Books

About the Series

Anne's very first Greek tycoon was on the cover of one of her books. He was supposed to be Owain O'Neill, the Welsh rock singer turned historian in DREAM CHASERS. Of course, he was neither, but he did become a very good friend — and an inspiration of sorts.

All her Greek heroes owe a little bit to him.

There have been quite a few starting with Damon Alexakis in THE ALEXAKIS BRIDE, right up to the last one, Lukas Antonides, who, in  THE RETURN OF ANTONIDES, finally became a hero as he discovered a reason to come back for the girl he left behind.

All her Greek heroes find a bit more than they bargained for when they meet the heroines of their lives in Anne's books. Whether they are real business tycoons like Damon and Elias or sailboat racing loners like Theo or beach bums like PJ, they are fun to write about, to challenge and match wits with.

They keep Anne on her toes, especially when they turn out to be guys like Spencer Tyack — who isn't even Greek! — but who nearly hijacked THE SANTORINI BRIDE and had to be promised a book of his own (THE BOSS'S WIFE FOR A WEEK) before he would settle down and behave himself. Spence is an honorary Greek tycoon.

One lovely thing about these Greeks, especially the Savas and Antonides guys, is they seem to have vast extended families intent on providing Anne with lots of stories down the road. She can't wait.

About the Series

Sand and sea and sun are three of the main ingredients of paradise to Anne's way of thinking. She hasn't quite figured out how to get the cowboy and the horse to the Caribbean, but she's working on it.

In the meantime she's delighted to share Pelican Cay with a soccer goalkeeper turned entrepreneur, a devil-may-care charter pilot, and a Spanish playboy — not to mention the women who get to tame them!

Pelican Cay first appeared in some of Anne's earlier Presents novels and figured prominently in the lives of all of the Wolfe brothers in her New York! New York! mini-series By the time she finished writing NATHAN'S CHILD and was in the middle of yet another northern winter writing about Caribbean sea breezes, she found herself longing to go back for an extended period of time. Writing about Lachlan, Hugh and Molly McGillivray has given her the opportunity to spend a whole vicarious year there.

Now she's finished, but every day she wants to pack up her flippers and her sun screen and go back in person! For the moment, though, she's going to have to settle for living through Lachlan and Fiona, Hugh and Sydney, and Joaquin and Molly!

About the Series

Anne is not a big city girl, but if she had to pick a city to live in, there's no question which she'd pick — NEW YORK! As different as it might seem from "mainstream America" it embodies much of the American spirit — it's vital, strong, diverse, colorful.

The whole city hums with an energy that exists nowhere else. And the energy rubs off on the people who live there or grew up there — Finn MacCauley, Sam Fletcher, Gibson Walker and Rhys, Dominic and Nathan Wolfe — who meet challenges head on, who know how to get what they want and do whatever they need to do.

It's a city that can be a little bit daunting, too. Izzy isn't sure if she's up to the challenge — of New York and of Finn. Josie, safe and settled in Dubuque, has no desire to leave home. But Sam's life is there, and wherever Sam goes, she'll take the risk. And Chloe — well, Chloe wants that one magical summer. A small town girl with big beautiful dreams, Chloe doesn't want New York forever, just for the moment — until she meets Gibson.

Chloe's neighbor Rhys has his hands full when Chloe moves out and Mariah Kelly moves back in. He and Mariah have been friends for a long time. But then one night something happens between them...and suddenly Rhys's world is turned upside down. Not long afterwards, his tough businessman brother Dominic has his own world turned upside down by Mariah's free-spirited purple-haired sister, Sierra.

Nathan Wolfe, Rhys and Dominic's brother, never spent much time in New York after growing up there. The free-wheeling photographer saw the whole wide world as his home. To call him "footloose" would be mild. But Dominic has news for Nathan — news that sends him to the small Bahamian island of Pelican Cay — and a confrontation with Carin Campbell. He has a lot of questions, first and foremost, "Why didn't you tell me you'd had my child?" Nathan and Carin's story bringst them to New York, too, where they have to confront the past and each other. Like I said, in New York there's always a lot going on!

About the Series

The second cowboy Anne ever fell in love with was Jess Harper played by Robert Fuller on Laramie.  Stubborn, hard-headed, honorable (not to mention gorgeous) men who are too noble for their own good tend to appeal to her.  Thus Robert Tanner, oldest of the Tanner brothers, was born. He was, an editor once said, "a died-with-his-boots-on" sort of cowboy.  Well, yes.

