Kristan Higgins books in order

Millie Barnes is this close to finally achieving her perfect life…

Rewarding job as a local doctor on Cape Cod? Check. Cute cottage of her very own? Check. Adorable dog suitable for walks past attractive locals? Check! All she needs is for golden boy and former crush Joe Carpenter to notice her, and Millie will beset.

But perfection isn't as easy as it looks—especially when Sam Nickerson, a local policeman, is so distracting. He is definitely not part of her masterplan. But maybe it's time for Millie to make a new plan….

Journalist Chastity O’Neill is tired of being just one of the guys. When returns to her hometown, she decides it’s time to get in touch with her feminine side. While doing a story on local heroes, she meets a hunky doctor who is the perfect candidate to test her newfound womanly wiles. 

There’s only one problem: Trevor Meade, her first love and the one man she’s never quite gotten over—although he seems to have gotten over her just fine. Yet the more time she spends with Dr. Perfect, the better Trevor looks. But with the in-your-face competition, the irresistible Trevor starts to see Chastity as more than a friend….

How far would you go to get over a guy?

When Grace Emerson's ex-fiancé starts dating her younger sister, extreme measures are called for. To keep everyone from obsessing about her love life, Grace announces that she's seeing someone. Someone wonderful. Someone handsome. Someone completely made up. 

Who is this Mr. Right? Someone…exactly unlike her renegade neighbor Callahan O'Shea. Well, someone with his looks, maybe. His hot body. His knife-sharp sense of humor. His smarts and big heart.

Whoa. No. Callahan O'Shea is not her perfect man! Not with his unsavory past. So why does Mr. Wrong feel so…right?

Turning Thirty Has Its Ups and Downs…

For Callie Grey, coming to grips with her age means facing the fact that her boyfriend-slash-boss is way overdue with a marriage proposal. And that she's way off track, because Mark has suddenly announced his engagement to the company's new Miss Perfect. If that isn't bad enough, her mom decides to throw her a Big Three-Oh birthday bash…in the family funeral home.

Bad goes to worse when Callie stirs up a relationship with the town's single—yet not so warm and fuzzy—veterinarian, in order to flag Mark's attention. So what if Ian McFarland is more comfortable with animals? So what if he's formal, orderly and just a bit tense? Friendly, fun-loving and spontaneous Callie decides it's time for Ian to get a personality makeover. But, dang—if he doesn't shock the heck out of her, she might actually fall for Georgebury, Vermont's unlikeliest eligible bachelor….

Divorce attorney Harper James can't catch a break. Bad enough that she runs into her ex-hubby, Nick, at her sister's destination wedding, but now, by a cruel twist of fate, she's being forced to make a cross-country road trip with him. And her almost-fiancé back at home is not likely to be sympathetic.

Harper can't help that Nick has come blazing back into her life in all of his frustratingly appealing, gorgeous architect glory. But in Nick's eyes, Harper's always been the one. If they can only get it right this time, forever might be waiting—just around the bend.

Posey Osterhagen can't complain. She owns a successful architectural salvaging company, she's surrounded by her lovable, if off-center, family and she has a boyfriend—sort of. Still, something's missing. Something tall, brooding and criminally good-looking…something like Liam Murphy.

When Posey was sixteen, the bad boy of Bellsford, New Hampshire, broke her heart. But now he's back, sending Posey's traitorous schoolgirl heart into overdrive once again. She should be giving him a wide berth, but it seems fate has other ideas….

Letting go of her ex-husband is harder than wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate expected…especially since his new wife wants to be Jenny's new best friend. 

Sensing this isn't exactly helping her achieve closure, Jenny trades the Manhattan skyline for her hometown up the Hudson, where she'll start her own business and bask in her sister Rachel's picture-perfect family life…and maybe even find a little romance of her own with Leo, her downstairs neighbor, a guy who's utterly irresistible and annoyingly distant at the same time.

Rachel's idyllic marriage, however, is imploding after she discovers her husband sexting with a colleague. She always thought she'd walk away in this situation, but her triplet daughters have her reconsidering her stance on adultery, much to Jenny's surprise. 

Rachel points to their parents' perfect marriage as a shining example of patience and forgiveness; but to protect her sister, Jenny may have to tarnish that memory—and their relationship­—and reveal a family secret she's been keeping since childhood.

Both Rachel and Jenny will have to come to terms with the past and the present and find a way to get what they want most of all.

Ainsley O’Leary is so ready to get married—she’s even found the engagement ring her boyfriend has stashed away. What she doesn’t anticipate is being blindsided by a breakup he chronicles in a blog…which (of course) goes viral. Devastated and humiliated, Ainsley turns to her older half sister, Kate, who’s struggling with a sudden loss of her own.

