Stephanie DeCarolis Books in Order

Stephanie DeCarolis writes domestic suspense novels about polished lives, hidden histories, and the damage a single lie can cause. Her stories tend to begin in familiar places, marriages, neighborhoods, college friendships, then pull back the curtain on what people would rather keep private.

Before publishing fiction, DeCarolis built a legal career. She graduated from Binghamton University in 2006 and earned her law degree from St. John’s University School of Law in 2009. Her work has included litigation and medical-malpractice defense, the kind of job that calls for patience, detail, and a close eye on competing versions of the truth.

Writing had been on her mind since childhood. A fifth-grade teacher once told her she could become an author, and the idea stayed with her through school, work, and the start of family life.

That early nudge eventually mattered.

After her daughters were born, DeCarolis stepped back from full-time law-firm work and began writing in the small stretches of time she could claim at home. Nap times, late nights, and the quiet hours around family routines became space for a project of her own. That manuscript became her debut, The Guilty Husband.

In that novel, tech CEO Vince Taylor becomes the obvious suspect when Layla, an intern with whom he had an affair, is found dead. The premise sets the pattern for much of DeCarolis’s work: a character has something to hide, the truth comes out at the worst possible moment, and the people closest to them may not be telling the whole story either.

Her second thriller, Deadly Little Lies, follows Manhattan attorney Juliana Daniels after she receives a message from Jenny Teller, a college friend who has been dead for years. It brings old friends and an old secret back into the present. In The Perfect Sister, Alex Walker heads to the Hamptons to find her missing older sister, Maddie, and finds herself in the orbit of the wealthy Blackwell family.

With The Wives of Hawthorne Lane, DeCarolis turns to an outwardly perfect upstate neighborhood preparing for its annual Halloween festival. Four women with private troubles become tied to a murder investigation. The book also draws on her early volunteer work as an advocate for people experiencing abuse, giving the suburban drama a heavier thread beneath its secrets and suspicion.

Her books are built for readers who like family tensions, unreliable appearances, and mysteries that move through several points of view. DeCarolis lives in Oceanside, New York, with her husband and two daughters. When she is away from the page, she has mentioned reading, baking, and spending time on the tennis court.