Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis Books in Order

During Mardi Gras, the King of Carnival is shot by someone dressed as Dolly Parton. Rookie cop Skip Langdon, born to the city's upper crust but uneasy in it, has to untangle family secrets, public scandal, and murder.

A killer borrowing the Axeman legend is hunting victims inside New Orleans recovery groups. Skip Langdon joins the task force and has to move through meetings where anonymity is supposed to keep people safe.

On the eve of JazzFest, beloved producer Ham Brocato is found stabbed in his own kitchen. Skip Langdon suspects his missing teenage sister may be either the killer or the next victim.

A young man dies after posting online about seeing his father murdered, and Skip Langdon is left sorting through rumors, family secrets, and one of the earliest virtual communities. The internet is new, but human cruelty is not.

A prominent restaurateur is murdered, and much of his family vanishes in the aftermath, including his daughter and baby grandchild. Skip Langdon has to solve the killing while finding the missing heirs before the case gets worse.

On leave from the force and struggling to steady herself, Skip Langdon is drawn toward a preacher with a saintly public image and something far darker underneath. The deeper she looks, the more dangerous he becomes.

After a respected New Orleans police chief is gunned down, a vigilante group called the Jury starts handing out its own justice. Skip Langdon sees the hand of her old nemesis behind the chaos and goes after him.

Trying to track down the doctor who saddled her with a terrible birth name, Talba Wallis stumbles into a missing-person case and a murder. Skip Langdon and Talba circle the same corruption scandal from very different angles.

Talba Wallis takes a job with private investigator Eddie Valentino and gets more than office work. A dangerous case involving a vulnerable girl pulls Talba into real detective work while stirring painful questions about her own family.

Talba Wallis refuses to believe her friend Babalu died by suicide or overdose. Her search leads into old family secrets, small-town racism, and the kind of buried history that can still get people killed.

Skip Langdon's old enemy, Errol Jacomine, is back in a new and even slipperier form. While she investigates cemetery thefts, the case turns personal as Jacomine starts aiming at her friends, her lover, and Skip herself.

A glamorous arts patron is found shot dead in her pool, and Talba Wallis's half sister is the leading suspect. Talba and Eddie dive into literary egos, old lies, and a victim who was easier to hate than to understand.

When Eddie Valentino's lawyer daughter is framed on a drug charge, Talba Wallis goes after the judge she blames. Her undercover job inside his troubled household uncovers corruption, family poison, and then murder.

This sampler gathers one Skip Langdon novel, one Rebecca Schwartz novel, one Talba Wallis novel, and the short story Private Chick. It is a lively cross-section of Julie Smith's San Francisco and New Orleans mysteries.

A serial killer is using short-term rentals to stage murders, and a teenage runaway may be the only witness who got away. Skip Langdon races through New Orleans to find the girl before the killer does.

In the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, Skip Langdon is told to keep the peace in a city with no phones, no power, and almost no rules. When she stumbles onto a possible homicide and rumors of police killings, survival and justice collide.