Lisa Wingate Books in Order

Lisa Wingate is a well-known Christian fiction book author who combines crafty Southern storytelling with lyrical elements, history, and mystery. Readers of Nicholas Sparks and Mary Alice Monroe will enjoy her writing.

Here are the Lisa Wingate books in order for her numerous series. She has also written so far several standalone novels including the latest, Shelterwood, in 2024, which is also listed below.

New Lisa Wingate Books

Shelterwood, 2024

Tending Roses Books in Order

1. Tending Roses, 2001
2. Good Hope Road, 2003
3. The Language of Sycamores, 2005
4. Drenched in Light, 2006
5. A Thousand Voices, 2007

Texas Hill Country Books in Order

1. Texas Cooking, 2003
2. Lone Star Cafe, 2004
3. Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner, 2005

Blue Sky Hills Books in Order

1. A Month of Summer, 2008
2. The Summer Kitchen, 2009
3. Beyond Summer, 2010
4. Dandelion Summer, 2011

Daily, Texas Books in Order

1. Talk of the Town, 2008
2. Word Gets Around, 2009
3. Never Say Never, 2010

Moses Lake Books in Order

1. Larkspur Cove, 2011
2. Blue Moon Bay, 2012
3. Firefly Island, 2013
4. Wildwood Creek, 2014

Carolina Chronicles Books in Order

1. The Sea Glass Sisters, 2013 (#0.5)
2. The Prayer Box, 2013 (#1)
3. The Tidewater Sisters, 2014 (#1.5)
4. The Story Keeper, 2014 (#2)
5. The Sandcastle Sister, 2015 (#2.5)
6. The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, 2015 (#3)

Outer Banks Series

1. A Sandy’s Seashell Shop Christmas, 2014

Standalone Lisa Wingate Books in Publication Order

• Before We Were Yours, 2016
• The Book of Lost Friends, 2020
• Shelterwood, 2024

Anthologies in Publication Order

• When You Pass Through Waters: Words of Hope and Healing from Your Favorite Authors, 2015
• Stories from Suffragette City, 2020

Non-Fiction Books in Publication Order

• Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, 2019

Tending Roses Series Summary

Tending Roses

Kate Bowman is on maternity leave from her high-profile Chicago job. She has to convince her old and forgetful grandmother that living alone on her Missouri farm is no longer healthy for her. So she takes her family – husband and son – and moves to the farm to help the grandma for a bit, at least until grandma decides to move away from the farm to a nursing home. While she is there, Kate discovers grandma’s handmade journal which includes numerous stories about family, love, friendship, and faith. While reading the journal, Kate begins to see everything in a new light and reevaluate her own priorities.

Good Hope Road

When a tornado strikes around the Missouri farmland where twenty-year-old Jenilee Lane is living, things become pretty dire for the community. Jenilee doesn’t believe herself as being a Good Samaritan. But when her elderly neighbor, Eudora Gibson, finds herself trapped in her own cellar, Jenilee Lane knows she has to help the old woman. In fact, the whole town has to gather together to save what is important and leave the unimportant behind. The story is told from two points of view, from Jenilee and Eudora, and it is full of depth and love that is prevalent in the South.

The Language of Sycamores

Karen Sommerfield’s life has been upside for a while now. She has cancer, although in remission, her family life is not the greatest, and she cannot have kids. Thus, she does what she knows best: buries herself into work. However, when she is downsized and her doctor tells her that her cancer that was in remission might be back, she leaves everything behind and moves to Grandma Rose’s farm, where Kate Bowman is living a seemingly happy and content life. Here Karen and Rose will have to work to rebuild their shaky relationship, and Karen must find out what she truly wants from life.

Drenched in Light

Julia Costell had a bright future ahead of her as a gifted ballet dancer. But when her professional dancing career broke her and left her spent after she collapsed following a bout with an eating disorder, she began working as a guidance counselor at a performing arts high school where a gifted student went one day to her with an essay. Little did she know that the student and the essay would be the spark of a new life for Julia, one where she would be able to find a new purpose in life and her new destiny.

