Meredith Lavender Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Meredith Lavender is a published author known for writing along with Kendall Shores.

Meredith Lavender has worked for over two decades as a television writer and an executive producer. She has been a showrunner and an executive producer on The Flight Attendant on HBO Max and was an executive producer on Nashville, and is working on different projects in development with A&E.

Happy Wife is a 2025 book by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores. If you’ve been keeping your eyes open for a great summer read with plenty of drama, you’re in the right place. The Read with Jenna Book Club Pick was featured on the TODAY Show, where Jenna Bush Hager called it ‘one of those delicious, fun summer books that you’ll open on the beach and never put down’.

This national bestseller features a young woman who has to find her missing husband in order to prove her innocence, all taking place in a wealthy Florida community where appearances are not always what they seem.

Main character Nora Davies lives in Winter Park, Florida, but she’s kind of sticking out like a sore thumb. She doesn’t really fit in with the community there, which consists of old guard Floridians mixing with the coastal elite (who are often fleeing from being taxed).

She herself is 28 years old and working at a country club, but the job is barely helping her to get by. With things as they are, Nora can’t help but think that she is going nowhere, and fast. But things might be about to change with the introduction of Will Somerset into her life.

Will is a lawyer of 46 years old who is prominent in the local community. He is a father with a teen daughter and has just recently got divorced. It all ends up setting the two of them up for a perfect romance. The social scene can’t help but get to talking when they find out that Nora and Will have fallen in love after a quick fairy-tale courtship and end up getting married.

Things seem to be going well, but Winter Park is turned completely on its end when Will goes missing the morning after a big birthday party thrown for him by Nora. Nora tries to run over the various aspects of their romance in her mind in an attempt to figure out what went wrong and takes part in a search after he disappears.

The entire time, Nora is wondering what has happened. She has to question herself and looks at the one thing that she is thinking from every possible angle– where is Will? What has happened to her husband? And will she end up being the number one suspect when it comes to his vanishing act?

Putting together suspenseful moments, social dynamics, and a wide cast of interesting characters, Happy Wife dives head first into the topics of wealth, marriage, and the secrets that we hide. Read this novel to keep up with all of the action and find out what happens!

Perfect Life is a 2026 book by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores. The bestselling authors come together once more in order to pen the sequel to the first book that introduced readers both to Nora and to the setting of Winter Park.

A woman is going to have to deal with the secrets from her past as well as a spouse that she thought she knew well after a murder occurs that she never saw coming. Readers who loved the twists of Happy Wife are going to love seeing the drama continue with an all-new story from Lavender and Shores.

Main character Este Walker moved to Winter Park, Florida, but she didn’t relocate there so that she could make friends alone. It was more of a necessity for her, a chance to reinvent herself and leave her old world behind.

It was just five years ago that Este decided to depart from her life in California without warning in order to go and mingle with Florida’s elite among the lakefront estates. She achieved her goal and now hangs out with her new friends, a cocktail in her hand and with an obscene amount of money at her disposal. She also has secrets, plenty of them that she wants to keep buried.

Everything worked out and Este is as close to content as she can get. Keeping to herself and worrying about her secrets have meant that she has a relatively small social circle, but Este doesn’t mind. She’s made friends in the form of her best friend Nora and has her husband Beau. They provide her with company enough and when she’s with them she finds that she has all the companionship and social life that she needs.

The only problem is that Este may have buried her secrets, but now she is worried that they are coming out and they are catching up to her. Nora gained a lot of attention on a national scale last year when she became a suspect in the case of her missing husband. Through the extra focus, Este’s picture appeared onscreen. Now the past that she thought she could leave behind seems to be closing the gap, and more than that, she’s about to find out that her innocent husband may also have some secrets of her own.

All of this comes to a roiling boil and then starts to overflow when a murder sends people throughout Winter Park talking and ends up turning the entire place upside down. Este finds herself now part of a high stakes murder investigation and even though she doesn’t have any professional experience is going to have to do her best to get down to the bottom of everything.

She’s going to have to make her way through various secrets and lies, all to figure out the answer as to what happened in California and whether it’s come back to haunt her. How can she get herself out of all this and will she be able to find out who the killer is? Read Perfect Life by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores to find out!