Santangelo Books In Order

Publication Order of Lucky Santangelo Books

Santangelo is a series of melodramatic romance novels written by Jackie Collins. The books tell the story of the Santangelo family over a period of several years and generations.

+The Story

Jackie Collins died in 2015, the result of her battle with breast cancer. By then, the author had garnered a reputation for writing hard-hitting romance novels saturated with epic plots and dominant female characters.

The Santangelo series began publication in 1981 and many a reader has admitted to stumbling upon ‘Chances’, the first book in the series, in their teenage years. Anyone that has read Jackie Collins’ previous works can probably guess that the Santangelo series isn’t appropriate reading for young audiences.

The books do not shy away from sex. In fact, the first few novels in the series have been criticized for the incessant sexual content that sometimes interrupts intriguing storytelling.

It should be noted that those complaints typically arise from male readers and that might explain why so many of Jackie Collins’ readers are women. The author has always had a knack for telling the sorts of stories that pique the interest of female audiences, and not just because of her habit of writing sexually promiscuous heroines.

Though, Collins has never been shy about breaking the rules and pushing the moral boundaries of the times.

The Santangelo series specifically tells the story of the Santangelo family. Some attention is given to other entities like the Zennocotti-Grazione Family, the Richmond Family, and the Stanisopolous Family.

But it is the Santangelo men and women that drive the story of the Santangelo series, primarily Lucky and Gino.

The two are initially introduced as enemies of sorts in ‘Chances’. Gino is a crime boss who was forced to go into exile. His daughter Lucky took over. In ‘Chances’, Lucky has grown accustomed to the power she wields. And when she learns of her father’s imminent return, she begins working towards keeping him away.

It is at that point when things look like they might have reached a boiling point that Jackie Collins takes readers back to the past. She introduces readers to Gino as a young man growing up in the 20th Century.

Gino was the son of Italian Immigrants. Growing up in the poorer parts of New York, he learned that while it was possible to survive by walking the straight and narrow road, wealth was not a possibility.

And with the criminal elements thriving around him, Gino decided that the straight and narrow would not be his destiny. So he started his rise to power, first finding his footing as a two-bit gangster, then starting his own business and finally becoming a criminal mastermind of considerable financial strength.

All the while, Gino struggled to make sense of his love life and to overcome the numerous heartaches that assaulted him.

Lucky fared no better in that arena. As a child, she saw her mother’s dead body floating in the family pool. She saw firsthand the disaster that could descend when her father’s unscrupulous business went bad.

Lucky didn’t spend much time with her father. And going to boarding school did nothing to curb her wild impulses. She ran away from School with a friend hoping to find adventure. But her father dragged her home.

Once there, Lucky wished to learn the family business. Her father instead married her off to another family for the purposes of building an alliance. The majority of the Santangelo series is spent exploring Lucky’s relationship with Gino.

Gino is often forced to rely on Lucky to manage the family assets and to protect him from their many enemies. However, he doesn’t always trust her ambition or her interests.

On her part, Lucky initially pursues the family business because of a desire to find purpose and meaning. Once she gets a taste of Gino’s power, she finds that she is no longer willing to give up or even share the throne.

Collins writes her as an ambitious and ruthless woman who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. While she initially tries to hold on to her scruples, Lucky eventually realizes that her moral compass is a weakness she cannot allow to hold her back.

Her many fights with friends, family and enemies alike, her marriages, relationships, and affairs, not to mention the many business projects she undertakes litter the Santangelo series.

+Adaptations

‘Chance’, ‘Lucky’ and ‘Lady Boss’ were turned into two NBC mini-series that Jackie Collins wrote and executive produced.

+Chances

Gino Santangelo’s name resonates with power and prestige, at least in the fields of gambling and organized crime. However, things were not always flowery for Gino.

Gino grew up on the mean streets of New York. The son of Italian Immigrants, he learned early on that hard work did not pay. And he pursued the philosophy by getting into the crime business and working his way up the ladder until he built a multi-million dollar hotel.

But now Gino could lose everything. The crime boss was forced to go into exile because of tax issues. And at the time he had little choice but to let his daughter run the family business.

Now Gino is ready to come back home. However, his daughter Lucky has set in motion events that could delay his return. Now that Lucky has had a taste of power, she isn’t too keen on letting it slip out of her fingers.

+Lucky

‘Chances’, the first book in the Santangelo series, was primarily designed to explore Gino Santangelo as a character. Its sequel changes things by throwing a little more of the spotlight onto Lucky Santangelo.

Ambitious, cunning and sensual, Lucky has always sought the love and respect of her father. However, she hasn’t always gone about the right way of getting those things. She takes center stage in ‘Lucky’, a strong woman who makes her presence known as she prowls her Las Vegas Casino.

This time she is up against cold Hollywood wife, a married cocaine-addicted heiress and a power-obsessed magnate.

Lucky wants to have it all. She wants her empire to thrive. She wants the man she desires safe within her grasp. And she wants to protect her father’s honor, and this book details the steps she takes to get what she wants.