Debbie Herbert Books In Order

Publication Order of Dark Seas Books

Publication Order of Appalachian Magic Books

Publication Order of Bayou Magic Books

Publication Order of Bad Alpha Dads Books

Publication Order of Lavender Mountain Books

Publication Order of Normal, Alabama Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Debbie Herbert is a Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestselling author of paranormal, romantic suspense and psychological suspense novels. She has said that she has always had a fascination for Gothic and romance stories with some magic in them. Herbert publishes her novels through Harlequin and Thomas & Mercer as well as independently. She is currently married and lives with her husband in Alabama. She is a big fan of the Crimson Tide football team. Debbie has two grown sons, the oldest is autistic which means she sometimes includes characters with autism in her novels. She went to Berry College in Georgia where she got a bachelor’s in English and then proceeded to the University of Alabama for her masters in Library studies. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America Georgia chapter and was a Maggie Award finalist for both Paranormal and Young Adult Romance categories.

Growing up, Debbie was a bookworm and as a teen spent much of her time reading angst-filled poems. Upon graduating from college in 1979, she got married and moved to Alabama where she had very limited choices. While she had always dreamed of becoming an author, she had no money that would have allowed her to sit at home and write professionally. She applied for a job with the state prison and though the process required a firearms test and rigorous physical agility test, she surprised herself by passing. Debbie worked in the women’s and men’s prisons for three years before she was promoted to the public relations department. However, while she has never expected to work as a corrections officer, she developed a fascination for the job. She remembers sitting in death row/segregation unit and listening to women laughing about how they killed their spouses and thinking about how she ended up in corrections. While it was not a dream job it sparked her interest in psychology and crime and probably led her down the path of writing crime and suspense fiction.

During her time working in corrections, she stopped writing for years except for a little poetry that she submitted to a publishing house which went nowhere. However, she was still optimistic about becoming a professional author. In the years that followed she withdrew from anything to do with writing for a few more years until she was convinced to go to a local library where some author was speaking. It was this event that rekindled her love for writing and she started writing a lot more, garnering more than three hundred rejections from agents during the first two years. It may seem delusional to anyone not built to be so persistent but it worked for Debbie. She never gave up and continued working hard and learning the art of writing until the editors and readers finally appreciated her work. Debbie published her first novel “Siren’s Secret” in 2013 and has never looked back since. She has gone on to achieve her dreams of becoming a professional author publishing romantic and paranormal romance novels and getting a ton of awards. She has written the “Dark Seas,” “Appalachian Magic,” “Bayou Magic,” “Bad Alpha Dads,” “Lavender Mountain” and several single standing novels.

Debbie Herbert’s “Siren’s Secret” opens to a totally lovable and sweet hybrid mermaid named Shelly spying on a man dumping a body into the sea. The villain is Melkie who spots her and stabs her in the tail fin with a huge knife. Shelly flees the scene and goes home where she tells her cousins Lily and Jet about the happenings at the beach. Lily is a bit of a player and is irresistible on the looks side while Jet is a no-nonsense and badass mermaid. Shelly thinks they should report the matter to the cops but her cousins tell her that may jeopardize their mermaid secret. They have to find a way to let the police in on the incident without telling them directly. But it gets even more complicated when Shelly’s love interest who is the local sheriff starts asking questions she has no answer for. He knows that she is keeping something from him but the romance still burns hot between them. But Tillman is still determined to solve the homicides and keeps digging. Can Shelly trust him with her deepest secret?

Herbert’s second novel “Siren’s Treasure” is about Jet Borsage, a mermaid from the Alabama bayou who has rising desires but needs to keep her deepest secrets. At the opening of the novel, she just got a letter from the IRS asking for information about her tax status. An IRS agent named Landry Fields is in charge of the investigation and thinks that some of her activities particularly with regard to the sale of artifacts to a salvage company are very suspicious. Given that she is a mermaid, she is an expert at retrieving lost items from the sea but cannot tell that to the IRS guy. She had once told her boyfriend about her secret capability but he had blabbed about it before he was arrested and jailed. He is now back in the bayou and insists that she join forces with him to find an ancient artifact. The other merfolk had always shunned Jet though she never knew why. Her boyfriend had fed her lies and she had accepted them since all she wanted was to feel part of a community but she is now wiser. But since she was once associated with someone who is a criminal, Landry is investigating her returns. In addition to working for the IRS, he also works undercover for the FBI. Jet is intrigued by the agent just as he is with her yet both have secrets that may make any relationship between them almost impossible.

Herbert’s “Siren’s Call” tells of Lily Borsage, a siren that uses her powers to influence men. Given her powers, she has made a lot of enemies with the women of Bayou La Siryana. While she is used to the frequent shunning, she cannot help that the male populace reacts so positively to her presence. But then a strange thing happens when she approaches a man in the store and he does not seem to be interested in her yet she feels a strong attraction to him. Jet thinks he is familiar and soon learns that he is Nashoba Bowman, a man that had been a regular visitor to the Bayou. But she still cannot figure out why her sexuality does not seem to have any effect on him. While Nash has no recollection of their teenage friendship, he knows that he has to keep as far away from Lily as he undertakes his photography assignment in town. He had a very bad relationship with the last two women he had been involved with and does not want her to become the latest in the list. Lily is determined to understand why Nash is so unresponsive towards her charms even as she wants to keep her dual identity secret. But an unexpected event might expose both their secrets and they may just lose a lot.