Susan Isaacs Books In Order

Judith Singer Books In Publication Order

  1. Compromising Positions (1978)
  2. Long Time No See (2001)
  3. Compliments of a Friend (2013)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Close Relations (1980)
  2. Almost Paradise (1984)
  3. Shining Through (1988)
  4. Magic Hour (1991)
  5. After All These Years (1993)
  6. Lily White (1996)
  7. Red, White and Blue (1998)
  8. Any Place I Hang My Hat (2004)
  9. Past Perfect (2007)
  10. As Husbands Go (2010)
  11. Goldberg Variations (2012)
  12. Takes One to Know One (2019)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. A Hint of Strangeness (2015)

World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories Books In Publication Order

  1. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 1 (2000)
  2. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 2 (2000)
  3. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3 (2002)
  4. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4 (2003)
  5. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 5 (2004)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Intellectual Growth in Young Children (1972)
  2. Brave Dames and Wimpettes (1999)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Opening Shots: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories (2000)
  2. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4 (2003)

Judith Singer Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Susan Isaacs Books Overview

Compromising Positions

The brilliant debut that’s sold over a million copies now in trade paperback for the first time! Rediscover the ‘wonderfully funny, deliciously mean’ New York Times novel that launched Susan Isaacs’ New York Times bestselling career and introduced Long Island housewife Judith Singer, her most beloved character. Judith is smart and funny, with a gorgeous husband and wonderful kids. She’s also incredibly bored, having put her Ph.D. plans on hold for a life of housekeeping and nose wiping. So when a local dentist is found murdered, and the police suspect her neighbor, that’s all the excuse Judith needs to jump in and begin her own investigation. It seems the deceased periodontist was quite the Don Juan of the PTA, with a habit of taking incriminating photos. In between school runs and making dinner, Judith is drawn deeper into the case and closer to the sexy police detective in charge.

Long Time No See

‘On an unseasonably warm Halloween night, while I was reading a snappy treatise on Wendell Wilkie’s support of FDR’s war policies and handing out the occasional bag of M&M’s to a trick or treater, the fair haired and dimpled Courtney Logan, age thirty four, magna laude graduate of Princeton, erstwhile investment banker at Patton Giddings, wife of darkly handsome Greg, mother of five year old Travis, canner of spiced pears, collector of vintage petit point, and ex president of citizens for a more beautiful Shorehaven vanished from long island into thin air.’Judith Singer is back! After twenty years Susan Isaacs brings us back the hero*ine from Compromising Positions, her first and most beloved novel and returns to a great suspense story set in suburbia. Judith’s life has changed. She now has her doctorate in history. Her workaday hours are spent at St. Elizabeth’s College, mostly squandered in history department shriek fests. She is also a widow. Her husband Bob died one half day after triumphantly finishing the New York City Marathon in four hours and twelve minutes. And although twenty years have passed without seeing him, she still cannot get her former lover, Nelson Sharpe of the Nassau County Police Department, out of her system. With Courtney Logan’s dramatic disappearance, all eyes turn instantly toward her husband, Greg Logan, son of Long Island mobster Philip ‘Fancy Phil’ Lowenstein. But since there is no body, there is no arrest. Then, in the less than merry month of May, Judith comes home from work, turns on the radio, and hears the Logans’ pool man telling a reporter that he opened the pool and found…
a raccoon? Not quite. ‘I see, you know, it’s a body! Jeez. Believe it or not, I’m still shaking.’ The woman in the pool turns out to be Courtney, and now it’s officially homicide. And Judith comes alive! She offers her services to the police’s chief suspect, Greg Logan, but he shows her the door, thinking her just another neighborhood nut. But his father isn’t so sure: Fancy Phil may have other plans for her. Long Time No See is Susan Isaacs at her wickedly observant best. With razor sharp wit and an irresistible mystery, she brings us back in touch with an engaging, endearing and irreverent hero*ine we haven’t seen in far too long.

Close Relations

It was a situation from which half hour television comedies are made. ‘Marcia! In tonight’s episode, Marcia Green’s warm and winning and wise and wonderful Jewish family reminds her that she is thirty five, divorced, and childless.’ That’s Marcia on her Close Relations. True, she’s one of the best speechwriters around in the tough world of New York’s smoke filled rooms, but her family wants something else for her. No, not that Irish person she’s living with. Another doctor, or at least a dentist. But Marcia claims she’s happy, getting plenty of the two things that exhilarate her most: sex and politics. She’s not looking for commitment, and certainly not looking for a wealthy Harvard educated man about town who is every mother’s dream. Yet as wise mothers everywhere are fond of saying: you never know.

