Check out Cosmopolitan.com for an exclusive excerpt of the first chapter of Jessica’s upcoming, highly-anticipated thriller, Somebody Worth Killing
NEWS: Somebody Worth Killing will have a sequel! Tentative publication date is April 2027. More details soon!
Pre-order your personalized, signed copy from Browser’s Bookshop. The first 100 pre-orders will get feminist stickers + bookmark included as a pre-order incentive.
Nov. 5, 2025: People Magazine has exclusively revealed the cover for Somebody Worth Killing! You can read the whole article here.
Excerpt: “Writing Somebody Worth Killing felt like magic — like the story I’d been waiting my whole life to tell,” Payne tells PEOPLE of the novel, which has been described by Berkley as part Dexter and part Big Little Lies with a dash of Finlay Donovan.” More details below!
Somebody Worth Killing
Pub date: June 16, 2026
Meet Nadia Davis, a doting mom and loving wife who has a big secret: she’s actually an assassin. And she really needs a babysitter who shows up on time.
Nadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark…somebody worth killing.
But it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects—her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an evil villain who needs exterminating? Has their whole life together been a lie? Now Nadia must choose between the two things she loves most in life, the career that keeps her sane or the family she thought she knew.
Somebody Worth Killing will publish June 16, 2026. If you preorder from her local bookstore, Browser’s Bookshop in Olympia, you’ll receive a signed copy and a little something extra! Click here for your copy. Please specify in the comments if you want specific personalization.