A Thousand Voices

Dell Jordan is a talented young musician. She always loved music, and she was always encouraged by everyone to follow her passion. She is back from a successful one-year journey with a traveling symphony, and she is about to receive her much-desired scholarship. But still, she is not all too content. Because something from her past bothers her deeply. She can’t figure out why her mother would abandon her, and she doesn’t even know who her father is. She wants answers and she will go to the end of the world, even to Oklahoma’s Kiamichi Mountains to find them. She feels her Choctaw ancestors are calling her name.

Texas Hill Country Series Summary

Texas Cooking

Colleen Collins is an investigative reporter who had some troubles at work, so now she has been offered a job to write magazine articles about Texas cooking in the rural area. So she travels to San Saline, a small town that she finds right away enchanting. She also grows fond of the town residents, and especially of one person, True McKitrick. But what she doesn’t expect to find in that small place is a piece of herself.

Lone Star Cafe

Laura Draper is a magazine editor who finds herself, after some troubles at home, in a small town in Texas on an assignment. Just like Colleen in the previous book in the series, Laura will have to rediscover herself and along the way to learn that life is worth living even when one is not a big hotshot at a major publishing company.

Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

In this third book, we meet Lindsey Attwood, who this time is a paleontologist and not a writer like the previous two ladies. She is in Big Lizard Bottom, Texas, on an undercover assignment where she is posing as a horse psychology student. Her real goal: recover some stolen dinosaur tracks at a local ranch. She must be undercover because the theft might be an inside job. Soon after she arrives in town, however, things go awfully sideways for Lindsey. She almost runs over a dog that she will eventually adopt, and one of the cowboys running after said dog is Zack, whom Lindsey falls in love with. But things are not always as they seem.

Blue Sky Hills Series Summary

A Month of Summer

Rebecca Macklin has not the best relationship with her estranged father. So when she learns from the police that he has been found wandering alone on the streets of Dallas, lost and afraid, she knows she must return to her childhood home to deal with him. Her relationship with the wife of his father (not her own mother) is not the greatest either. And her own husband might be having an affair. Unfortunately, her fast trip to her father’s house makes her realize that she might have to stay there longer than anticipated. Alzheimer’s is not a fun or easy illness, and soon Rebecca realizes that this is only one problem she has to face while away from home.

The Summer Kitchen

Sandra Kaye Darden’s life is in shambles. After the death of a loved one, everyone around her seems to be distancing from her. Her uncle Poppy died and her adopted son, Jake, has disappeared. She is devastated, but she knows she has to organize Poppy’s house to be sold.  In the meantime, Cass Sally Blue and her brother Rusty are two lost kids who have it bad. When Sandra Kaye meets the children who are running from foster home to foster home, all their lives forever change.

Beyond Summer

Tam Lambert is a well-off woman who learns that her home is in foreclosure. Now she has to take her family and move to Blue Sky Hill where she meets other people, including Shasta Williams, who becomes her neighbor and friend. When they learn of a Ponzi scheme that could mean losing all, the two women bond together and learn that nothing is impossible if you just sent your mind to it.

Dandelion Summer

Epiphany Salerno is just sixteen-years-old. When she is hired to take care of J. Norman Alvord during the afternoons, little does she know that both their lives will be forever changed. Past mysteries come to surface and the grumpy old and independent man will soon learn that friendship and adventure can always keep a heart yound, while the young girl learns that her future is not all that uncertain after all.

Daily, Texas Series Summary

Talk of the Town

Mandalay Florentino is working on a reality TV show and has to go to the small town of Daily, Texas to organize a reunion concert for Amber Amberson, who is a finalist in the show. Amber is a 19-year-old girl who is poor and all she has to her name is her voice and faith in God. Some people don’t want her to win because of her gift and faith, and there is some other secret in town that people don’t want to be leaked either. But Mandalay with her camera and inquisitive questions might destroy all that…

Word Gets Around

Lauren Eldridge is the best horse trainer in the entire state of Texas. She’s away from home but has to come back when her father confesses to her that he’s bought a horse that doesn’t want to behave at all. And Lauren is the only one that can tame him and train him. The said horse is the star of a Hollywood movie, so Lauren is her father’s only chance. But when she gets home, she realizes that herself in over her head when she sees the movie screenwriter, Nate Heath. But what does Nate really want?

