Karen Kingsbury Books in Order

Below is the complete list of Karen Kingsbury books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.

Above the Line Books in Publication Order

1. Take One (2009)
2. Take Two (2009)
3. Take Three (2010)
4. Take Four (2010)

Angels Walking Books in Publication Order

1. Angels Walking (2014)
2. Chasing Sunsets (2015)
3. Brush of Wings (2017)

Bailey Flanigan Books in Publication Order

1. Leaving (2011)
2. Learning (2011)
3. Longing (2011)
4. Loving (2012)

The Baxter Family Books in Publication Order

1. A Baxter Family Christmas (2016)
2. Love Story (2017)
3. In This Moment (2017)
4. To the Moon and Back (2018)
5. When We Were Young (2018)
6. Two Weeks (2020)
7. Someone Like You (2020)
8. Truly, Madly, Deeply (2020)
9. Forgiving Paris (2021)
10. The Baxters: A Prequel (2022)
11. The Baxters Devotional (2024)

Baxter Family Children Books
with Tyler Russell

1. Best Family Ever (2019)
2. Finding Home (2020)
3. Never Grow Up (2021)
4. Adventure Awaits (2022)
   (With Tyler Russell)
5. Being Baxters (2023)
   (With Tyler Russell)

The Bridge Books in Publication Order

1. The Beginning (2012)
2. The Bridge (2012)

Cody Gunner Books in Publication Order

1. A Thousand Tomorrows (2005)
2. Just Beyond the Clouds (2007)
3. This Side of Heaven (2009)

Coming Home Books in Publication Order

1. Coming Home (2012)

Lost Love Books in Publication Order

1. Even Now (2005)
2. Ever After (2006)

Firstborn Books in Publication Order

1. Fame (2005)
2. Forgiven (2005)
3. Found (2006)
4. Family (2006)
5. Forever (2007)

Forever Faithful Books in Publication Order

1. Waiting for Morning (1999)
2. A Moment of Weakness (2000)
3. Halfway to Forever (2002)

Heart of the Story Books in Publication Order

1. The Family of Jesus (2014)
2. The Friends of Jesus (2015)

Liberty University Short Stories/Novellas Books in Publication Order

1. Once Upon a Campus (2016)

Red Gloves Books in Publication Order

1. Gideon’s Gift (2002)
2. Maggie’s Miracle (2003)
3. Sarah’s Song (2004)
4. Hannah’s Hope (2005)

Redemption Books in Publication Order

1. Redemption (2002)
2. Remember (2003)
3. Return (2003)
4. Rejoice (2004)
5. Reunion (2004)

September 11 Books in Publication Order

1. One Tuesday Morning (2003)
2. Beyond Tuesday Morning (2004)
3. Every Now & Then / Remember Tuesday Morning (2008)

Sunrise Books in Publication Order

1. Sunrise (2007)
2. Summer (2007)
3. Someday (2008)
4. Sunset (2008)

Timeless Love Books in Publication Order

1. A Time to Dance (2001)
2. A Time to Embrace (2002)

Standalone Novels Books in Publication Order

1. Where Yesterday Lives (1998)
2. When Joy Came to Stay (2000)
3. On Every Side (2001)
4. Oceans Apart (2002)
5. Divine (2006)
6. Like Dandelion Dust (2006)
7. Between Sundays (2007)
8. Shades of Blue (2008)
9. Unlocked (2009)
10. The Chance (2013)
11. Fifteen Minutes (2013)
12. A Distant Shore (2021)
13. Just Once (2023)
14. The Christmas Ring (2025)

Picture Books in Publication Order

1. Go Ahead and Dream (2000)
2. Let Me Hold You Longer (2004)
3. Let’s Go on a Mommy Date (2008)
4. We Believe in Christmas (2008)
5. The Princess and the Three Knights (2009)
6. Let’s Have a Daddy Day (2010)
7. Brave Young Knight (2011)
8. Far Flutterby (2012)
9. Always Daddy’s Princess (2013)
10. Whatever You Grow Up to Be (2014)
11. Forever My Little Boy (2016)
12. Forever My Little Girl (2016)

