Laura Durham Books In Order

Better Off Wed

The murder of a particularly difficult mother of the bride has cast a pall on wedding planner Annabelle Archer’s latest triumph and suspicion falls heavily on her sometime business partner and friend Richard Gerard. Annabelle knows that even her trusted wedding emergency kit won’t be able to salvage their careers if she and Richard can’t find the real culprit.

It’s no easy task since the slain matron was perhaps the most hated socialite in D.C., but Annabelle navigates through the city’s colorful wedding industry and powerful social scene on the deadly trail of a killer. Always the bridal consultant and never the bride, she’s seen her fair share of bouquet tosses. But there’s no telling what surprises a ruthless killer will throw her way if she gets too close.

For Better Or Hearse

Iced!

Wedding planner extraordinaire Annabelle Archer is used to dealing with difficult personalities neurotic brides, despotic mothers, and prima donna bridesmaids. However, being chased from a swank hotel kitchen at knifepoint by a shrieking Chef Henri takes the cake. Soon after, Washington’s most thoroughly despised culinary artist is discovered dead, impaled on an ice sculpture a crime which surprises no one, since revenge is, after all, a dish best served cold.

Unfortunately, the police think the hotel’s sometimes temperamental but always stylish catering exec and Annabelle’s good friend Georgia Rhodes did Henri in so the planner and her posse set out to put the real murderer on ice. But when the corpse of a rival culinarian turns up in a walk in freezer and more nasty chef deaths quickly follow the suspect list suddenly shrinks…
as do Annabelle and her cronies’ chances for survival, if they get caught poking around in a killer’s kitchen.

To Love and To Perish

Everyone knows that planning a wedding can be murder, but when top D.C. wedding planner Annabelle Archer finds an old nemesis hanging by a bridal veil in a hotel ballroom, she’s shocked to discover that wedding planners can be murdered as well! Carolyn McCrabe was D.C.’s grande dame of wedding planning and made more than a few enemies in her day, but because many of the hotel staff saw Carolyn and Annabelle arguing only minutes before the aging diva’s demise, Annabelle is immediately pegged as the prime suspect. Determined to shake the suspicion from their beloved colleague and friend, Annabelle’s flirtatious assistant Kate, flamboyant caterer Richard, and the always fabulous hairdresser Fern team up to investigate other suspects. But when another wedding planner is found murdered strangled by a curling iron cord at an industry party Annabelle realizes that she might not only be a suspect, but a crazed killer’s next victim as well.