Wanda M Morris Books in Order

Wanda M. Morris was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the youngest of seven children. Money and resources were tight, but books offered an escape, and trips to the local library became a lasting part of her childhood. She has recalled the pleasure of walking there on her own, browsing the stacks, and asking a librarian to help her choose the next book.

Before publishing fiction, Morris built a career as a corporate attorney, working in legal departments for Fortune 100 companies. That experience gave her a close look at workplace hierarchy, the compromises people make to get ahead, and the ways women and people of color can be overlooked inside powerful institutions.

Those pressures later became useful raw material for her novels.

Her road to publication took time. Morris wrote an early draft, set it aside, then returned to it after a health scare made her reconsider the things she wanted to do. She kept learning through workshops, including the Yale Writers Workshop and Robert McKee's Story Seminar, and through a community of fellow crime writers. More than a decade and many rejections later, that manuscript evolved into All Her Little Secrets.

Published in 2021, All Her Little Secrets introduces Ellice Littlejohn, an Atlanta corporate attorney whose life starts to unravel after she finds her boss and lover dead. The book uses the pressure of a legal thriller to explore office politics, race, class, family secrets, and the cost of keeping quiet. It won the Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel, but its pull is also simple: Ellice has very little room to make a mistake.

Morris followed it with Anywhere You Run, a historical suspense novel set against the civil rights movement in 1964. The story centers on sisters Violet and Marigold Richards, whose separate escapes from Mississippi put them in danger from people determined to hide a damaging truth. The novel moves between their points of view, with a road-story pace and a strong focus on family loyalty. It won both the Lefty and Anthony awards for historical mystery.

In What You Leave Behind, Morris returned to Georgia for a legal mystery about inherited land, grief, and a hometown under pressure. Attorney Deena Wood comes back to Brunswick after a string of personal losses, then gets drawn into the disappearance of a landowner whose family property is suddenly up for sale. The book looks at heirs' property and land theft without losing sight of Deena's own difficult homecoming.

Her shorter work, Small Things, takes a tighter, darker route. It follows a jewelry maker whose private refuge is threatened by her abusive husband, forcing her to think carefully about what it will take to protect herself.

Across Morris's work, the stakes are personal as well as legal. Her characters often face institutions with more money, influence, or history behind them, while carrying private losses and complicated family ties of their own. She writes about the past as something that keeps showing up in the present, whether in a corporate office, a small town, or a family's land.

Morris lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children. She has remained active in the crime-writing community, including Crime Writers of Color, and has served on the board of International Thriller Writers.