Kate’s always been the poised, self-assured sister, but becoming a newlywed—and a widow—in the space of four months overwhelms her. Though the sisters were never close, she starts to confide in Ainsley, especially when she learns her late husband was keeping a secret from her.

Despite the murky blended-family dynamic that’s always separated them, Ainsley’s and Kate’s heartaches bind their summer together when they come to terms with the inevitable imperfection of relationships and family—and the possibility of one day finding love again.

One step forward. Two steps back. The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back.

Injured in more ways than one, Nora feels her carefully built life cracking at the edges. There’s only one place to land: home. But the tiny Maine community she left fifteen years ago doesn’t necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments.

With a tough islander mother who’s always been distant, a wild-child sister in jail and a withdrawn teenage niece as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was, Nora has her work cut out for her if she’s going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family. Balancing loss and opportunity, dark events from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise…and the chance to begin again.

Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults.

For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her.

But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson's dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves.

Emma London never thought she had anything in common with her grandmother Genevieve London. The regal old woman came from wealthy and bluest-blood New England stock, but that didn't protect her from life's cruelest blows: the disappearance of Genevieve's young son, followed by the premature death of her husband. But Genevieve rose from those ashes of grief and built a fashion empire that was respected the world over, even when it meant neglecting her other son.

When Emma's own mother died, her father abandoned her on his mother's doorstep. Genevieve took Emma in and reluctantly raised her--until Emma got pregnant her senior year of high school. Genevieve kicked her out with nothing but the clothes on her back...but Emma took with her the most important London possession: the strength not just to survive but to thrive. And indeed, Emma has built a wonderful life for herself and her teenage daughter, Riley.

So what is Emma to do when Genevieve does the one thing Emma never expected of her and, after not speaking to her for nearly two decades, calls and asks for help?

The Frosts are a typical American family. Barb and John, married almost fifty years, are testy and bored with each other...who could blame them after all this time? At least they have their daughters-- Barb's favorite, the perfect, brilliant Juliet; and John's darling, the free-spirited Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. It was fine. It was enough.

Until the day John had a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down.

Now Sadie has to put her career as a teacher and struggling artist in New York on hold to come back and care for her beloved dad--and face the love of her life, whose heart she broke, and who broke hers. Now Juliet has to wonder if people will notice that despite her perfect career as a successful architect, her perfect marriage to a charming Brit, and her two perfect daughters, she's spending an increasing amount of time in the closet having panic attacks.

And now Barb and John will finally have to face what's been going on in their marriage all along.

Being a widower is not something Joshua Park ever expected. Given his solitary job, small circle of friends and family, and the social awkwardness he’s always suffered from, Josh has no idea how to negotiate this new, unwanted phase of life. But Lauren had a plan to keep him moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him, giving him a task for every month in the year after her death. A plan that leads Joshua with a loving hand on a journey through grief, anger, and denial.

It’s a journey that will take Joshua from his first outing as a widower to buy groceries…to an attempt at a dinner party where his lack of experience hosting creates a comic disaster…to finding a new best friend while weeping in the dressing room of a clothing store. As his grief makes room for new friendships and experiences, Joshua learns Lauren’s most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn’t follow a straight line.

Lillie Silva knew life as an empty nester would be hard after her only child left for college, but when her husband abruptly dumps her for another woman just as her son leaves, her world comes crashing down. Besides the fact that this announcement is a complete surprise (to say the least), what shocks Lillie most is that she isn’t heartbroken. She’s furious.

Lillie has loved her life on Cape Cod, but as a mother, wife, and nurse-midwife, she’s used to caring for other people . . . not taking care of herself. Now, alone for the first time in her life, she finds herself going a little rogue. Is it over the top to crash her ex-husband’s wedding dressed like the angel of death? Sure! Should she release a skunk into his perfect new home? Probably not! But it beats staying home and moping.

She finds an unexpected ally in her glamorous sister, with whom she’s had a tense relationship all these years. And an unexpected babysitter in, of all people, Ben Hallowell, the driver in a car accident that nearly killed Lillie twenty years ago. And then there’s Ophelia, her ex-husband’s oddly lost niece, who could really use a friend.

It’s the end of Lillie’s life as she knew it. But sometimes the perfect next chapter surprises you...out of the clear blue sky.

A kid walks into your bookstore and says to you, Guess what? I’m your son. The one you put up for adoption seventeen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise!

