Rachel Ekstrom Courage Books In Order

Publication Order of Golden Girls Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Rachel Ekstrom Courage is a bestselling author who has been featured in USA Today and the New York Times.

She is a bestselling author known for her Golden Girls Cozy Mystery series as well as Nothing Bad Happens Here, a young adult thriller.

Rachel is also the founder of Courage Literacy, which advocates for authors and books that are able to make the world a better, smarter, more interesting place. She is a literary agent who has represented USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Amazon best sellers. Her clients have been named IndieNext picks, Goodreads Choice Award Winners, and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections. They have also been finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, the Lambda Award, and the ITW Thriller Award.

Courage has led workshops, keynoted, and been on panels at The Loft’s Wordsmith Conference, the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop, Grub Street, Thrillerfest, SCBWI’s Winter Conference, Writer’s Digest, the University of Pittsburgh, Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, Chatham University, Seton Hill University, Jambalaya Writers Conference, the New England Crime Bake, the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop, the RWA, the New York Writers Workshop, the Unicorn Writers Conference, Digital Hollywood, PennWriters, and more.

Rachel also co-founded Littsburgh, which is a community that celebrates Western Pennsylvania’s literature. She occasionally makes appearances on CBS Pittsburgh where she talks about books and literary events. She started her publishing career in NYC where she started as a bookseller before becoming a book publicist, promoting thriller and mystery stories for Minotaur in the Flatiron building.

After that, Rachel took on a directorial role for the Dutton and Gotham imprints for Penguin. She then worked on blockbuster fiction and nonfiction for St. Martin’s Press, which allowed her to watch a taping of Oprah live from the green room. She also worked as a fifth-grade teacher and was a bookseller at a children’s bookstore located inside of FAO Schwartz.

Rachel loves to work on writing her books and when she is not busy doing that she can usually be found either playing around with her dog or dutifully restocking her Little Free Library. She is married to Nick Courage, a children’s book author. She resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her family.

Murder by Cheesecake is the first book in the Golden Girls Cozy Mystery series by Rachel Ekstrom Courage. If you have been keeping your eyes open for a great new light mystery to read, whether for the summer or any time of year, this fun debut might be the right fit for you. Know and love the classic show Golden Girls? Then you’re certain to love this book too.

Dorothy went on a date and she has to admit that they were positively obnoxious. But when her date is discovered dead in the hotel freezer, it ruins a cheesecake and threatens to ruin the St.Olaf-themed wedding that Rose plans on hosting.

Now things are starting to get hot, and that’s not just from Blanche having another one of her flashes. Rose’s cousin is going to elope in Miami and Rose is going to be the host. But she also has to deal with the snobbish nature of the groom’s family and balance it against the normal St. Olaf guidelines for wedding week. If she can’t, her hometown might not ever accept her cousin again.

The stakes are high and Dorothy starts to realize that she really needs a date that she can exchange wisecracks about the wedding with. She turns to a VHS dating service for a potential candidate and meets up with him in real life. She expects that he’s a great conversationalist but ends up finding that in real life, he’s a jerk.

Now it appears that she’s just going to have to go solo since her date is dead and just enjoy hanging out with her friends. All the Girls help out and Rose is over the moon that her kickoff event (with a tea and fish theme) has gone off without a hitch.

But when Dorothy’s date is discovered dead with his face in a cheesecake, every guest is a potential suspect. A marriage is at risk, and so the four best friends must team up to find a killer so that they can get the couple down the aisle. Can they find a way to let love win out? Will they find the killer? Read Murder by Cheesecake to find out.

Death on the Lanai is the second book in the Golden Girls Cozy Mystery series by Rachel Ekstrom Courage. If you thought that the first mystery was cute and a lot of fun, check out the sequel to see more mystery adventures featuring everyone’s favorite foursome of friends.

The Girls accept an invitation to a party on a remote island and when they do, they end up discovering that murder might get in the way of a wonderful evening. The invitation didn’t have a lot of details and mysteriously promised to celebrate the greatest artist of the century and is paired with a jewel-encrusted brooch. Intrigued, the girls agree to go, since another weekend night playing gin rummy just didn’t compare. When else would they have the chance to have such a night again?

Blanche Devereaux has been with so many enchanting men– she can’t be expected to remember every single one of them. However, when the Girls get off from the party’s ferry at the Biscayne Bay island and meet their host, she starts to find tons of memories coming back.

She was a Radio City Rockette, only in her twenties, and he was a poor artist. Fate pulled them apart but now Declan is the famous artist who goes by ‘El Toro’, and he tells Blanche that she has always been his muse.

Blanche finds that she is a main inspiration for his art and was a big part of his return to the top of the art world. Now she is happy to have been an inspiring figure to him. But when she looks around at the party, she starts to wonder how welcome they really are on this island.

A storm kills the power on the island, and Blanche thinks that everyone looks better by the light of the candles anyway. However, the next morning dawns with a dead Declan. Everyone is looking at her. Can she prove she’s not the killer by finding the person responsible? Read Death on the Lanai by Rachel Ekstrom Courage to find out.