Deborah Goodrich Royce Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Deborah Goodrich Royce
Deborah Goodrich was born May 11, 1958 in Detroit, Michigan. She grew up in Warren, Michigan. She graduated summa cum laude from Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, in the year 1980, earning her bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages with a minor in dance.

She is a former actress, story editor, and writer. She is best known for her roles in “Remote Control”, “April Fool’s Day”, and “Just One of the Guys”.

She started acting in 1980, with the movie “Those Lips, Those Eyes”. Thereafter, she acted in several roles in film and on television series like “All My Children” and “St. Elsewhere”. She quit acting in 1992 in order to dedicate herself to her work as a story editor with Miramax.

She was married to Pliny Porter and has two daughters, Tess and Alexandra, before they divorced. She remarried to Charles Royce.

“Finding Mrs. Ford” was named one of the top ten summer reads of 2019 by Good Morning America, one of the five must-read summer mysteries for 2019 by forbes.com, and one of the top fifty summer books of 2019 by Book Riot.

“Finding Mrs. Ford” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2019. One sunny summer morning by the sea in New England, Susan Ford’s cocoon of privilege gets threatened when this Iraqi man from her distant past boards a plane in Baghdad in order to come and find her.

Mrs. Ford leads a privileged life. From her Blenheim spaniels to the cottage on the coast of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, she carefully curates her own world. House in place, hair in place, life in place, Susan Ford keeps everything in control.

Early this one morning during the summer of 2014, her past pays a call to collect from her. The FBI shows up to question her about this man from Iraq (a Chaldean Christian from Mosul) where ISIS has recently seized control. Sammy Fakhouri, so they’re saying, is his name and they have taken him into custody, was picked up on the way to her house.

Back during the summer of 1979, out on the outskirts of a Detroit on the decline, college coed Susan meets the reckless and charismatic Annie. They are this unlikely pair of friends however they both see something in the other, something that they would like to possess. Studious Susan is a moth to the flame that is Annie. But it’s dazzling Annie that senses Susan is going to be the one that makes it out of Detroit.

Together, these girls navigate through the minefields of the down-market disco that they work their summer jobs. It is a world that is filled with pretty girls and powerful men, some of whom, like Sammy Fakhouri, just happen to be Iraqi Chaldeans.

What exactly happened back then when Annie and Susan met during the summer of 79? Why would Sammy be looking for her all these years later? And would Mrs. Ford be lying about it?

“Ruby Falls” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2021. This is a nail-biting story of one fragile young actress, the new husband that she hardly knows, and her growing suspicion that the secrets he is harboring might just eclipse her own.

This brilliantly sunny day in July, Ruby is just six years old when she’s abandoned by her dad in the suffocating dark of this Tennessee cave. Twenty years later, Ruby is transformed into Eleanor Russell (a soap opera star), and is fired under rather dubious circumstances. Fleeing off to Europe, she marries this glamorous stranger called Orlando Montague and continues keep her past hidden closely.

Orlando and Eleanor start afresh back in LA together. Setting up a house in this storybook cottage located in the Hollywood Hills, she gets cast in a dream role: the lead in a Rebecca remake. While she immerses herself in that spooky gothic story, Orlando’s personality begins changing, ghosts from her past re-emerge, and Eleanor fears that she’s not the only person holding onto a secret in her marriage.

In a twisty and thrilling homage to Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”, the tale ricochets through the streets of LA, a dangerous marriage to an exotic stranger, and the mind of one young woman whose own past might not release her.

“Ruby Falls” will sweep you up into Eleanor’s life. Secrets abound in this bang of a novel, a haunting tale sure to give you chills. It’s a stunner with some serious Gothic vibes to it. Spine tingling, imaginative, unique, and just the right sort of eerie, this novel is what readers wants their psychological thrillers to be. With whip-smart language and fun twists, Deborah leads her readers down a pretty familiar path, until she doesn’t.

Lyrical and filled with page turning suspense, readers gulped down every word and enjoyed each and every bite. This is the type of novel that grabs you right from the first page and won’t let you go until the very end.

“Reef Road” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2023. This severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, it makes the lives of two women (a panicked wife whose husband vanished with her kids and a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mom’s best friend) collide while the world shutters during the pandemic of 2020.

A young woman’s life appears to be perfect up until her family goes missing. This writer that lives alone with her dog and collects some arcane murder statistics. What each one of them stands to lose while they sneak around the do-not-enter tape that blocks Reef Road beach gets exposed by the steady lightening of the cincture that encircles them.

In a nod to the true crime which inspired it, Deborah’s “Reef Road” probes some unhealed generational scars in this original and wrenching work of fiction. It’s both sexy and stunning and, just like a bystander that’s surprised by a curtain getting left open, you will not be able to look away from it.