Michelle Richmond Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe Books

Publication Order of Akashic Noir Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Michelle Richmond is a New York Times bestselling author of mystery fiction best known for the novel “The Marriage Pact,” which can be found in more than two and half dozen languages.

The author was born in Mobile, Alabama, even though she now makes her home in San Francisco Bay following two years spent in Paris. Since 2010, Michelle has been a board member of the Author’s Guild and has taught creative writing MFA programs at the California College of the Arts and the University of San Francisco.

She has also worked at the St. Mary’s College of Moraga and the Bowling Green State University as a Distinguished Visiting Writer. She has also been chair at the Notre Dame de Namur University’s Catherine Julie Cunningham department.

Her essays and stories have been featured in several prestigious publications including “Best American Fantasy,” “The Wall Street Journal,” “The Kenyon Review,” “The Oxford American,” “The Believer” and “Playboy” among many others.

She has also been the recipient of several awards over the years for online education development, fiction writing, teaching, essays, public speaking, editing and publishing.

Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, Michelle Richmond and her family used to spend their vacations at Disney World in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and in Brookhaven, Mississippi with her grandparents. As a teen, she majored in English and Journalism at the University of Alabama.

While she was the university yearbook’s managing editor, she published her first work, which was a collection of short stories that celebrated the college’s centennial. She was a cofounder of the “Marr’s Field Journal,” an undergraduate literary magazine that is still published to this day.

After she graduated from college, she went on to work in magazines, advertising and as a waitress in Atlanta and Knoxville before she moved to Fayetteville Arkansas. She always wanted to become a writer and the move to Arkansas was meant to facilitate her start in creative writing as she intended to attend an MFA program.

During her first week in Arkansas, she met Kevin, a San Francisco native. She had crawled through his window into his room in the middle of the night and had such a good time she decided he was her soulmate. They have now been together for more than two dozen years.

Michelle Richmond got bored of Arkansas when her boyfriend quit his MFA and went to find a real job in Florida. She decided to transfer her credits to the University of Miami and soon after graduated.

She then got a job teaching creative writing and it was during this time living in a studio apartment alongside the beach that she wrote her first short story collection. They would then move to New York City before moving back to San Francisco from where she now writes her novels.
“Dream of the Blue Room,” her debut novel, was inspired by her brief stint in Beijing.

The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond introduces Jake and Alice who are the picture perfect newly wedded couple. Alice is a former singer in a popular rock band that has successfully transitioned into a lawyer. Jake is a partner in very successful and expanding psychology practice.

Their life appears to be filled with infinite possibilities until they join “The Pact,” a mysterious and exclusive group upon the invitation of one of Alice’s biggest clients. The aim of the group is simple enough – keep marriages intact and happy.

The rules are sensible enough – plan a couple’s trip once every quarter, exchange thoughtful gifts every month and answer the phone when your significant other calls. But they also have to keep “The Pact” a secret.

Jake and Alice are at first seduced by the sense of community, the glamorous parties and what is rapidly widening social circle. But then one of the couples breaks the rules and Alice and Jake soon realise that membership in “The Pact” is for life just like marriage.

The organization will do everything in its power to enforce the rules. The young couple’s marriage is about to turn into their worst nightmare.

Michelle Richmond’s novel “The Year of Fog” is set on a foggy beach where life changes in an instant. The lead in the novel is photographer soon to be step mother and fiancee Abby Mason. Emmy, a six year old child, vanishes in the San Franciscan fog or maybe into a stranger’s van, a parking lot or into the Pacific ocean.

Haunted by guilt, Abby will not believe that Emma is dead and she starts a desperate hunt for clues about the happenings on the day the girl went missing. But in her investigations, she finds that clues often result in memories from her childhood flooding back.

However, the days turn into weeks and the fliers fade on the telephone fliers even as the police become disinterested in the case. The girl’s father is starting to find solace in scientific probability and religion. Meanwhile, Abby wanders the city streets and beaches to find the lost girl even as her life is at a crossroads.

She may be forced to leave the US for a foreign country and into a very different culture. In the process, Abby will stumble upon a shocking discovery as the truth of the missing girl unravels.

“No One You Know,” by Michelle Richmond is a compelling story about Lila and Ellie Enderlin. The two women are sisters but their family had been changed two decades ago when Lila was killed. She had been a top student studying mathematics at Stanford when she was killed in a homicide that had remained unsolved for years.

Following the death of her sibling, Ellie had gotten in contact with a man that told the story in a book which became a bestseller. The publishing of the story which fingered one of Lila’s professors as the killer had devastated her family.

Several years later, Ellie who has become an inveterate traveler and professional coffee buyer, meets a ruined academic named Peter in Nicaragua. When it is time to leave, he leaves behind a notebook that Ellie is sure belonged to Lila.

She goes back home to try to find if there is anything in the notebook that could explain her sister’s disappearance. What she unearths is a century old mathematical puzzle and to a lover she never knew her sister had.

Connecting with people, she soon has to deal with a series of shocking revelations from the confessions of loss, pain and love to the eloquent truth of numbers.