Tanner (no one called him Robert except his mother) was was followed by Luke, whose hot-headedness was legendary, and by Noah, who never met a woman he couldn't charm.  

The three of them began a series of books that became The Code of the West.  These three have been updated and reissued. The others will follow.

Check out these related series:

The Cowboys of Horse Thief Mountain

About the Series

The Cowboys of Horse Thief Mountain grew out of the series that began with The Tanner Brothers. It seems like once those guys started coming out of the woodwork, they just wouldn’t quit!

The first Horse Thief Mountain cowboy, Mace Nichols, appeared in The Cowboy and the Kid. Mace was the one that “the Kid,” eight-year-old Becky, Taggart Jones’s matchmaking daughter, had had a crush on since, well, forever. Mace, of course, was already long and happily married to his childhood sweetheart, Jenny.

And then he wasn’t. Word was he had filed for divorce.

Mace and Jenny’s story is, according to Anne, less a romance and more a love story. When Mace, equal parts bull-headed and honorable, discovers he can’t give Jenny the family that has always been her dream, he is, of course, gutted. Also, he feels as if he’s cheating her. Jenny disagrees. Vehemently. But it takes more than one person to make a marriage. Convincing Mace is not an easy task.

Shane Nichols, Mace’s younger brother, is a “leap before you look” kind of guy. He’ll do anything for a friend – even kidnap the bride when it seems like she’s going to marry the wrong man. He’s not thinking about marriage himself. He’d never met a girl who made him think about anything long term. Until Poppy Hamilton enters his life. If Mace’s story is at times dark and angsty, Shane’s is the opposite. Anne had so much fun writing it. Especially the chicken.

And then there’s Cash. If anyone is more of a rolling stone than Shane, it’s his rodeo traveling buddy Cash Callahan. Cash has been breezing in and out of Milly Malone’s life for five years! Long-suffering Milly is, but there comes a point when even Milly has had enough. Cash is sure she’ll come to her senses even though she gets engaged to another man. But when Milly’s wedding looms on Saturday, suddenly Cash finds himself rethinking spending the rest of his life without Milly in it.

Check out these related series:

The Tanner Brothers

About the Series

The first man Anne McAllister fell in love with was a cowboy. She was five and he was nineteen, and she followed him everywhere. It was, she thinks, a case of imprinting — like a duck. In any case, tall, dark, handsome lone-wolf types have appealed to her ever since.

"Me, for instance," her college professor husband says. Well, yes. But even though she's been married to the man of her dreams for over thirty years, she still loves writing about those men of the west!

So far there have been seventeen CODE OF THE WEST titles. One of them, A COWBOY'S PROMISE, links with an earlier mini-series Anne did for the HARLEQUIN AMERICAN line, in particular the book GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. Which just goes to show that there is a whole alternative universe out there and you never know when threads are going to weave together.

The most recent book in this series came out from Harlequin Presents in ONE-NIGHT LOVE CHILD, the story of Flynn and Sara from THE GREAT MONTANA COWBOY AUCTION. As she still hears from people wanting Logan and Addie's story, Anne hopes someday to write that, too. But not just yet.

If you've ever tried to keep all these folks straight, a timeline and family tree pages might help. We'll be putting it up as we get things sorted out.

About the Series

Imagine what would happen if you wrote a romance and the man on your cover — your hero! — turned up on your doorstep!

That's the sort of thing Anne thinks about when she's staring at a blank screen! So she just sort of imagined what would happen when one did — and wrote IMAGINE about how Frances Moon's life changed when Jack Neillands appeared.

But then Jack had a friend called Carter, and Carter fell in love with Diane. But Nick was already in love with Diane. And if Nick got Diane, Carter had to have a love of his own. Anne — and a whole lot of readers — figured that out.

So then there was Annabel. And her kids. And a baby. And a goat. Carter got more than he expected in that book.

There were a couple of anthologies, too. One about what happened at Nick and Diane's wedding and another that took place back in Boone's Corner, Vermont several years later when Lucy Potter accidentally took Holt Braxton home for Christmas.

Anne is very glad Boone's Corner is still there. She never knows when a small Vermont town will come in handy!

The middle book in the IMAGINE series, I THEE WED, was reprinted as a part of a two-fer in MARRY ME . . . MAYBE? in 2004.

