Deborah Brown

Christ, the West call him Jesus is her second book. Straight from the Heart was her first book. It is about the life of African Americans through poetry. Ms. Brown enjoys being with her family, friends, music, dancing, writing, reading, sketching, drawing, social activities and travelling. This was written during the Covid-19 quarantine.

Sometimes it's safer to stay dead-it's easier to dig for the truth. I've got a man handcuffed to my bed. I'm Harper Finn, legit business owner. But I picked up a ringing phone that wasn't mine and...well, I'm now involved. Sure, Grey Walker, six feet of blue-eyed hotness, will gripe about me kidnapping him when he wakes up. But I couldn't just let the ex-cop fall prey to a hit someone took out on him. Trust me, with people setting him up to take the fall for an infamous murder, he's better off pretending to be dead for a while. In south Florida, it's easier than you might think. And as we dig for the truth, we have to be careful not to wind up at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.

It sucks to be caught off guard, especially before coffee on what's otherwise a perfect, sunny, Florida Keys day. Luckily, Madison and Fabiana have friends who owe favors on speed dial. Travis West, a shady Miami lawyer with a swanky address, is dead, and the prime suspect is Tarpon Cove's very own Professor Crum (first name none of your business). Crum is a lot of things-including a major pain in the booty-but he's no murderer. Mad and Fab set out to prove he's innocent-as long as they stick to their promise to Creole and Didier to stay out of trouble. Like that's going to happen. Before the sand settles, someone's gun is going to end up in an evidence box-and someone's flip-flopped foot may end up with a toe tag.

In the Florida Keys, the tops are down, the margaritas are cold, and water is murder. Madison and Fab's morning coffee comes with a side dish of witnessing two bodies being dumped at the end of their boat dock. And gossip is flying around Tarpon Cove faster than a cigarette boat. When yet another "easy" job turns up more dead bodies, the smell is making Madison barfy, and the girls' "I know nothing" faces are getting a workout. So is the hotline to their lawyer. Madison just wants happy endings all around, but evidence is piling up that they're all being watched. If they don't play their cards right, they could be someone's loose end-and all wind up dead.

Luck - and a few well-placed IOUs - can take you a long way in the Florida Keys. In the case of a young woman that stumbles onto a remote beach road, practically in front of Madison Weston and her bestie, Fabiana Merceau, it saves her life. Fab and their guys, Creole and Didier, know Madison's do-gooder heart can get her in trouble faster than a margarita blender. But when she encounters yet another young girl, this one just trying to survive the mean streets of Tarpon Cove, Madison's determination to help could solve a crime... but draw the wrong kind of attention. Because when you mess with the wrong people, you could wind up as alligator kibble.

Don't you ever stay out of trouble? I get that question a lot. It's fair-weirdness and nutjobs cling to Tarpon Cove like seagrass in a tangle of mangrove roots. And a dead body found near The Cottages is an excuse to line up the lawn chairs, pass the margaritas, and indulge in the Cove's favorite pastime-speculation. But this time trouble has followed me home. My own husband-Creole. They said the head injury he suffered when he was kidnapped might change him. Getting him back won't be as easy as partnering up with Fab to find a purloined pooch or repo a not-exactly-stolen car. What am I saying? Somehow the simplest jobs wind up going south in a hurry. Sometimes the easy answer is the right one.

Madison Westin lives by the Unbreakable Rule of IOUs: When it's time to collect, no whining allowed. So, when the four kids of an undercover Miami detective temporarily land in her care, she doesn't panic. She raises a village-more accurately, the motley crew of The Cottages-to lend a hand. Things are going swimmingly, and home schoolingly, and alligator-farm field trippily, when Madison learns the apartment building next to The Cottages is about to be sold to a crime kingpin known as Trigger. Crossing Trigger is a very good way to wind up dead, but with the neighborhood poised to go to hell in a handbasket, Madison and her bestie, Fab Merceau, figure out a way to swipe the done deal right out from under his grabby paws. But Trigger isn't going away quietly, especially since Madison and Fab have unwittingly disrupted a much larger scheme. Madison and Fab find themselves neck-deep in alligators. And the danger of losing everyone they love is rising.

