fairy tales.
Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives
by Josie Brown
2010
A divorce shakes an upscale planned community and exposes the lies hiding inside other marriages. Brown turns neighborhood gossip and domestic strain into a sharp, emotional page-turner.
The Baby Planner
by Josie Brown
2011
Alex Harkness is San Francisco's go-to baby planner, expertly managing nervous clients while quietly wanting a child of her own. Behind the polished nurseries and showers, love, ambition, and family longing get complicated.
The Housewife Assassin's Handbook
by Josie Brown
2011
Donna Stone looks like a Southern California widow with three children, but after her husband's death she is recruited into black ops. Soon she is juggling carpool, suburban gossip, and a deadly hunt tied to his secret life.
The Housewife Assassin's Guide to Gracious Killing
by Josie Brown
2012
Donna and Jack land in the middle of a nuclear arms summit where someone wants the Russian president dead. Saving a target she does not trust gets messy fast, especially with Carl's betrayal still burning.
The Housewife Assassin's Killer Christmas Tips
by Josie Brown
2012
Christmas cheer is in short supply when Donna and Jack chase a missing cache of heat-seeking missiles. Holiday chaos, family obligations, and a terrorist plot make this a very dangerous season in Hilldale.
The Onesies: Fall
by Josie Brown
2012
Four San Francisco mothers with messy private lives compete for the last spots in the elite Pacific Heights Moms & Tots Club. In this glossy opener, friendship starts to grow even as secrets threaten to blow everything up.
The Onesies: Winter
by Josie Brown
2012
With only a few club spots left, the holiday season turns ruthless. Bettina's challenges push Jade, Jillian, Ally, and Lorna to their limits as money troubles, old secrets, and family strain spill into public.
The Candidate
by Josie Brown
2013
Political consultant Ben Brinker thinks he has seen everything until a presidential campaign pulls him into a plot involving terrorism on U.S. soil. It is a fast, cynical look at power, image, and loyalty on the trail.
The Housewife Assassin's Recipes for Disaster
by Josie Brown
2013
Donna must stop assassination attempts on both parties' top presidential candidates, even though she has every reason to hate one of them. Politics, old grudges, and danger at close range put her bond with Jack to the test.
The Housewife Assassin's Relationship Survival Guide
by Josie Brown
2013
Donna's new mission sends her across London, Paris, and Guantanamo as she dates dangerous men tied to the Quorum. The job might save lives, but it also puts her heart and her future with Jack under pressure.
The Housewife Assassin's Vacation to Die for
by Josie Brown
2013
What should be a getaway turns into a nightmare when Donna and Jack hunt a missing scientist carrying a deadly plague virus. Fantasy island resorts, strange murders, and feral kids make survival anything but relaxing.
The Onesies: Spring
by Josie Brown
2013
New members should mean calm, but spring only stirs up old rivalries and fresh trouble. Bettina is reeling from betrayal, Lorna faces hard family conversations, and Jillian fights to steady her life.
The Onesies: Summer
by Josie Brown
2013
Summer heat brings the first year of club life to a boil. As loyalties shift and long-buried truths surface, the mothers of Totlandia must decide what matters more, status, marriage, or the friendships they have built.
The Housewife Assassin's Hollywood Scream Play
by Josie Brown
2014
When Hollywood wants to turn Donna's life into a movie, she and Jack use the production as cover for a mission against the Quorum. Fame, stunts, and dangerous co-stars turn the set into another war zone.
The Housewife Assassin's Hostage Hosting Tips
by Josie Brown
2014
A hotel full of international dignitaries becomes a trap when terrorists take hostages and make demands that hit Donna personally. She has to save the room, the mission, and the people she loves.
The Housewife Assassin's Killer App
by Josie Brown
2014
Donna goes undercover in the tech world to expose a hacker tearing through top-secret intelligence files. Smart devices, greedy CEOs, and a deadly game avatar make this mission feel uncomfortably close to home.
Hollywood Whore
by Josie Brown
2015
A film director's obsession with a phone-sex operator threatens both his movie and his marriage. When a talent agent tries to buy the woman off and falls for her instead, Hollywood becomes a tangle of lust, lies, and damage control.
