Rebecca Forster Books in Order
Browse Rebecca Forster books in order, with Josie Bates, Finn O'Brien, and Bailey Devlin reading guides, quick summaries, and easy tips on where to start.
Last updated: July 4, 2026
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Publication Order
36 books
A Delicate Matter
by Rebecca Forster
1989
With nothing left for her in Sanger, California, Calla Oaks heads to Los Angeles determined to build a better future. But shame, memory, and the risks of starting over make her fresh start anything but simple.
Privileged Secrets
by Rebecca Forster
1990
Newly appointed presiding judge Rachel Williams enters a glittering Los Angeles circle that hides sex, drugs, and murder beneath its privilege. As the trial before her darkens, one choice could ruin her life or end it.
Golden Threads
by Rebecca Forster
1992
Char Brody is determined to make her name in the high-pressure world of fashion design. Then a chance meeting complicates her careful plans and forces her to weigh ambition against the pull of love.
Rainbow's End
by Rebecca Forster
1992
Bridget Devlin's first nursing job carries her from an Irish village to the world of San Francisco wealth. When the woman in her care dies and leaves her an estate, love, suspicion, and family resentment close in fast.
The Reckless Ones
by Rebecca Forster
1992
Abandoned by her mother for a richer life, Ricky Blair grows up hungry for revenge. By day she is a top executive, by night she leads a jewel-thieving ring aimed straight at the wealthy world she hates.
Checks and Balances
by Rebecca Forster
1993
When Nicole becomes executor of her father's estate, she decides to fight the thieves who stole one of his inventions. A determined attorney stands beside her as the legal battle turns personal.
Vanities
by Rebecca Forster
1993
Three women discover that one man can make their deepest fantasies feel possible, or ruin them completely. Desire, glamour, and ambition mix into a story where dreams come with a price.
Beyond Malice
by Rebecca Forster
1994
Hotshot associate Nora Royce is accused of murdering a law partner's wife and finds herself abandoned by the legal world she served. Her only hope is her estranged sister, Amanda Cross, who must fight a case that should be far beyond her reach.
Vows
by Rebecca Forster
1994
Dani Cortland is talented, driven, and sure she knows what she wants. Then broken promises and dangerous desire show her how deadly a lover's betrayal can be.
Dreams
by Rebecca Forster
1995
Hollywood star Sass Brandt becomes obsessed with a haunted love story and the man who controls its rights. Her search leads to the Alaskan wilderness, where desire and danger are waiting together.
Keeping Counsel
by Rebecca Forster
1996
New Mexico attorney Tara Linley agrees to represent her best friend's lover and learns too late that he is unstable and dangerous. Bound by privilege and conscience, she is trapped in a chilling game of cat and mouse.
Seasons
by Rebecca Forster
1996
After her husband disappears, Elizabeth is left with a child, no money, and no clear future. Then Max Marino enters her life, bringing hope, passion, and a secret that could break them both.
Character Witness
by Rebecca Forster
1997
Young lawyer Kathleen Cotter thinks joining her uncle's faded Beverly Hills firm might be her break. Then a client asks her to prove an ex-husband's death was murder, and Kathleen lands in a web of corruption, scandal, and very real danger.
The Mentor
by Rebecca Forster
1998
Federal prosecutor Lauren Kingsley takes on a militia bombing case to prove herself worthy of her mentor's faith. When that mentor is murdered, she is pulled into a conspiracy that climbs all the way toward the highest court.
Hostile Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2004
Hermosa Beach lawyer Josie Bates returns to criminal defense when sixteen-year-old Hannah Sheraton is charged with killing her stepgrandfather, a powerful judge. The deeper Josie digs, the more she finds a wealthy family, political influence, and deadly secrets.
Silent Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2005
When Archer is accused of killing a stepchild Josie never knew existed, love and law collide head-on. Josie must defend the man she trusts while confronting truths that could destroy them both.
Privileged Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2006
Josie defends an abused woman and finds the case cutting dangerously close to home. Old secrets surface, loyalties fray, and the fight for justice becomes painfully personal.
Before Her Eyes
by Rebecca Forster
2010
A mountain grocer is executed and a fading model disappears, leaving Sheriff Dove Connelly with a case that feels wrong from the start. His search leads into a strange, unsettling place where memory, instinct, and death blur together.
Wilde's Gamble
by Rebecca Forster
2010
A murder investigation turns into a dangerous gamble in this romantic suspense novel. As the pressure closes in from every side, Wilde has to decide who to trust before desire and violence collide.
Expert Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2011
Josie vanishes just as Hannah's future is on the line. Hannah and Archer race through Los Angeles and into Josie's buried past, uncovering old enemies who would rather keep her gone for good.
The Matthias Ring
by Rebecca Forster
2011
Lauren Malin goes to Budapest looking for adventure and finds herself swept away by a charming stranger. When trouble follows him to California, she has to decide whether she is risking only her heart, or something far more dangerous.
Eyewitness
by Rebecca Forster
2013
A case tied to an Albanian blood feud forces Josie to choose between modern law and ancient vengeance. To protect the people she loves, she must step into a world where every witness can become a target.
Dark Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2014
When Hannah's life is at stake, Josie heads into the wilderness to face a predator more terrifying than the law. The case pushes her nerve, her loyalties, and her sense of justice to the breaking point.
