Wendy Heard Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Wendy Heard is an author who writes thrillers for adult and teen audiences. She is the author of Hunting Annabelle, The Kill Club, She’s Too Pretty to Burn, and Dead End Girls.

Heard is a native of California. She was born in San Francisco, but later moved to Los Angeles where she has spent most of her life. She enjoys living there where she enjoys hiking in Griffith Park and visiting local bookstores.

Wendy enjoyed reading books from a young age, but read many books that were inappropriate for her age as a kid. She read a lot of Stephen King and Anne Rice from a very young age.

She is a member of many writers groups, including Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the Mystery Writers of America. In addition to her work as an author, Wendy also contributes articles at Writer’s Digest and Crimereads.com. The author is also active on social media with official twitter and Instagram accounts where she interacts with readers.

Hunting Annabelle is a chilling page-turner set in the 1980s decade. This was the first book released by Wendy Heard in her career. It was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a diabolically plotted creep show from a writer to watch.”

The story follows Sean Suh who has killed in the past, but after spending three years in a psychiatric prison he is ready to live a clean life and stay away from the temptation to kill again. Then he meets Annabelle and he can’t resist her. She is beautiful, confident, and she sees past the monster in him. Annabelle sees him not as the man he was, but as the man he is trying to be.

Before things can go any further, Annabelle disappears. Sean sees her taken and reports her kidnapping to the police, but they just assume that he is the one responsible based on his history. Sean begins to question himself as well. He has lost time due to his illness before and now he worries if there is more to what happened with Annabelle than what he remembers.

Sean has the idea that it might be better if he never finds her for her own good, but that can’t stop him from searching for her. He won’t let her go without a fight. In order to do so, he’ll have to let the monster within him loose.

Wendy Heard followed that book up with The Kill Club. Jazz got away from her foster mother as soon as she could when she grew up. Carol, her foster mother, has always been fanatical, but things have gotten dangerous for Joaquin, Jazz’s younger brother. The people at child services have failed to intervene and Jazz realizes that she needs to get her brother out of there as soon as possible.

Jazz then receives a phone call from a blocked number which is offering her a solution to her problems. The call tells her that there are others like her, people who the law has failed and need to find their own way of getting things done. Many of these people have gotten together to form an underground network of helpers with each member agreeing to eliminate the abuser of another. The network has left a trail of bodies throughout Los Angeles and come to be known as the Blackbird Killings. Jazz is being offered the opportunity to join and eliminate Carol for good, but to do so she’ll need to kill a stranger.

She’s Too Pretty to Burn is a novel by Wendy Heard that was inspired by the classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. This book was the first YA novel by the author. The story begins as summer is coming to an end in San Diego. Veronica is not having a great time right now as she is bored and feeling uninspired in her photography work. While Nico is an insatiable and subversive person who is currently obsessed with a chaotic form of performance art. The two are best friends, but the art comes first for both of them.

That is the case at least until Mick comes around. Mick is the perfect subject and Veronica’s dream girl. The two spend days together, long days filled with adventure, and the two soon find themselves falling in love. The two are so enraptured with each other that they are completely unprepared for what will come next. A fire, dead bodies, and one suspect behind it all. Summers almost over, but they might not survive to see the end of it.

In an interview, Heard said that she finds villains more fun than protagonists so with this book she set out to really blur the line between hero and villain. She wanted readers to question whether they loved or hated the characters.

Dead End Girls is the story of two girls who fake their deaths and only find more trouble because of it. Maude has made plans for everyone to think she is dead in one week. She has been researching this moment for years and it is finally time to fake her own death. She knows how, when, and where she is going to do it and has already figured out who will help her unsuspectingly. Her reasons for doing it are at least partly because of revenge. Her parents are awful, but the thing that really drives her is the call of the void, a new life where no one will know her and she can finally be free. However, her perfect planning is nearly blown when her step-cousin Frankie figures out what she has been plotting. Frankie doesn’t want to expose her though, she actually wants to join her.

The girls will head into the unknown and prepare for a new, limitless life free from their prior identities. However, they will soon learn that there are some things you can’t run away from no matter how hard you try.