Short Story Collections Books in Publication Order

1. A Treasury of Christmas Miracles (2001)
2. A Treasury of Miracles for Women (2002)
3. A Treasury of Miracles for Teens (2003)
4. A Treasury of Miracles for Friends (2004)
5. A Treasury of Adoption Miracles (2005)

Non-Fiction Novels Books in Publication Order

1. Missy’s Murder (1991)
2. Final Vows (1992)
3. Deadly Pretender (1993)
4. The Snake and the Spider (1995)
5. The Prism Weight Loss Program (1999)
6. Forever Young (2005)
7. Be Safe Little Boy (2006)
8. Stay Close Little Girl (2006)
9. Miracles: A 52-Week Devotional (2009)
10. I Can Only Imagine (2012)
11. The Family of Jesus Bible Study (2014)
12. The Friends of Jesus – Bible Study Book (2015)
13. Elizabeth Baxter’s 10 Secrets to a Happy Marriage (2019)

About Karen Kingsbury

Karen Kingsbury has built one of the most recognizable careers in contemporary inspirational fiction, and the clearest way to understand her bibliography is through the combination of family-centered storytelling, openly Christian themes, and a strong commitment to emotional redemption. She is not simply a romance writer who includes faith, nor a general women’s-fiction novelist who occasionally turns toward spiritual material. Her books are constructed around the belief that faith, forgiveness, grief, marriage, family loyalty, and second chances belong at the center of popular storytelling. That clarity of purpose is a large part of why her work has remained so commercially durable.

She is widely identified as a bestselling inspirational novelist, and her career has grown to a scale that few writers in that space have matched. Her fiction is built for an audience that wants emotional intensity without cynicism and spiritual conviction without apology. Even when her novels deal with loss, betrayal, illness, broken relationships, or national tragedy, they are shaped by the expectation that suffering is not the final word. That does not mean the books are weightless. It means Kingsbury writes toward restoration. Hope, in her work, is not a decorative ending but the organizing principle.

The Baxter family novels are the core of her bibliography and the main reason so many readers seek her books in order. That universe became much larger than a single series line, eventually expanding into multiple connected sequences and later-generation stories. The reason it matters so much is simple: Kingsbury understood that readers were not only following plots, but attaching themselves to a family. The Baxters became the emotional architecture of her career, allowing her to write not just individual love stories or crises, but a long-running world of parents, siblings, marriages, children, grief, reconciliation, and generational continuity. Her bibliography makes the most sense once you see that this is not merely a set of related titles. It is a sustained fictional community.

That family-based structure also explains her broader style. Kingsbury writes in a highly accessible, emotionally direct mode. Her novels are not built around stylistic experimentation or literary ambiguity. They are built around attachment: to family, to faith, to the idea that human lives can be changed by grace. She tends to favor strong moral stakes, recognizable emotional dilemmas, and stories that move through heartbreak toward healing. Readers often come to her for romance, but romance is only part of the larger appeal. Just as often, the books are about parenthood, marriage, estrangement, adoption, memory, or the long aftershocks of old pain.

Her bibliography is broader than the Baxter world alone. Alongside those books, she has written standalones, shorter series, seasonal stories, and novels tied to specific emotional premises such as lost love, tragedy, or reunion. But even outside the Baxter books, the same sensibility holds. Kingsbury’s fiction is best understood not by subgenre labels alone, but by what it consistently values: reconciliation over bitterness, devotion over detachment, and spiritual meaning over irony. That consistency is one reason readers often move through her work in clusters rather than picking up only one or two books.

Another important part of her career is adaptation. Her stories have moved beyond the page into film and television, which makes sense given how strongly they rely on emotional payoff, family drama, and clear relational arcs. That expansion into screen work reinforces what her readership already recognized: Kingsbury’s strength lies in building stories that are intimate in feeling but broad in appeal.

The best way to understand Karen Kingsbury’s bibliography, then, is as the work of a writer who turned inspirational fiction into an expansive, reader-loyal world of its own. Her books are not meant to stand at a cool distance from emotion. They are meant to immerse readers in love, heartbreak, faith, and reunion, and to insist that redemption remains possible even after the deepest wounds. That promise is the thread running through her entire career.