Forgotten Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2014
A stranger slips Josie a clue during a tense hearing in Washington, sending her to Hawaii in search of Hannah. The trail leads to buried crimes, political ambition, and a truth with the power to upend everything she loves.
The Day Bailey Devlin Picked Up a Penny
by Rebecca Forster
2015
Bailey thinks she's finally on the right track until one small act of kindness changes everything. Picking up a stranded woman in the rain sends her luck, and love life, spinning in a new direction.
The Day Bailey Devlin's Horoscope Came True
by Rebecca Forster
2015
Bailey Devlin's horoscope promises that the man at her door will change her life, and it does. He is not the man she expected, which makes the romantic chaos that follows even harder to resist.
The Day Bailey Devlin's Ship Came in
by Rebecca Forster
2015
Bailey heads out to sea to figure out which man belongs in her future. What should be a romantic turning point becomes another funny, messy, and revealing test of her heart.
Severed Relations
by Rebecca Forster
2016
The murder of two children and their nanny in a wealthy home throws Finn O'Brien and Cori Anderson into a volatile investigation. In a case full of privilege, grief, and lies, nobody comes out untouched.
Foreign Relations
by Rebecca Forster
2017
When a foreign woman jumps to her death on a crowded freeway, the truth threatens more than one government. Finn and Cori keep digging, even as powerful people try to bury the case, and them with it.
Hannah's Diary
by Rebecca Forster
2017
This companion novella lets Hannah Sheraton tell more of her own story. Through diary entries, the teen at the center of the Witness books records fear, hope, and the fragile family she is trying to build with Josie and Archer.
Secret Relations
by Rebecca Forster
2018
Finn and Cori hunt a serial killer targeting undocumented young men in Los Angeles. When the case reaches into Cori's own family, the search becomes even more urgent and far more personal.
Lost Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2019
Josie's personal and professional lives collide when she fights to save a secret hostage aboard a foreign ship. The rescue could cost her everything, but walking away is not an option.
The Death of Me
by Rebecca Forster
2020
Sheriff Dove Connelly is reeling from the murder of his best friend while trying to make sense of trouble at home. As he follows the case, the lies around him grow stranger, darker, and far more dangerous than they first appeared.
Distant Relations
by Rebecca Forster
2022
A private plane explosion kills two people from Finn O'Brien's past and leaves too many questions behind. Chasing the truth sends him into a maze of business interests, old loyalties, and deadly family ties.
Intimate Relations
by Rebecca Forster
2022
A late-night disturbance pulls Finn O'Brien into an artists' colony and a brutal murder. As he digs deeper, art, science, money, and desire twist together in a case where the closest relationships are the most dangerous.
The 9th Witness
by Rebecca Forster
2024
At Christmas, Josie Bates is named executor of a dead woman's modest estate and expects a simple job. Instead she finds hidden secrets, a hostile tech mogul, and a fight that turns lethal fast.
Where should I start?
If you want legal thrillers first: Hostile Witness → Silent Witness → Privileged Witness → Expert Witness
If you prefer police procedurals: Severed Relations → Foreign Relations → Secret Relations → Intimate Relations
If you like standalone suspense: The Mentor → Keeping Counsel → Before Her Eyes
If you want something lighter: The Day Bailey Devlin's Horoscope Came True → The Day Bailey Devlin Picked Up a Penny → The Day Bailey Devlin's Ship Came in
Author bio
Rebecca Forster was born in Webster Groves, Missouri, and later grew up in Long Beach, California. She has spent much of her adult life in Southern California, and that blend of Midwestern roots and West Coast experience shows up in the way she writes about ambition, reinvention, and the pressure people put on themselves.
She did not come to books through a straight literary path. Before writing full time, she worked in marketing and advertising, promoted a luxury spa back when people still casually called it a gym, and even did business in China. She earned a B.A. at Loyola in Chicago and an MBA in Los Angeles, which may help explain why her fiction often feels both emotional and sharply organized.
Then a dare changed everything.
Forster has said she wrote her first novel on a crazy dare from friends, sold it, and discovered that storytelling was the work she actually wanted to do. What followed was a long career that moved from romance into legal suspense, crime fiction, and psychological thrillers, all with a strong interest in how ordinary lives get bent by pressure, grief, money, and the justice system.
She is also a hands-on researcher. She has completed the DEA and ATF Citizens Academies, spent time watching trials, landed by tail hook on the USS Nimitz, and traveled to Albania to research the blood feud history that shaped Eyewitness. She seems to like knowing how things really work before she asks readers to believe them.
Many readers first meet her through Josie Bates in Hostile Witness. That series mixes courtroom tension with family drama, romance, and questions about what justice should look like when the law falls short. Other readers come in through standalones like Keeping Counsel, The Mentor, and Before Her Eyes, or through the Finn O'Brien books that begin with Severed Relations. Even when the plots move fast, her attention usually stays on the emotional cost of every decision.
Teaching matters to her, too.
Over the years Forster has taught in university extension writing programs, including UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Long Beach, and she has worked with young writers as well. That part of her life fits the rest of the picture. She clearly likes story as a craft, not just as inspiration.
She is married to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, is the mother of two grown sons, and lives in Southern California. When she is away from the page, she has spoken about liking travel, tennis, and sewing. It all adds up to an author whose books know both the messiness of real life and the pull of a very good thriller.
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