About the Series

Anne spent her formative years on southern California beaches. And while she imprinted on a cowboy, she can't quite shake the sand from her toes.

The Quicksilver books have a lot of Anne's favorites in them — baseball and beaches, San Francisco and sand castles, The Strand in Manhattan Beach and the Channel Islands off the California Coast. There are a few old family stories dressed up in new clothes.

The books were a delight to write because they allowed Anne not only to go back to old haunts and reconnect with old friends, but to do lots of fun "research" into making sand castles, rehabbing a baseball player's broken arm, becoming a priest, being an umpire, finding one's roots on the Navajo reservation, restoring a Victorian house, getting a divorce in Alameda County, getting arrested for soliciting a prostitute, soothing the painful gums of teething babies, stealing a Porsche, being a hero in pursuit of losing his virginity . . .

Oh, there's no end to the amazing stuff writers get to learn — and no end to the kind and interesting people they get to meet while doing so!

The amazing thing is, these characters hung around. In GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT, the last of the five, there was a teenager in trouble and in need of a good role model. Joanna Hancock-Smith was determined that Chase Whitelaw was going to be that man. He was. And thirteen actual years later the boy, Charlie Seeks Elk, came back as the hero of a book of his own — A COWBOY'S PROMISE — in Anne's Code of the West series! Lots of the Quicksilver folks came back to visit, too. It was like "old home week."

About the Series

Late last year Anne got call from Sophie Weston inviting her to join in writing a four-book series about couples whose stories grew out of an English village wedding. To say she was thrilled to work with such stellar writers as Sophie and Jessica Hart and Liz Fielding is an understatement. She could hardly wait.

But she had to, because about a week after she signed on, she broke her wrist. Then Liz, in a fit of entirely unnecessary oneupsmanship, broke her arm! Things got put off. The holidays came and went. There were weeks when no one thought the books would see the light of day. But in March, with broken bones knitted and casts removed, all four writers got together in Castle Combe, often called the 'prettiest village in England' where they went to work out the final logistics and details, while soaking up the local village atmosphere, sharing an elegant lunch, and, not least, enjoying each other's company. Anne loves research anyway, and this was the best kind of all.

The stories have come together at last, all revolving around the wedding that took Combe St Philip (which, let's face it, owes a lot to the beauty of Castle Combe) by storm because it wasn't just a wedding, it was a royal wedding -- the royal wedding of Prince Jonas of San Michele and local girl, Hope Kennard, who was not royal at all. Hope did, however, have a backbone, and when she said she wanted to get married in her village church, even though the San Michele royals were not pleased, Jonas, having finally found the love of his life, was determined to make that happen. How they got to that point you can discover in Sophie Weston's charming, Falling for Charming (formerly titled The Prince's Bride).

Hope's decision had a huge impact on her older brother, Max. He was not expecting Hope's friend Flora to take over his kitchen -- or his life. But in Jessica Hart's Best Made Plans (formerly titled The Baronet's Wedding Engagement), she does. It is great fun. The first of the four books to be finished, Jessica's book set the bar very high. Liz Fielding met it. Her story, If the Shoe Fits (formerly titled The Bridesmaid's Royal Bodyguard), is a delight. Her characters, Ally and Fredrik, jumped off the page. They jumped into Anne's story, too.

Miss You More (formerly titled The Best Man's Bride), Anne's story, grew out of conversations she and Sophie had about a book they considered writing together long ago. In it they had ghosts and parrots and grumpy old earls. They had a young dashing hero and the woman he was going to sweep off her feet, and for once, far too much plot. Trouble was, too, Anne had written a scene with the heroine's ex in it and, frankly, he kept hijacking the story.

She and Sophie never wrote the book. The ghost wouldn't cooperate. Neither would the ex, Jack. He wouldn't go away, either. And he turned up the minute Sophie invited Anne to join the series. She barely got off the phone with Sophie when she looked around and there he was, leaning against the doorjamb, looking supremely satisfied. "About time," Jack said. "Now you can finally write my story."

Anne knows when she's been beaten. She wrote Jack's story. She wrote Celina's story, too. Celina wasn't the heroine from the first story. She was quite different. Jack had changed a bit, too. He wasn't giving up, that was for sure. He loved Celina. He needed to make her understand that. Anne thought he needed to shape up a bit, too. They had some discussions over the course of the book. Celina had some input, too. That's what heroines are for, she reminded them: to make heroes realize they can be even better than they already are.