Clayborn of Rosehill Books In Order

Publication Order of Claybornes of Rose Hill Books

The name ‘Clayborne of Rosehill’ refers to a series of historical romance novels written by Julie Garwood. The books follow the exploits of a group of brothers who are forced to get their acts together when they stumble upon an abandoned little girl.

+The Story
The Clayborne of Rosehill series has been praised as one the best collection of novels in Julie Garwood’s bibliography. The books are technically romance. However, when Julie isn’t finding new ways to get her protagonists together, she is exploring themes of family and friendship.

When readers meet the Claybornes in ‘For the Roses’, the first novel in the Clayborne of Rosehill series, it is 1860 and the kids are a little down on their luck; Cole, Adam, Travis, and Douglas are homeless.

The street urchins live in an alley. They steal to survive. Though, when lucrative targets prove difficult to find, they will stoop so low as to eat out of garbage cans. Cast aside by society and largely looked down upon by everyone except their Mama Rose, the Claybornes have garnered quite the harsh reputation.

Having bonded over their trials on the streets of New York, eventually learning to look at one another as brothers, the Claybornes knew they were on a journey to a dark and gloomy future.

But then Douglas found something astonishing. It was his turn to stand guard as his brothers slept one random night. He took note of a basket discarded by a mysterious woman. On investigating the matter, Douglas was shocked to stumble upon a baby girl.

With his brothers helping him, Douglas was able to rescue the girl before the rats could chew through her basket. And after a thorough discussion, it was determined that the boys would band together to give the girl, who they called Mary rose after their Mama Rose, the home, and family that none of them had ever enjoyed.

To achieve this difficult task, the Claybornes abandoned their life on the streets of New York, moved to Montana and made new lives for themselves on the frontier. They gave Mary Rose every advantage that was denied them, educated her, clothed her, fed her and turned her into a lady of significant reputation.

And once they were satisfied that she no longer required their direct intervention to find her way through life, the boys turned the spotlight inward and attempted to find new meaning outside their lives with Mary Rose.

The Clayborne of Rosehill series explores the lives of the Clayborne boys as they attempt to carve out happy and respectable futures for themselves. This often involves finding the love of a good woman, settling down and starting homes of their own.

Julie Garwood goes to great lengths to highlight the transformations that the boys undergo. They might have been uncouth ruffians as children, rogues who would go to any lengths to survive, but Mary Rose forced them to see the error of their ways, so much so that by the time she grows up, the Clayborne urchins have become strong, dependable, respectful men of great reputations.

For all their maturation, though, the boys still harbor some of the emotional scarring and damage that life on the streets of New York inflicted upon them. None of them truly care for the concept of marriage or even settling down.

In many cases, it takes the intervention of either Mary Rose or their Mama Rose for the Clayborne boys to take a chance at true love. But while Mama Rose does the heavy lifting of actually bringing them into contact with the sort of women they could fall for, it falls upon the shoulders of these women to force the Clayborne brothers out of their shells.

The love stories that Julie Garwood writes are normally quite contentious. Her heroines are strong, feisty women with iron wills who refuse to bend to the needs of anyone. They challenge each Clayborne brother at every turn, a strategy that makes them all the more irresistible to the Clayborne brother whose interest they have piqued.

There are five books in the Clayborne of Rosehill series. The first novel primarily explores the life of Mary Rose, specifically the events that allow her to find love with the man of her dreams.

The subsequent novels each follow a particular Clayborne brother as he finds the one woman who can tame him and entice him into domestic bliss. Emphasis is placed on the historical setting of each Clayborne of Rosehill novel.

+The Author
Julie Garwood is a native of Kansas City in Missouri where she was born in 1944. An illness she contracted at an early age debilitated Julie’s ability to read. She hid her weakness so effectively that no one realized she couldn’t read until she was 11-years-old.

It was during the summer that her math teacher dedicated to teaching her how to read that Julie’s love for fiction was sparked. A wife and mother of three children, Julie Garwood writes both historical fiction and suspense.

Her first Clayborne of Rosehill novel became a 1997 movie called Rose Hill.

+For the Roses
The Claybornes have always been such a close-knit family. So Douglas, Travis, Adam, and Cole are not amused when Lord Harrison threatens to tear them apart.

The boys are not related by blood. Discarded by society at an early age, they met as children on the streets of New York and bonded over their determination to survive. Growing into a dangerous gang, the Claybornes saw their lives change when they met Mary Rose, a baby girl abandoned in an alley.

The boys vowed to raise her like a lady and give her all the advantages they never had. Years later, Mary Rose cannot help but feel drawn to Lord Harrison. She knows that her brothers, now respectable men, will do anything to keep her safe.

So she convinces them to teach Harrison the ways of the frontier, unaware of the secret he carries and the power it has to upend her life.

+One Pink rose
Some people underestimate Travis because he is the youngest of the Clayborne brothers. But Travis is his own man, or so he would like to think. He never expected to find himself escorting a young woman from Boston to Golden Crest to marry a man she’d never met.

But their Mama Rose had asked Travis for the favor and he couldn’t refuse. And now Travis doesn’t know what to make of his feelings. Emily has a way of stirring his emotions.

He doesn’t know if she could ever fall for a perfect stranger but he isn’t sure he wants to let her run into the arms of another man.