The Housewife Assassin's Tips for Weddings, Weapons, and Warfare
by Josie Brown
2015
Donna and Jack are trying to get married while tracking a terrorist inside the White House. Exchanging vows is hard enough without gunfire, sabotage, and the Quorum crashing the party.
The Twosies: Fall
by Josie Brown
2015
The second year begins with weddings, babies, funerals, and more upheaval than anyone expected. As the children grow, the women of Totlandia find that club politics are still the easy part.
The Housewife Assassin's Deadly Dossier
by Josie Brown
2016
This prequel shifts the spotlight to Jack Craig as he investigates Carl Stone's death and starts falling for Donna. It fills in how Donna was pulled into Acme, and how her life changed forever.
The Housewife Assassin's Garden of Deadly Delights
by Josie Brown
2016
A genetically altered corn crop carrying a brain-eating virus has slipped into the American food chain. Donna's latest case mixes bio-terror, suburban satire, and a race to stop mass panic.
The Housewife Assassin's Ghost Protocol
by Josie Brown
2016
Evidence makes it look as if Donna's own black-ops group is tied to a string of planned attacks, and the president shuts Acme down. Donna and Jack disappear underground to find the real traitors before the country pays the price.
The Housewife Assassin's Husband Hunting Hints
by Josie Brown
2016
To save Jack from torture and execution, Donna agrees to pose as a traitor and work as a double agent for the Quorum. The gamble could save her husband, but it may destroy everything else.
The Housewife Assassin's Terrorist TV Guide
by Josie Brown
2016
Donna and Jack join a reality show in Hilldale to hunt a sleeper threat hiding in plain sight. Being filmed around the clock would be bad enough without murder, family stress, and terrorism in the mix.
The Twosies: Winter
by Josie Brown
2016
Winter brings fresh stress to the Pacific Heights circle as marriage problems, money worries, and old resentments pile up. The women know each other better now, which only makes the betrayals sting more.
The Housewife Assassin's Greatest Hits
by Josie Brown
2017
Donna's life hangs by a thread, and in a coma she faces the ghosts of people she loved, lost, and killed. The result is part reckoning, part dark adventure, and deeply personal for the whole series.
The Twosies: Spring
by Josie Brown
2017
Spring offers a shot at renewal, but nothing in Totlandia comes easily. Bettina's strange disappearances unsettle the club, and Lorna is trying to keep things steady while preparing for twins.
The Twosies: Summer
by Josie Brown
2017
By summer, the women of Totlandia are forced into hard choices about love, family, and the club's future. The season closes this stretch of the saga with more honesty, more fallout, and hard-won loyalty.
The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky
by Josie Brown
2018
A dead young woman in a London club throws Lucky O'Toole and Donna Stone Craig into the same investigation. To solve the murder and decode missing intel, the two sharp operators have to learn to trust each other fast.
The Housewife Assassin's Fourth Estate Sale
by Josie Brown
2018
Donna and Jack infiltrate a giant media company to stop a foreign effort to sabotage the American president and manipulate U.S. politics. Newsrooms, broadcasts, and propaganda become weapons.
The Housewife Assassin's Horrorscope
by Josie Brown
2018
Twelve suspects, twelve zodiac signs, and a doomsday plot point Donna and Jack toward a possible world war. To stop it, the Acme team must decode a trail of clues before treason reaches the highest levels.
Extracurricular - Book 1
by Josie Brown
2019
Senior year at Ashbury Academy is already tense when SAT pressure, moneyed parents, and a no-curve math teacher push everyone toward panic. Audrey Thorpe's buried secret threatens her family and the school's reputation.
Extracurricular - Book 2
by Josie Brown
2019
Audrey's mother, Lavinia, is gravely ill but refuses to loosen her hold on Ashbury Academy. As an old face returns and a shady admissions scheme grows, Audrey's past and the school's mission both start to crack.
Extracurricular - Book 3
by Josie Brown
2019
The admissions scandal breaks open as the FBI closes in and a battle for Ashbury Academy's board begins. Audrey must decide what she will protect first, the school, her marriage, or the truth.
The Housewife Assassin's Assassination Vacation Planner
by Josie Brown
2020
Donna and Jack race across the globe to prevent the murders of seven world leaders. It is a fast-moving international mission with almost no time, and plenty of ways for everything to go very wrong.