Almost Paradise

Fate can be benevolent. Or incredibly cruel. That’s what Nick and Jane will learn…
Just take their relationship. Nick is stunningly handsome, the blue eyed scion of a blue blood New York family. Rich, talented, confident, he will become the world’s most famous movie star. Jane is delightfully funny, a dark skinned, dark haired, half Jewish, half German daughter of the Midwest. Smart, gifted, loving, she will become famous in her own right as well…
From the time they first meet in their Social and Intellectual History of the U.S. course at Brown University, it’s love at first sight. Coming together from two very different worlds, they will cast off adversity and disapproval to forge a life filled with work, love, and children. But fame and success come at a high price their marriage. Just when it seems the promise of their love might be renewed, an accident leaves Jane hovering between life and death. Now, it’s not only their union that might not survive, but Jane too…
Almost Paradise is vintage Susan Isaacs, a witty, poignant, and engrossing tale of a man, a woman, and a passion wondrous, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.

Shining Through

It’s 1940 and Linda Voss, legal secretary extraordinaire, has a secret. She’s head over heels in love with her boss, John Berringer, the pride of the Ivy League. Not that she even has a chance he’d never take a second look at a German Jewish girl from Queens who spends her time taking care of her faded beauty of a mother and following bulletins on the war in Europe. For Linda, though, the war will soon become all too real. Engulfing her nation and her life, it will offer opportunities she’s never dreamed of. A chance to win the man she wants…
a chance to find the love she deserves. Made into the movie of the same name starring Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, and Liam Neeson, Shining Through is a novel of honor, sacrifice, passion, and humor. This is vintage Susan Isaacs, a tale of a spirited woman who wisecracks her way into heroism and history and into your heart.

Magic Hour

Movie producer Sy Spencer one of the premier summer residents of the Hamptons, Long Island’s oh so fashionable beach resort for everyone who is anyone has hosted his last power clambake, thanks to whoever shot him dead beside his oceanfront pool. Heading the investigation is Hamptons native Steve Brady. His prime suspect is Sy’s ex wife Bonnie, a strangely appealing and energetic woman both in and out of bed. As the case against Bonnie builds, so does Brady’s obsession with her. Before long, he’s laying the case and his career on the line for her, ignoring all the rules, all the evidence, and all common sense.

After All These Years

The day after her lavish wedding anniversary bash, Rosie Meyers gets a big surprise: her nouveau riche husband, Richie, is leaving her for a sultry, sophisticated, size six MBA. So, when he’s found murdered in their exquisitely appointed kitchen, no one is surprised to find Rosie’s prints all over the weapon. The suburban English teacher is the prime suspect the police’s only suspect. And she knows she’ll spend the rest of her life in the prison library unless she can unmask the real killer. Going into Manhattan on the lam, Rosie learns more about Richie than she ever wanted to know. And more about herself than she ever dreamed possible.

Lily White

Critically acclaimed NY Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs has crafted her most dazzling novel of manners and morality. Lily White is a brilliant story of con artists and true lovers, of treachery and devotion and of one brave lawyer’s triumphant fight for justice. Lee White is a criminal defense lawyer practicing on Long Island. Into her life drifts Norman Torkelson, a career con man charged with strangling to death his latest mark. At first the case seems routine, the evidence overwhelming. Norman manly, magnetic, and morally reprehensible is a man who crisscrosses America working his cruel marriage scam: love ’em, liquidate their assets, leave ’em. Clearly, he murdered Bobette Frisch, his latest patsy. But just as Lee is resigning herself to the inevitable ”Guilty!” verdict, she begins to have doubts. What, after all, was Norman’s motive for killing? Why not do what he had done for the last twenty years: run, leaving behind a broke and brokenhearted victim? Lee starts to wonder if her client is not merely not guilty, but covering for the real killer and, in doing so, performing the first selfless act of his life.

