Barbara Colley

As the saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Charlotte LaRue knows she should take a broom and chase Joyce Thibodeaux off her front porch. Once married to Charlotte’s tenant Louis Thibodeaux, Joyce is fresh out of detox and has no place to go. She pulls on Charlotte’s heartstrings...and soon she’s staying in Charlotte’s guest room.Charlotte survived Hurricane Katrina, but Joyce proves to be an ill wind of a different kind. Charlotte knows she has to show Joyce the door, but she never gets the chance. Instead her beloved parakeet Sweety Boy vanishes, her living room gets trashed, and Joyce ends up in the middle of the mess...stone cold dead.Now Charlotte is on the list of murder suspects along with Louis, who’s been out of town on business...or has he? Finding the answers means doing a little snooping herself. Grabbing her mop she’s starting with the hospital where Joyce last stayed: a place with skeletons in its closets and a bucket full of clues that just might lead to a killer...

As owner of Maid for a Day, Charlotte LaRue is cleaning up New Orleans house by house. When it comes to hired help, she’s the best there is, especially if murder runs in the family...Though she’s short two employees, Charlotte answers a desperate plea the weekend before Mardi Gras. A woman named Emily Rossi is hosting a huge bash for out-of-town guests, and just lost her maid to a family emergency. And Charlotte soon learns why. Emily’s husband, Robert, just happens to be the most ruthless crime boss in the country. Nevertheless, Charlotte agrees to help at the Rossi family’s costume ball when one of the servers comes down with the flu. She’s beginning to think that the party is a cover for Robert’s illegal activities, when the man himself is found dead in the library.The case seems cut-and-dried—to anyone but Charlotte, that is. Although Emily looks guilty as sin, Charlotte has seen enough of the Rossi family’s dirty laundry to suspect everyone. But she’d better tread carefully if she doesn’t want to spend Fat Tuesday in the bayou, sleeping with the catfish…

When Charlotte LaRue, owner of the Maid for a Day cleaning service, discovers the dead body of her houseguest, a recovering alcoholic, in her living room, she becomes the number one suspect in the murder investigation.

Doing a favor for a friend in need has Charlotte cleaning rooms at the New Orleans Jazzy Hotel. The historic Garden District mansion is serving as a home-away-from-home for Shreveport’s chapter of the Red Scarf Sorority, a group of socially elite women in their forties.While picking up beautiful red silk scarves from the floor of a room she's cleaning, Charlotte is startled by the sudden arrival of its ranting and raving occupant. Charlotte is stunned into silence, until the Red Scarf Sorority comes to the rescue. The women manage to calm Tessa Morgan, who just had a run-in with her estranged husband’s much younger mistress Lisa.The next day, Charlotte gets back to work, only to learn that Lisa has been murdered, strangled by what could have been a red scarf. Now it’s time for Charlotte to start scouring through clues before the person who rubbed out Lisa makes a clean getaway…

When a big Hollywood studio wants to use Bitsy Duke's gorgeous Victorian home for a movie shoot, she agrees, but only if Charlotte LaRue agrees to take care of her place during the shoot. The cast includes one of Hollywood's hottest ingenues, Angel Martinique. But as Charlotte quickly discovers, Angel is no saint - in fact, she's a complete diva. On the shoot, tensions run high, especially when Angel's friend Gavin is found dead in the star's dressing room. Charlotte senses there's more to Angel's story than meets the ye. But a little digging into her past turns up a lot more dirt than she bargained for - enough to put Charlotte in a killer's crosshairs if she doesn't watch her step...