South Beach Cartel Books in Order

The South Beach Cartel series brings together women from different corners of Nisa Santiago's crime-fiction world and places them in Miami, where old scores are waiting to be settled. The first book centers on Cartier Timmons, Citi Byrne, and Apple, each carrying her own history, losses, and reasons to want power.

Miami gives them a new battlefield.

In South Beach Cartel - Part 1, Cartier is looking for revenge after violence against her family. Citi is in a struggle with her mother, Ashanti, and has been pushed away from the position she wants in the family. Apple is restless in Colombia and wants to find her daughter, Peaches. When the three women meet in Miami, they recognize that working together may give them a better chance against the people standing in their way.

The series is a crossover story, so it draws on characters and relationships established in the Cartier Cartel and Baddest Chick books. That gives it an ensemble feel. Cartier has the instincts of a survivor who has seen crews come apart. Citi is trying to claim authority in a world that does not take her seriously. Apple brings her own drive, grudges, and unfinished family problems.

Their partnership is useful, but it is never easy. Each woman has a separate goal, and each has learned to protect herself first. The tension comes from whether they can keep a shared plan together when money, family, romance, and revenge start pulling them in different directions.

Nobody comes to South Beach empty-handed.

In South Beach Cartel - Part 2, Apple is still angry over money Citi took from her, Cartier is trying to stay out of the life while waiting for Head, and Citi has built a stronger team in New York. Circumstances bring them back toward Miami, where they work to revive the South Beach Cartel and finish what earlier conflicts left unresolved.

The tone is fast, confrontational, and packed with shifting alliances. It is about women taking charge in a criminal world, but it also keeps the focus on the personal debts that make leadership difficult. New readers can begin with South Beach Cartel - Part 1, though readers of the earlier Cartier and Apple and Kola books will have more context for the characters' history. Read the two South Beach books in order for the clearest path through its rivalries and reunions.