Red, White and Blue

Compromising Positions to Lily White seven critically acclaimed novels, seven New York Times bestsellers. Now, with her eighth novel, Susan Isaacs has written her finest work yet. Red, White and Bluetells the story of two ordinary Americans who find it within themselves to become extraordinary heroes. Charlie Blair of Wyoming and Lauren Miller of New York start out as strangers. They are drawn together by an appalling hate crime and by their mutual passion for justice. Yet they share more than a sense of fair play. They are not simply kindred spirits but actual kin, descendants of immigrants who met on a boat on their way to America, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Special Agent Blair of the FBI has the numbing job of a bureaucrat and the soul of a cowboy. A wry Westerner from his Stetson to his boots, he also happens to be the great great grandson of…
Dora Blaustein? Dora what? True, although he is unaware of that particular ancestor. A nearly burned out case at thirty four, he is about to walk away from the safe world of paper pushing to risk his life in Wyoming, infiltrating an armed, white supremacist, viciously anti Semitic group called Wrath. Wyoming born and bred, Charlie seems the perfect choice for this undercover operation, because who in Wrath could question this whiter than white man, so clearly one of their own? Also in Jackson Hole is Charlie’s apparent opposite. Gen X Lauren Miller is articulate, ironic and unwaveringly liberal. A journalist from Long Island, she has been hired by the Jewish News to investigate a bombing that Wrath is suspected to be behind. Lauren’s job is to know who, what, where and when, of course. But most of all, she is compelled to discover why. Why are all these people who’ve never met a Jew in their lives obsessed with Jews and why do they want them dead? Just who is it who gets to define who is an American? With narrative grace, insight and her trademark exuberant wit, Isaacs not only chronicles Lauren’s and Charlie’s investigations, but explores their American heritage as well: How did their forebears how did all of our forebears get from there to here? And what can this mountain man and this suburban woman possibly share except a few random genes? Intelligent, exhilarating and intensely moving, Red, White and Blue is a novel about what makes Americans American.

Any Place I Hang My Hat

Amy was barely born with a spoon in her mouth let alone a silver one. Her mother abandoned her before her first birthday and her father, a small time crook, was in jail more time than he was out. Raised by her flaky and slightly felonious grandmother, Amy worked hard and managed to get scholarships to boarding school, then Harvard, then the Columbia School of Journalism. But now a few years into her stint as a reporter for a prestigious magazine she doesn’t know who she is or how to connect with the world. Seeking answers, she sets out to find the mother she never knew…
and maybe a place to belong.

Past Perfect

In Past Perfect, Susan Isaacs gives us one of her most glorious characters ever: bright, buoyant, and borderline luscious Katie Schottland. Katie seems to have the ideal life: a great husband, a precocious and winning ten year old son, and a dream job writer for the long running TV series Spy Guys. But all is not as splendid as it should be because writing about the espionage business isn’t nearly as satisfying as working in it. Fifteen years earlier, Katie was in the CIA. She loved her job to say nothing of her boss, the mysterious Benton Mattingly. Yet just as she was sensing she was in line for a promotion, she was fired escorted off the premises by two extremely hulking security types. Why? No one would tell her: when you’re expelled from the Agency, warm friends immediately become icy ex colleagues who won’t risk their security clearances by talking to you. Until that day, Katie was where she wanted to be. Coming from a family of Manhattan superachievers, she too had a job she not only adored but a job that made her, in the family tradition, a Someone. Fifteen years later, Katie is still stuck on her firing. Was she set up? Or did she make some terrible mistake that cost lives? She believes that if she could discover why they threw her out, she might be at peace. On the day she’s rushing to get her son off to summer camp, Katie gets a surprise call from former Agency colleague Lisa Golding. ‘A matter of national importance,’ says Lisa, who promises to reveal the truth about the firing if Katie will help her. Lisa was never very good at truth telling, though she swears she’s changed her ways. Katie agrees to speak with her, but before she can, Lisa vanishes. Maturity and common sense should keep Katie in the bright, normal world of her present life, away from the dark intrigues of the past. But she needs to know. As she takes just a few steps to find out, one ex spy who might have the answers dies under suspicious circumstances. Another former agent is murdered. Could it be there’s a list? If so, is Katie now on it? And who will be the next to go?

As Husbands Go

Now in mass market from bestselling author and master of the genre O, The Oprah Magazine, a fast and furious ride through wanton greed, fragile relationships, and love worth fighting for Publishers Weekly, starred review. Susan Isaacs, a master of witty commercial fiction with an undercurrent of truth USA TODAY brilliantly turns the conventions of the mystery on end as Susie Gersten, suburban mom, floral designer, and fashion plate, searches not so much for answers to her husband’s death as for answers to her own life in this rollicking caper Good Housekeeping. Call her superficial, but Susie B. Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten assumed her marriage was great and why not? Jonah Gersten, M.D., a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, clearly adored her. He was handsome, successful, and a doting dad to their four year old triplets Dashiell, Evan, and Mason. But when Jonah is found in the Upper East Side apartment of second rate escort Dorinda Dillon, Susie is overwhelmed with questions left unanswered. None of it makes sense to Susie not a sexual liaison with someone like Dorinda, not the better not to discuss it response from Jonah s partners. With help from her tough talking, high style Grandma Ethel who flies in from Miami, she takes on her snooty in laws, her husband s partners, and the NYPD as she tries to prove that her wonderful life with Jonah was no lie.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 1

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 2

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 5

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

Opening Shots: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories

‘Opening Shots’ is a collection of incredible short fiction stories that began the published careers of 19 now prominent mystery and crime writers. Their aptitude for short fiction and the delight they take in writing it are unmistakably evident in this anthology.

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