Josie Brown

Josie Brown is an American writer that hails from San Francisco, California, which also doubles up the setting for most of her novels. She is best known for the Housewife Assassin series of novels, the first of which is “The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook” that was published in 2011. With over a million copies of her romantic suspense novels sold to date, she is one of the most successful novelists in the genre.

The best place to start is The Housewife Assassin series, the earliest of Josie Brown's multi-book series: it opens with The Housewife Assassin's Handbook (2011) and runs to 27 books across 2011–2025, ending with The Housewife Assassin's Underwater Assets (2024). Josie Brown's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Josie Brown has 50 books catalogued in this guide, published between 2003 and 2025. 42 of them belong to 5 named series — the largest being The Housewife Assassin series with 27 books — and 8 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Josie Brown's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are True Hollywood Lies (2005–2015, 2 books), The Housewife Assassin (2011–2025, 27 books) and Totlandia (2012–2017, 8 books), plus 2 more.

This guide splits Josie Brown's 50 books into 5 named series and 8 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: The Housewife Assassin (27 books, 2011–2025); Totlandia (8 books, 2012–2017); Extracurricular (3 books, 2019); True Hollywood Lies (2 books, 2005–2015); Lucky O'Toole Collections / Misc (2 books, 2018).