Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Man Who Died Laughing | 1988 | David Handler | Buy |
| 2 | The Man Who Lived by Night | 1989 | David Handler | Buy |
| 3 | The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1990 | David Handler | Buy |
| 4 | The Woman Who Fell from Grace | 1991 | David Handler | Buy |
| 5 | The Boy Who Never Grew Up | 1992 | David Handler | Buy |
| 6 | The Man Who Cancelled Himself | 1995 | David Handler | Buy |
| 7 | The Girl Who Ran Off with Daddy | 1996 | David Handler | Buy |
| 8 | The Man Who Loved Women to Death | 1997 | David Handler | Buy |
| 9 | The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes | 2017 | David Handler | Buy |
| 10 | The Man Who Couldn’t Miss | 2018 | David Handler | Buy |
| 11 | The Man in the White Linen Suit | 2019 | David Handler | Buy |
| 12 | The Man Who Wasn’t All There | 2021 | David Handler | Buy |
| 13 | The Lady in the Silver Cloud | 2022 | David Handler | Buy |
| 14 | The Lady in the Silver Cloud: A Stewart Hoag Mystery | 2022 | David Handler | N/A |
| 15 | The Girl Who Took What She Wanted | 2023 | David Handler | Buy |
| 16 | The Woman Who Lowered the Boom | 2024 | David Handler | Buy |
| 17 | The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again | 2025 | David Handler | Buy |
The Stewart Hoag and Lulu series is David Handler’s signature work, running seventeen books from 1988 to 2025. Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag is a novelist who hit it big with his first book, flamed out spectacularly, and now makes his living as a celebrity ghostwriter. His basset hound Lulu goes everywhere with him, and together they keep finding themselves in the middle of murder investigations.
The early books, starting with The Man Who Died Laughing, established the series’ formula: Hoag takes on a ghostwriting assignment with a famous or powerful person, someone winds up dead, and Hoag’s curiosity and connections pull him into the investigation. The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald won an Edgar Award nomination and cemented the series’ reputation. After six books in the 1990s, Handler paused the series for twenty years before bringing it back with The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes in 2017.
The revived series has maintained the same mix of literary wit and whodunit plotting. The titles follow a distinctive pattern, usually beginning with “The Man Who…” or “The Woman Who…” or “The Girl Who…”, giving the series a recognizable identity on bookstore shelves. Hoag’s sardonic narration and Lulu’s scene-stealing presence have kept readers coming back across nearly four decades of publication.