C.S. O’Cinneide Books In Order

Publication Order of Candace Starr Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

CS O’Cinneide

C.S. O’Cinneide is an Edgar nominated author and a blogger on her site, She Kills Lit, where she features different women authors of noir and thriller. Her real name is Carole Kennedy but she writes under Irish name.

Her first novel, called “Petra’s Ghost”, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the year 2019. “Starr Sign” was nominated for the coveted Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

As she walked the 800 km pilgrimage in Spain known as the Camino de Santiago, there was a woman that got kidnapped and murdered. It served as the inspiration for “Petra’s Ghost”, which is a gothic mystery thriller set on the Camino.

She gets inspired to write with music. While she is unable to play it while she’s actually sitting down at the computer writing, each of her characters does have their own them song that she likes listening to before she begins. Candace Starr, her six foot three hitwoman really likes grooving out to “Bad to the Bone”.

CS lives in Guelph, Ontario with her Irish expat husband that remains her constant muse.

“Petra’s Ghost” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2019. One man’s pilgrimage becomes something out of his darkest nightmares once secrets arise and some ghosts begin haunting his path.

One woman has disappeared on the Camino de Santiago, which is the ancient five hundred mile pilgrimage which crosses through northern Spain. Daniel, who is an Irish expat, walks along the lonely trail carrying the ashes of Petra, his dead wife, along with that damning secret of how she truly died.

When he teams up to walk with Ginny, a vibrant California girl, she appears to be the perfect antidote for his grieving heart. However a nightmare figure starts stalking them, and Daniel’s mind begins to unravel from the horror of things that he just cannot explain.

CS uses the archaic rituals and settings of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in rural Spain in order to tell this very modern ghost story. Engagingly and brilliantly written, making readers not want the journey to ever end. With prose as clean as a bone, she tells an unsettingly elegant story. It is equally beautiful and terrifying.

“The Starr Sting Scale” is the first novel in the “Candace Starr” series and was released in the year 2020. A hard-drinking ex-assassin agrees to help catch this killer, even though the killer may just be her.

Candace Starr likes to think of herself as being retired since she got out of prison. That is until Kristina Corrigan, a society maven, attempts to hire her to permanently remove Tyler Brent, her daughter’s barnacle of a boyfriend, out of their lives. Only catch is that Tyler’s just seventeen. Even Candace typically draws the line at taking out a target that doesn’t shave yet.

However once Tyler ends up dead at a river gorge with his neck broken, people begin asking questions. Detective Chien-Shiung Malone, the ambitious cop that got assigned the case, has got more than just a few all her own to ask. Candace ain’t about to provide any answers, however. That is until Malone makes her this proposition that she just can’t refuse. Candace signs on to be Malone’s unofficial partner to locate whomever it was that murdered Tyler, despite the likelihood that she might’ve murdered the boy herself.

With cocky satire and scandalous wit, this book provides some full-throttle thrills as Malone and Starr race down the dangerous and dark road onward to the truth. Everybody along for the ride is going to be scrambling to call shotgun.

“Starr Sign” is the second novel in the “Candace Starr” series and was released in the year 2021. Candace goes hunting for her mom in the Detroit mob, however infiltrating her own crime family might just prove to be her most lethal assignment yet.

Candace Starr has fallen on hard times since she helped Detective Malone, her friend, with a murder case the previous year. These days, she trades upon her dark celebrity as an ex contract killer to keep her glass of Scotch whisky filled and the wolf from the door. However when Janet, her teen half-sister, arrives, she finds herself being responsible for more than merely her night to night bar tab.

Janet and Candace’s mercurial mom has up and disappeared as she was visiting her estranged family of Detroit mobsters, and Candace is forced to track the woman down in order to take the kid off of her hands. However the savage Scarpello family is hiding a whole lot more than just her mom’s whereabouts.
This one unearths the incredibly well-buried secrets of Candace’s mob family, and lays bare the roots of her own identity along the way.

“Eve’s Rib” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2022. After Eve tragically lost her young son in a tragic accident, she struggles the kid she’s got remaining, a teen daughter that just may be pure evil.

There’s a deep chasm which runs between the natural ebb and flow of the charismatic powers of the Ragman and female magic. No one knows about this better than Eve. Desperate just to have a child at all, she called on this clever conjurer almost twenty years prior. Abbey, her daughter, is the result.
After Abbey’s little brother dies in a fall, Eve starts fearing the worst about her daughter. Five years go by and she is still battling against her grief and guilt from what happened that day. Richard, her husband, does not understand it. He does not know the full truth about Abbey, and besides, the man has got his own secrets he’s looking to keep.

However when horrible things start happening to those that get in Abbey’s way, she has to overcome her own loss and pain in order to find the strength to deal with what she fears the most: a teen daughter she can’t control anymore and a past which could come back to haunt her in the most monstrous way possible.