Threaded with echoes of familial trauma—a sister’s battle with cancer, a brother’s struggles with depression—the lyric poems in The Human Half reveal an open-hearted speaker who finds solace in the beauties of celestial navigation, the flowers along the railroad tracks, and the brushwork of Vermeer and Van Gogh. Filled with quirks of perception, Deborah Brown holds space for wonder amidst of life’s seasons of longing.

There's always one party crasher in the crowd. But Madison Weston and her bestie, Fab Merceau, could have never guessed that the plus-one at their newly renovated hotel's grand opening would be a dead body. This isn't the first unsolved murder in Beachside's colorful past. While a ghost haunting the premises might be a selling point to some customers, fresh pools of blood generally aren't. So much for their promise to put personal safety at the top of their to-do list. Pretty tough when trouble gets dropped on their doorstep like the proverbial baby in a basket. Especially when the baby is packing a Smith & Wesson. But this murder was on their turf, on their watch. And they'll call in every shady character, every IOU, and anything short of a felony to lay this ghost to rest-even if it risks them becoming ghosts themselves.

Margaritas, mangroves, murder. Just another day at the office. One minute, Madison Weston and her bestie, Fab, are tailing Creole and Didier to figure out what they're hiding. The next, a hail of bullets sends them swamp slogging for their lives. So much for cute shoes. Eventually, Creole and Didier come clean: Bodies are turning up in shallow graves, and they didn't want their women catching wind of it. Too bad, boys, this mystery is too juicy to pass up.

A woman's been found dead in Dr. A's beach house, facedown in enough cocaine to put him away for life. It's going to take more than trading a couple of favors to help the doctor, who's always been there for Madison, no questions asked, no blood left behind. Hard as Madison and Fab have tried to keep their promise to stop playing sneak-around-chick, prying up the evidence that could set their friend free requires a skillset from their shady past. When they open up this set of Pandora's boxes, it's too late to mind their own business. Plus being on the radar of a big-time drug dealer, shoots up the street value on their lives a million-fold. They could be in a felonious hot mess. Nice things about living in Tarpon Cove? Favors are traded like cryptocurrency. If anybody asks, nobody saw anything. And even the worst day can end with a pitcher of margaritas-glass optional.

In the Florida Keys, you have to take the shady with the sunny. And Tarpon Cove has more than fifty shades of shady going on. Shady No. 1: When Brad is framed using the dead body of his crazy ex-girlfriend, the Westin family-which now includes Fab, Didier, and Creole by default-gathers to plan a strategy. Shady No. 2: Fab is having a hard time keeping her promise to go legit. It's not her fault she tends to attract clients who want their problems solved without getting the cops involved. Trying to keep her reined in is a full-time job, and a thankless one, since Madison keeps getting roped in on "easy" jobs that wind up getting the kind of messy that requires specialized cleanup. Shady No. 3: Ferreting out the info needed to save Brad means using sources so deep in the friend-of-a-friend network they're anonymous even to Madison. The only thing not shady is Creole's love. Madison's kept her promise never to lie to him. Mostly. But when the killer wafts like smoke through the cracks in the investigation, the danger reminds her she should've eaten dessert first more often. Because once he's through with her, the mess that'll need cleaning up will be her.

I've come a long way since inheriting my Aunt Elizabeth's Tarpon Cove house and her beach cottages full of quirky residents. I strap a Glock to my thigh as easily as I slip into flip-flops. Even Fab is going legit... mostly. When she's hired to investigate some high-end boat thefts in Biscayne Bay, I go along to do what I do best. Chat up the help to get the real story. Neither of us expected the case to explode-literally-and take out one of Miami's richest men. And possibly a mistress, though no one's found her body floating among the bits and pieces. Somewhere in the Miami upper-crust's phony smiles and even phonier alibis there's someone who wanted to see Marshall Sacks dead. Someone willing to ruin Fab's and my lives to keep their secret. It'll take calling in every favor I'm owed to keep us out of trouble.