Never Say Never

Kai Miller is a driver. She leads a wayfarer’s existence. So when she gets to Daily, Texas due to hurricane evacuation, she realizes that putting down roots might not be all that bad, especially when she meets Kemp Eldridge. Except that Kemp is already promised to another. So it seems that Kai has to move on once again, or she would if it weren’t for the naughty schemings of Aunt Donetta.

Moses Lake Series Summary

Larkspur Cove

Andrea Henderson has had it tough. She is newly divorced so she moves to Moses Lake to her parents’ vacation home where she hopes to find herself again. She is there with her son, and she begins a job as a social worker. When he gets a flat tire on the road, she notices a car with a man and a little girl. She doesn’t feel good about the man, so she motions for the car to move on. But the little girl is constantly on her mind. Mart McClendon is a warden with a sorrow past. He blames himself for the accidental death of his brother and nephew. The day Andrea has the flat tire, she also meets Mart. Initially, he doesn’t much like her, but soon they are both working together to find the little girl Andrea saw before on that fateful day.

Blue Moon Bay

Heather Hampton left her hometown, Moses Lake, a long time ago. She is an architect working in Seattle. When she learns that her family doesn’t want to sell their farmland, she moves back home to figure out what is going on. But everyone seems to be keeping secrets from her. She always had trust issues about her family which she is now estranged from, and surprisingly even her high-school crush, Blaine Underhill, keeps something from her. But all she wants is to find out the secret, expose the conspiracy, and go back home to her cushy job. Except destiny seems to have other plans for her.

Firefly Island

Mallory Hale is a high-profile Congress staffer who is in love with Daniel Everson and enchanted with his little boy, Nick. Much to her surprise, Daniel asks her to marry him and move with him down to Texas since he found a new job there with genetically modified crop. She says yes, and off they go into a life of adventures. She is still getting used to her small-town life when she starts to take notice of some flickering lights on the small neighboring Firefly Island. She knows she must solve the mystery around those lights, especially when they are not allowed on that island under any circumstance.

Wildwood Creek

Allie Kirkland is determined to work in the movie industry in order to follow in her family’s footsteps. When she is offered a job to do costumes for a historical documentary drama in Wildwood Creek, she jumps at the opportunity. Bonnie Rose, after a very turbulent past, lands in Wildwood Creek and becomes a teacher. As each woman learns about the town’s past and about their own, and as their own fates intertwine, the present and the past collide, they both get caught up in a 150-year-old mystery that needs to be solved.

Carolina Chronicles Summary

The Prayer Box

Tandi Jo Reese is renting a cottage from a 91-year-old woman,  Iola Anne Poole, on Hatteras Island. When the old woman dies, it is Tandi’s job to clean out the place, a Victorian mansion, when she discovers an old prayer box which hides the long-life of Iola, with bits of papers noting the woman’s wishes, prayers, fears, thoughts. Tandi realizes that her landlord was not a simple woman, and reading those letters changes Tandi’s life forever.

The Story Keeper

Jen Gibbs is a successful New York editor who discovers an old and mysterious manuscript on her desk one day. Little does she know that while reading that manuscript, the more she learns about Sarra, the mixed-race Melungeon girl trapped by dangerous men in the turn of the century Appalachia, the more she feels she must learn more about that girl. So much that she undergoes a journey to Blue Ridge Mountains, a place where she once thought she left behind forever.

The Sea Keeper’s Daughters

Whitney Monroe is a restaurant owner who is trying to keep her Minnesota business which includes two restaurants from being sold through a hostile takeover. When she finds some old letters from her grandmother, she learns that her grandmother had a sister. After her estranged father lands in the hospital, she must go to North Carolina to visit him. While she is driving towards her target, she decides to take all the valuables she can from her rightful family hotel that one belonged to her mother, so she can sell them and keep her business. While going through ancient stuff in the house, she discovers some old letters and some hidden artifacts that will change her worldview forever.