The Housewife Assassin's White House Keeping Seal of Approval
by Josie Brown
2020
Now serving as a senior White House security adviser, Donna hunts a foreign saboteur embedded close to power. Clearing Jack's name means stopping election interference before it reshapes the country.
The Housewife Assassin's Antisocial Media Tips
by Josie Brown
2022
Donna and Jack go undercover as instant internet celebrities at a live-streamed influencer junket. Their job is to expose who is leaking U.S. secrets before the whole spectacle turns into a terrorist target.
The Housewife Assassin's Manners, Missiles, and Mayhem
by Josie Brown
2022
Donna, Jack, and the Acme team crisscross the country to stop embedded Russian operatives from sabotaging the U.S. missile grid. It is a road-trip thriller with spy games, rising tension, and very little room for error.
The Housewife Assassin's Deep State Deep Fake Bake-Off
by Josie Brown
2024
Thanksgiving turns chaotic when a terrorist attack weaponizes cell phones and turns air travel into a disaster zone. Donna and Jack's crowded holiday gathering becomes the center of an international emergency.
The Housewife Assassin's Underwater Assets
by Josie Brown
2024
Donna and Jack finally get a vacation, then promptly find a corpse and a plot to concentrate the world's wealth under one powerful consortium. Sun, surf, and murder make a bad combination.
The Housewife Assassin's Doomsday Diary
by Josie Brown
2025
Donna goes deep undercover to stop Russian operatives embedded in Congress and the White House from killing presidential candidates and crashing the global economy. Even success may trigger something worse.
Where should I start?
If you want funny spy capers: The Housewife Assassin's Handbook → The Housewife Assassin's Guide to Gracious Killing → The Housewife Assassin's Killer Christmas Tips
If you want competitive parenting drama: The Onesies: Fall → The Onesies: Winter → The Onesies: Spring → The Onesies: Summer
If you want a ripped-from-the-headlines school scandal: Extracurricular - Book 1 → Extracurricular - Book 2 → Extracurricular - Book 3
If you want Hollywood satire and relationship chaos: True Hollywood Lies → Hollywood Whore
Author bio
Josie Brown grew up in and around Atlanta, Georgia, in a Puerto Rican family with roots in Ponce and Humacao. Before novels took over her life, she worked in advertising and radio, which gave her a close look at how people sell ideas, shape stories, and hide what they really mean.
That ear for human behavior never left her.
She moved into journalism and relationship writing, interviewing celebrities and writing features for magazines, websites, and newspaper syndication. She also edited John Gray's Mars Venus advice column, work that kept her close to the everyday negotiations of dating, marriage, sex, and family life. You can feel that background in her fiction, where people are often funny, guarded, needy, ambitious, and a little messier than they first appear.
Brown wanted to write fiction early. She has said she started her first novel the day she brought her first child home from the hospital, then spent years trying to balance that dream with motherhood and work before she could give it the time it needed.
Her first books were nonfiction, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Finding Mr. Right, Last Night I Dreamt of Cosmopolitans, and Marriage Confidential, which she wrote with her husband, Martin. That stretch mattered. It helped her find an agent and gave her a way into publishing, but it also confirmed that what she really wanted was to tell stories.
Then Hollywood gave her material.
Because Brown had written celebrity profiles and entertainment pieces, she knew the machinery of fame from the inside. That experience fed directly into her early fiction, including True Hollywood Lies, Hollywood Hunk, and Impossibly Tongue-Tied. These books are sharp about ego, gossip, and tabloid culture, but they are just as interested in the assistants, spouses, and strivers trying to keep hold of themselves while everyone around them is performing.
She later widened her canvas with novels such as The Baby Planner and Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives, both set in polished California worlds where status, marriage, friendship, and ambition rub uncomfortably close together. Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives was optioned for television, and her long-running The Housewife Assassin's Handbook series became her biggest calling card, mixing suburban comedy, espionage, romance, and family drama through the adventures of Donna Stone.
Brown also created the Totlandia books, about competitive San Francisco mothers, and the Extracurricular novels, which take on private-school politics and the college admissions scandal. Across all of these stories, she keeps coming back to social masks, female friendships, family pressure, money, class, and the strange things otherwise sensible people will do when status is on the line.
These days she lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children. She has also spent time interviewing other writers for her podcast, which feels fitting, because curiosity has always been one of the clearest threads running through her work.
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