My name is Madison Westin. Unless it's Christmas, in which case my official title is "Holiday Cheermistress." Nothing stops me from getting my ho-ho-ho on, not even my friends' Grinch-worthy attitude toward sparkling tinsel, twinkling lights, and tinkling bells. Hey, if Creole, Fab, and Didier wind up with coal in their stockings, it won't be my fault. When some bah-humbug bandit makes the rounds of Tarpon Cove, Fab and I are on the case. It's the least we can do for our loyal friends. Seasonal crime-victim disorder seems to be on the rise. Some guy in a Santa suit-well, the top half of one anyway-is robbing local banks. The cops are fingering the wrong guy. And you can bet your light-up Rudolph boxers that if we can't track the real thief down, one of my merry band of miscreants could be spending the holidays behind bars.

The Keys is a great place to hide a seashell bucket full of secrets. Creole...shot...dead. Three words Madison Westin never thought she'd hear in the same sentence. Creole promised. He pinky swore on it. But even through a blur of tears fed by prescription-strength margaritas, Madison can tell when things are shady. Sure, Creole was undercover, but she deserves more than sketchy non-answers, an urn of ashes, and a secret life crawling out of the woodwork. Nothing's adding up, nothing that remotely sounds like the Creole she knew and loved. Calling in every one of her IOU's-only to find some of her most reliable information sources drying up-Madison sets out to dig up what really happened to Creole. She never thought the truth would wrap its arms around her and make her wonder if she's chasing a ghost... or taking a vacation from sanity. Ambushed in Paradise is book #12 in the action-packed Paradise series. Come along with Madison and Fab as they dig up the truth and share more than one hair raising adventure.

Meet the crime-solving duo of the Florida Keys: Madison who has all the charm of the girl next door, not to mention a deadly aim and Fab, her best friend, a femme fatale private investigator with a taste for danger and stilettos. When their neighbor is found dead, the headlines read, "It doesn't pay to be a lottery winner." It gets you nothing but an endless line of crazies at your door, greedy relatives and acquaintances. Sleuths Madison and Fab don't have time to be concerned about the latest murder; they have problems of their own trying to figure out why their house has suddenly become the focus of several attempted break-ins. The duo are off on more adventures -- what could go wrong chauffeuring a limousine full of college girls? Or chasing after a custom Ferrari? Along the way, there's a break-up, a wedding, and the usual run-ins with the law. If you like sassy, exciting crime novels, then you'll love Lottery in Paradise, the eleventh book in the scorching Paradise series about two seductive ladies who use unconventional and highly entertaining measures to maintain the peace in the steamy and twisted paradise of Tarpon Cove.

Set against the steamy backdrop of Tarpon Cove's sun-kissed, tropical waters, sexy sleuths and best friends Madison and Fab are at it again dealing with the occasional dead body. Hidden just below the surface of the small town lies an underworld, one steeped in deceit, corruption, and deadly secrets. It's only a matter of time before Madison and Fab find themselves on a collision course with the police, who consider them likely suspects in a murder. Ride along on their adventures when the duo realizes that a family member is missing and pull themselves away from all jobs to track him down. Theories: walked away, freak accident, kidnapped? If so, then why no ransom demand? Hurricane in Paradise is book ten in the thrilling and humorous provocative Paradise series, which finds the two waist-deep in mystery and romance. It is a smart, adventurous read that delivers heart-thumping, non-stop action. Join Madison and Fab as they solve the most twisted of cases, through unconventional - and highly entertaining - measures... sometimes in flip-flops.

When a body turns up at the Cottages, Madison and Fab, the sexy sleuths are on the case. But when the killer makes a habit of discarding bodies on Madison's property... it's personal. While on the hunt for the killer, the duo track down a double-crossing bail jumper, repossess a Lamborghini, and Madison lands her first case. As more bodies pop up, the cops are eager to name a suspect. When a close friend is arrested as the prime suspect, Madison and Fab will stop at nothing to prove her innocence, but will they be too late? Executed in Paradise, the ninth book in the scorching Paradise series about best friends who maintain the peace in the paradise of Tarpon Cove through unconventional ¬- and highly entertaining - measures.