Lisa Wingate Biography

Lisa Wingate is an American author who was born in Germany but grew up in the US, in Oklahoma. She attended Oklahoma University from where she graduated with a BA degree in English and communications.

In 1988, Lisa Wingate married Sam, who was a school teacher and had a ranch in Texas. Over the years they lived in various places in Texas with their two sons until they finally settled down in Menro, Arkansas, close to the Texas border.

Lisa always liked to read and write. In school, she would write stories, which the teacher would read to the entire class as she found them that good. Her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Krackhardt, told Lisa that she expected to find Lisa’s name in one of the popular magazines someday. She recognized her talent and guided her towards writing. In addition, Lisa Wingate got inspiration from her older brother who was also always writing. She knew she wanted to become just like him.

Over the years, she worked as a journalist, technical writer, and motivational and inspirational speaker. She wrote articles for various magazines and small-town newspapers. While she always wanted to write, Lisa only began writing after finishing her college, after she got married, worked other jobs, and got her first son. During that time she was still a technical writer. Once the boys were a bit more grown up and independent, Lisa Wingate finally had time to devote more time to writing fiction.

Lisa Wingate released her debut novel, Tending Roses, in 2001, after which she managed to write around 30 books so far. Her genres include not only Christian but also more streamlined ones, which is rather rare for a Christian book author. She not only worked with Bethany House, a Christian fiction book publisher, but also with Random House, one of the big six traditional publishing houses in the US.

The inspiration for Tending Roses came from the author being with her grandmother while her first child was just a baby. They were talking, and her grandmother began telling her life story, about her flowerbeds, and all the life lessons she has learned over the years. Those stories were gathered in a small notebook that Lisa found at some point in the house, and those became the basis for a novel that would combine bits and pieces of her grandmother’s stories with a fictional family.

Once the book was done, which took her about a year to write, she sent it to various agents along with her query. During that time, she began writing her second novel, Texas Cooking, which would be the first in a new series titled Texas Hill Country. About half a year later, both books were sold to Penguin Putnam. The book Before We Were Yours was on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 10 months, and so far it has sold over one million copies alone. It has also been recently optioned for film by MGM Studios.

For her books, Lisa Wingate won numerous awards, including the  2014 RT Reviewers Choice Award for Wildwood Creek, 2014 RT Book Reviews and 2015 Christy Contemporary Award for The Story Keeper, 2015 RT Book Reviews Top Pick for The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, 2011 Carol Contemporary Award for Never Say Never, 2012 Carol Award in Women’s Fiction for Dandelion Summer, and 2017 Goodreads Choice Award in Historical Fiction for Before We Were Yours. Her books were also nominated for several awards.

Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization chose Lisa Wingate and six others for the National Civics Award. This award celebrates people who stand in the forefront to promote kindness and civility in American life. Over the years, the Lisa Wingate books have been translated into over 35 languages.

Praise for the Lisa Wingate Books

Historical fiction has the capacity to entertain, educate, or horrify. In Before We Were Yours Lisa Wingate manages all three. (Abby Fabiaschi)

Lisa Wingate brings…shocking crimes and their long-term emotional impact to light in her affecting new novel, Before We Were Yours. (Nick Poppy, New York Post)

Richly emotional and spiritual, Tending Roses affected me from the first page. A story at once gentle and powerful about the very old and the very young, about the young woman who loves them all. In Kate, Lisa Wingate has created a wonderful character. (Luanne Rice)

Wingate’s touching story of love and faith proves the old adage that we should take time to smell the roses and try to put our modern problems in perspective. (Booklist)

A remarkably talented and innovative writer, with a real feel for human emotions. (Linda Lael Miller)

A novel bursting with joy amidst crisis: small town life is painted with scope and detail in the capable hands of a writer who understands longing, grief and the landscape of a woman’s heart. (Adriana Trigani about Godo Hope Road)

References

• Author’s official website
• Penguin Random House author profile
• Author Goodreads interview

Books Reading Order » Christian Fiction Authors » Lisa Wingate Books in Order