His name is Matthew Walker, and he’s come to spend the summer on the Cape with his parents. Why? Well, he wants to meet you before he heads off to college in the fall. Tiny detail—he didn’t tell his adoptive parents about his plan. And while you hoped this day would come someday, you’re so stunned, you actually faint. You’re overjoyed (and stunned) and worried (and stunned) and you’ve yearned to meet him, but you didn’t know it would be like this. Did you mention feeling stunned?

Even more gobsmacked is your family. The Smiths looked like (and thought they were) the perfect family in town. How could Harlow, the “boring sister” who runs the bookstore with her dotty old grandfather, have a secret baby? How did she keep this secret for so long?

More than the truth of that baby will come out over the summer ahead, a summer filled with emotion as more than one secret is revealed, long-lost hurts are discovered…and one slightly lost soul realizes the best of everything is yet to come.

Sometimes the best man is the one you least expect…

Faith Holland left her hometown after being jilted at the altar. Now a little older and wiser, she's ready to return to the Blue Heron Winery, her family's vineyard, to confront the ghosts of her past, and maybe enjoy a glass of red. After all, there's some great scenery there….

Like Levi Cooper, the local police chief—and best friend of her former fiancé. There's a lot about Levi that Faith never noticed, and it's not just those deep green eyes. The only catch is she's having a hard time forgetting that he helped ruin her wedding all those years ago. If she can find a minute amidst all her family drama to stop and smell the rosé, she just might find a reason to stay at Blue Heron, and finish that walk down the aisle.

What if the perfect match is a perfect surprise?

Honor Holland has just been unceremoniously rejected by her lifelong crush. And now—a mere three weeks later—Mr. Perfect is engaged to her best friend. But resilient, reliable Honor is going to pick herself up, dust herself off and get back out there…or she would if dating in Manningsport, New York, population 715, wasn't easier said than done.

Charming, handsome British professor Tom Barlow just wants to do right by his unofficial stepson, Charlie, but his visa is about to expire. Now Tom must either get a green card or leave the States—and leave Charlie behind.

In a moment of impulsiveness, Honor agrees to help Tom with a marriage of convenience—and make her ex jealous in the process. But juggling a fiancé, hiding out from her former best friend and managing her job at the family vineyard isn't easy. And as sparks start to fly between Honor and Tom, they might discover that their pretend relationship is far too perfect to be anything but true love….

Is your first love worth a second chance…?

Colleen O'Rourke is in love with love…just not when it comes to herself. Most nights, she can be found behind the bar at the Manningsport, New York, tavern she owns with her twin brother, doling out romantic advice to the lovelorn, mixing martinis and staying more or less happily single. See, ten years ago, Lucas Campbell broke her heart…an experience Colleen doesn't want to have again, thanks. Since then, she's been happy with a fling here and there, some elite-level flirting and playing matchmaker to her friends.

But a family emergency has brought Lucas back to town, handsome as ever and still the only man who's ever been able to crack her defenses. Seems like maybe they've got some unfinished business waiting for them—but to find out, Colleen has to let her guard down, or risk losing a second chance with the only man she's ever loved.

Everyone loves Jack Holland, but Emmaline Neal needs him. Her ex-fiancé is getting married in Malibu and, obviously, she can't go to the wedding alone. In Manningsport, New York, tall, blond and gorgeous Jack Holland is practically a cottage industry when it comes to rescuing desperate women. He knows the drill, Em figures, so he won't get the wrong idea.

What Jack needs is an excuse to leave town. Ever since rescuing four teenagers from a car wreck, he's been hailed as a hero and the attention is making him itchy, especially since his too-pretty ex-wife is back, angling for a reunion. He's always liked Emmaline. She needs a weekend date? No problem.

So when they wind up in bed together, Em chalks it up to red wine and chocolate cake, just one impulsive night not to be repeated. But Jack's pushing for more, and if she lets down her guard, either she'll get her heart crushed again, or discover that Jack's worth more than just dreaming about.

Before you get down on bended knee…

…you should be pretty darn sure the answer will be yes. For ten years, Connor O'Rourke has been waiting for Jessica Dunn to take their on-again, off-again relationship public, and he thinks the time has come. His restaurant is thriving, she's got her dream job at Blue Heron Vineyard—it's the perfect time to get married.  

When he pops the question, however, her answer is a fond but firm no. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Jess has her hands full with her younger brother, who's now living with her full-time, and a great career after years of waitressing. What she and Connor have is perfect: friends with an excellent benefits package. Besides, with her difficult past (and reputation), she's positive married life isn't for her.

