Alexandra Destephano Books In Order

Publication Order of Alexandra Destephano Books

The Alexandra Destephano series is a set of thriller mysteries by Judith Lucci, a bestselling author who started out as a nurse before she decided to pursue a writing career.
The author was born in Richmond, Virginia and as a teenager, she went to the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University from where she got both her Ph.D. and graduate degree. Once she graduated, she went on to work as a clinical nurse for more than a quarter of a century.
Later in her career, she would find a job at James Madison University as a Nursing professor and researcher. During her long career, she has written articles, books, and tons of research papers in nursing and general health.

Since she had written a lot of academic stuff over the years, it was quite difficult for her to shift to writing fiction thrillers and mysteries when she first started. However, she persevered and published “Chaos,” the first novel of the “Alexandra Destephano” series in 2014.
In her novels, she showcases her knowledge of the world of doctors and hospitals to make suspenseful stories that have become bestsellers.

It was while Judith Lucci was working in New Orleans that she began working on “Chaos at Crescent City” her debut novel. It is thus not surprising that she set the novel in the city that she had come to consider home.

For the most part, Lucci never struggled with research as she likes to write medical thrillers. Moreover, this is a field in which she has a lot of expertise.
Given that she loves to control all aspects of her creative work, she currently publishes all her novels via Createspace.
The author currently makes her home in the Shenandoah Valley and when she is not writing her novels, she can be found working on multimedia arts and silk painting her favorite hobbies. She is also very active in the writing community and is a member of the Sisters in Crime, The Shenandoah Valley Writers, and the Virginia Writers Club.

The “Alexandra Destephano” series of novels tell the story of Alex Destephano. She is a former nurse that now works as a legal advisor for the CCMC. The novels are set at the Crescent City Medical Center in New Orleans.

Given that medical communities and hospitals tend to be highly regulated, it makes sense to make the lead a lawyer, given the constant threat of litigation. With medicine in recent times becoming a huge business, any health institution would be stupid not to have a legal team in place.
It is usually the responsibility of legal counsel to offer advice that prepares the administration and staff for fallout or minimizes the institution’s risk. This is Destephano’s job description in the series.

However, she is a very different type of lawyer as she intimately gets involved in trying to resolve the many problems including some not in her job description.

Destephano works alongside an interesting cast of characters that include her boss Don Montgomery, Bette Farve the head nurse, the head of surgery Robert Bonnet who happens to be her ex-husband., and the overweight and cranky cop Jack Francoise.

At the beginning of the series, the lead is in a romantic relationship with Mitch Landry an architect who is nothing like what it seemed he was.

“Chaos at Crescent City Medical Center” the first novel of the “Alexandra Destephano” series opens to the lead having finalized his divorce even though the pain still lingers. She had recently met an architect named Mitch Landry but is not so sure if he is what he needs.

Alexandra had worked hard to become a nurse and then attended law school and graduated to become a lawyer. With so much experience, she had finally been appointed in-house counsel at Crescent City Medical, which was a job that she had grown to like a lot.

But her job meant that she had to see her ex-husband every day as he works as a surgeon at Crescent.

Her date night does not go as planned as just as she is about to leave she is informed that the wife of the governor had been discovered covered in blood and unconscious.

It seems there are too many secrets in the Big Easy and Alex may be in over her head in a world of voodoo, underworld, and politics. She will come to learn that there are powerful forces she never imagined existed in her world.

“The Impostor,” the second novel of the “Alexandra Destephano” series opens to the lead still working at New Orleans’ Crescent City Medical Center.
Alexandra’s boyfriend Mitch Landry died in a tragic accident and she is still coming to terms with the loss. She is also trying to deal with her feelings for Dr. Robert Bonnet her ex-husband while also having to deal with Don Montgomery the horrible CEO of the hospital.
Meanwhile, Lester Whitsett the questionable and quirky administrator of the psych ward has proven himself incompetent with his staffing decisions and this complicates Alex’s work.

On the other hand, Jack Francoise the police chief has his hands full working on a case of two tourists savagely murdered and left with their wrists slit and their throats torn out. Things get even more interesting when a psychiatric nurse named Angela Richelieu is brutally attacked at the parking lot of the hospital.

When two politicians are later found at the very spot where the police had found the tourists, Alex decides to get involved. She works alongside the Chief of Psychiatry Dr. Desmonde and the police chief Jack to try to find out if some of the patients in the psych ward could be responsible for the murder.

“Viral Intent” the third novel of the “Alexandra Destephano” series is still set in New Orleans where medical professionals are dealing with a deadly virus.
The president and several prominent politicians are in town for a huge political convention. It is during this time that a strange killer virus starts wreaking havoc in the emergency room of the Crescent City hospital.

The hospital staff is in fear while the physicians are befuddled even as the CDC is sending in reinforcement.
But death strikes near the president as a Secret Service agent is among the first to die from the virus leading many to believe that this could be a terrorist attack. Things get even worse when a well-known politician visits the French Quarter and is murdered.
Jack and Alex need to learn to work with the Secret Service, the FBI, the CDC, and some of their enemies to save the Big Easy from disaster.