Violet Duke Books In Order

Publication Order of Can't Resist Books

Publication Order of Cactus Creek Books

Publication Order of Unfinished Love Books

Publication Order of Juniper Hills Books

Publication Order of Luxe Springs Books

Violet Duke is the pseudonym of Nina Nakayama, a contemporary romance writer who writes a series of popular happily ever after novels. The former professor of English has beaten all odds to become a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author with several of her titles. Duke writes stories of sexy match ups, sweet but everyday characters, and emotional narratives that are great fun. Since her 2013 debut “Resisting the Bad Boy” was published, she has gone on to sell over a million books and made her way into many international and national bestseller lists.

Violet Duke asserts that she has had a lifelong obsession with books and would spend hours in the public library as a kid. Decades later, she still has not managed to kick the reading habit and still reads a book a day even if it is by nightly flashlight bingeing. It could be argued that she found her way into a writing career from her love for reading. While she had always wanted to become a writer ever since she was a child, she got a lot of inspiration from the many books that she read as a child. As a child she got started drawing her stories when she was five before she moved on to writing compositions on scrapbooks that she still has to this day. Her parents always say that she had an almost insatiable hunger for reading and would go to the public library any free time she could get. During her teen years, she loved the Young Adult section of her local library and had read the entire section by the time she left for college. As such, most of the inspiration for her novels comes from authors such as Elizabeth Lowell, Jude Deveraux, and Judith McNaught.

Similar to her heroines, the ups and downs of life have been part and parcel of Violet Duke’s life. But alongside the bad she has also had the quirky happily ever after ending that most people only ever dream of or read about in books. She lives on Hawaii’s Oahu Island with her husband and children in her dream house that was designed on bargain bin architecture software only readable older versions of Windows XP. The hero in her HEA is a romantic man who got her digits from a former student and then tricked her into going out with him when she could have been writing her doctoral dissertation. Duke fell in love with the man and a few months later got married to her prince charming. She loves to say that he was the major inspiration for her leaving a career in academia to pursue a writing career in contemporary romance. When she is not reading her books, Violet can be found playing with power tools, cooking impossible to replicate recipes, and playing with her kids and her husband.

The “Cactus Creek” series of novels is Violet Duke’s most popular. It is a small town series with a quirky cast, romantic heroes, strong heroines, and cameos from some of Duke’s most popular characters from her other series. The series of novels is set in the small town of Cactus Creek, that Violet modeled on the fantastic little town that she lived in while she was writing her doctoral dissertation. The series is composed of two novellas and three novels. The themes in the novel vary with the first novel being about beer and chocolate, the second about martial arts and antique weapons, and the third about football. They are an eclectic mix of narratives that follow the standard happily ever after formula though they have more flavor due to the cameo appearances by some of her popular characters from previous novels such as the “Nice Guy/Nice Girl” Books. What makes the novels different from the typical happily ever after novel is that in addition to her men being gorgeous, they strongly believe in love and is hopeless romantics even in the face of heart break. The heroes are dedicated and loyal and will everything in their power to get what they want as long as it works for the good of everyone in the situation.

“Love, Chocolate, and Beer” the first novel in the series has romance meeting the most unlikely of matchups. The lead in the novel is Luke Bradford, a chocolatier who moves his business to Cactus Creek, determined to make a success of it, by being the chocolatier of choice for miles around. But his plans for a grand takeover suffer a setback when he meets the feisty beer brewing girl from next door who thinks his idea of romantic idealism is hogwash. Bradford is now driven by an intense need to drive her nuts though he cannot deny that he finds her insanely additive and easy to incite. On the other hand, Dani Dobson the brewing queen of the town is riled up by the fact that Bradford, even as he is charming and sexy is selling something that has caused her so much pain. In her world idealistic romance only exists in the movies and she is going to do everything in her power to crush his ideas. To make things even more interesting, Bradford has decided to go head-to-head with her dubbing joints like hers, caves that romance hibernates to when it is bored.

“Love, Diamonds, and Spades” opens to the self-proclaimed queen of the west meeting her match in a man she cannot resist. Quinn Christiansen is a fiercely independent single mother that has been making her way through life solo for many years. She has developed a reputation in the town as the one that no man would ever break. She had once lost a two carat heirloom to a man who had preyed on her and abandoned her pregnant and deep in debt. Christiansen had vowed to never love again and instead look after her son by herself. But now a man arrived in Cactus Creek that is not a respecter of reputations. To add insult to injury, he is gritty, gruff, pushy, and ridiculously handsome man. Nonetheless, she is sure that he is everything she never wanted in a man. On his part, Rylan is bemused that his advances could get a woman so worked up, though he is never one to give up so fast. He has been a gambler in life and has now made it as a landscaper by day and rock artist by night. But he has never wagered anything he ever was willing to lose, particularly not his heart. Nevertheless, the sweet, beautiful and feisty woman could just be the one that gets past all his defenses.