But this time, Connor says it's all or nothing. If she doesn't want to marry him, he'll find someone who does. Easier said than done, given that he's never loved anyone but her. And maybe Jessica isn't quite as sure as she thinks…

Cooking is love made visible - Anonymous

This book was created to share two gifts: food and reading. Without the ability to read, we miss out on magic, on thoughts, on being transported to other times and other places. Without food, we wither and without the written word we are less than we can be.

And so, these wonderful authors offered their recipes and their histories and their love so others can have the ability to share their stories.

Pride Not Prejudice is a charity collection of 21, never-before-published, brand-new stories featuring and benefiting love and Happily Ever Afters across the gender and sexual identity spectrums. 

Proceeds from both ebook and paperback will be donated to four nationally renowned organizations in support of LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized and oppressed communities in the United States, including PLANNED PARENTHOOD, HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, NATIONAL CENTER FOR TRANSGENDER EQUALITY and HEALTH PROFESSIONALS ADVANCING LGBTQ+ MEDICAL TREATMENT AND EQUALITY.

The following contributing authors are either NYT or USA Today bestselling or LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC own-voice authors who are allies, parents, or children touched by the need to read more romance where people of all identities and orientations find love.

Amalie Howard ~ April White ~ Camille Duplessis ~ Cynthia St. Aubin ~ Darynda Jones ~ Erica Ridley ~ Hildie McQueen ~ Jade Lee w/a Kathy Lyons ~ Janna MacGregor ~ Jennifer Ashley ~ Mila Finelli ~ Kerrigan Byrne ~ Kim Loraine ~ Kristan Higgins ~ Mira Lyn Kelly ~ Piper Huguley ~ Robyn Peterman ~ Rosalind James ~ Ruby Dixon ~ Sara Ney ~ Clare Rebecca McCarthy

Finding a good man in a small town has never been so difficult!

Perpetually single Maggie Beaumont almost believes that her perfect man is out there waiting for her. With her infamous romantic past—including a failed long-term relationship with her high school sweetheart and a dead-end crush on the new priest, Father Tim O’Halloran—it’s becoming more and more difficult to picture anyone rolling into the small town of Gideon’s Cove, Maine, just to sweep Maggie off her feet. So when Father Tim offers to set Maggie up on a series of blind dates, she decides she has nothing to lose and lets him play matchmaker.

After a few bad dinners, including one date who doesn’t even show up, Maggie is ready to give up dating for good. But then romantic salvation appears in the form of sullen local fisherman Malone. Malone has always been dark and silent—not exactly Maggie’s ideal future partner. But as Maggie learns more about this mysterious man, she realizes that there’s a heart of gold underneath his salty exterior, and she wonders if Malone could be a good catch after all.

Finding a man should be simple, especially when you aren’t expecting romance!

Lucy Lang wants a husband. She’s not looking for anyone special, just someone decent and reliable—but definitely not a man she’ll fall in love with. A young widow, Lucy already loved and lost her soulmate, and she doesn’t want to risk that kind of heartbreak again. But sick of being lumped in with her cursed “Black Widow” aunts, Lucy is motivated to give up her casual and completely inappropriate relationship with Ethan Mirabelli, her handsome neighbor, and search for something more dependable.

Having been friends with Lucy for years, Ethan knows what she needs better than anyone else—and that’s him. But convincing her that their relationship is more than a “friends with privileges” arrangement will be a long, complicated process. Luckily, Ethan has always been patient…

An unexpected summer fling could turn out to be the best decision she’s ever made!

After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is faced with some hard decisions. First order of business: go to Gideon’s Cove, Maine, to sell the only thing she now owns—a decrepit house in need of some serious flipping. 

When her father’s wingman, James Cahill, asks to go with her, she’s not thrilled...even if he is fairly gorgeous and knows his way around a toolbox. Second on Parker’s list: find a nice man to have a no-strings-attached summer fling with…if that’s even possible in a small town.

Having to fend for herself financially for the first time in her life, Parker signs on as a florist’s assistant and starts to find out who she really is. Maybe James isn’t the boring lawyer she always thought he was. And maybe the house isn’t the only thing that needs a little TLC.

All women have had at least one crappy friend…that one who left a mark and left us drained and confused. Why do we put up with it? How can we focus on the more positive friends in our lives and stop giving our energy to those who suck us dry?

In this refreshing, often hilarious look at friendship, Kristan Higgins and Joss Dey (best friends and hosts of the podcast Crappy Friends) relate their own deeply personal experiences with toxic friends, detailing the red flags they missed or ignored, and the broken hearts they nursed back to health. 

Filled with down-to-earth wisdom, tips on weeding out the bad and making healthy friendships thrive, Crappy Friends is a guide for women of all ages.