Rebecca Drake Books in Order

If you want her early serial-killer suspense: Don't Be Afraid → The Next Killing → The Dead Place
If you prefer domestic thrillers: Only Ever You → Just Between Us
If you like creepy school and campus settings: The Next Killing → The Dead Place
If you want suburban secrets and friendship drama: Just Between Us → Only Ever You

Rebecca Drake was born in New York City, but her childhood was anything but settled. Her family moved through Indiana, Ohio, back to Indiana, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. By the time she finished school, she had attended nine schools in twelve years, including four high schools, and had become very used to being the new kid.

Books were the constant.

Wherever the family landed, there was usually a library or bookstore nearby. She has described books as the friends that never said goodbye, and the thing that made a new apartment or house feel like home once the boxes were unpacked. Reading was always first on her list of favorite things to do, and in high school she spent three years working as a library aide, almost getting fired because she kept reading the books she was supposed to shelve.

She started writing in her early teens and knew by fifteen that she wanted to be a novelist. Getting there took time. After attending two small colleges, she graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism, then worked as a reporter, technical writer, editor, and freelance copywriter while building the kind of practical, workmanlike writing habits that tend to serve suspense novelists well.

She did not lose the urge to move, either. After marrying and settling in Pittsburgh, she traveled to places she had once only read about, including Egypt, China, Turkey, and the Cook Islands. She also lived for a time in Qatar, which she has called a second home. Along with writing and parenting two children, she later taught as an adjunct instructor in Seton Hill University's MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction.

She has long been drawn to darker stories.

As a teenager, she stayed up late reading Stephen King and wondered what it might be like to live with someone who spent so much time imagining fear. That mix of curiosity and unease shows up all through her work. She has said she is interested not just in cruelty, but in choice, the turning points that make people become who they are, or someone they never expected to be.

Her first three novels, Don't Be Afraid, The Next Killing, and The Dead Place, arrived from 2006 to 2008. These books lean into serial-killer suspense and places that should feel safe but do not: a polished New England town, an elite girls' academy, a quiet campus community. Readers who like Drake often respond to that mood first, the sense that danger is already inside the neighborhood, school, or home. The Dead Place went on to reach the indie bestseller list.

When she returned with Only Ever You and later Just Between Us, the focus shifted from public terror to intimate, domestic pressure. A missing child, a strained marriage, close friends keeping secrets, these are the engines of the later books. She has also written short fiction that appeared in Pittsburgh Noir, Swamp Killers, and A Thousand Doors. Across the novels and stories, the through line stays pretty clear: ordinary people, bad choices, and the dark things that can hide under a normal-looking life.

Pittsburgh is still home. She lives there with her husband, two children, a large cat, and a little dog, and keeps writing suspense that looks hard at fear, family, and the cost of what people keep hidden.