Below is the complete list of Tami Hoag’s Rainbow Chasers books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
Rainbow Chasers Books in Publication Order
- Heart of Gold (1990)
View Book - Keeping Company (1990)
View Book - Reilly’s Return (1990)
View Book - Magic (1990)
View Book
About Rainbow Chasers
Rainbow Chasers belongs to the earlier phase of Tami Hoag’s career, before she became best known for darker suspense and serial-killer procedurals. The books grouped under this banner are Heart of Gold, Keeping Company, Reilly’s Return, and Magic, all published around the turn of the 1990s. Read together, they show Hoag working in a more overtly romantic mode, with a stronger emphasis on emotional chemistry, personal reinvention, and lively, high-energy storytelling than in the crime fiction that would later define her reputation.
What stands out about the series is its tone. These are not grim or brooding books in the way many readers now associate with Hoag. They come from the mass-market contemporary romance tradition in which charm, momentum, and strong central pairings carry the story forward. Even so, they are not weightless. Hoag was already very good at writing tension between independence and vulnerability, especially when a heroine’s sense of self is tested by love, instability, or the sudden arrival of a person who disrupts the life she has tried to build. That emotional push-and-pull is a major part of the series’ appeal.
The series title itself suggests a kind of restless pursuit, and that feeling runs through the books. These are stories about people reaching for something just beyond their grasp, whether that means security, belonging, excitement, or a second chance. Hoag’s early romance fiction often carries that combination of fantasy and instability. The settings and circumstances can feel colorful and heightened, but the emotional engine is usually grounded in longing, trust, and the fear of choosing badly. That gives the books more staying power than a simple high-concept setup might suggest.
Heart of Gold opens the sequence and sets the general mood for what follows, while Keeping Company and Reilly’s Return continue the line in the same romantic-commercial vein. Magic is the title that tends to create the most confusion, because some bibliographies also place it alongside Hoag’s Hennessy books. That overlap is worth noting simply because it explains why the series can look slightly inconsistent depending on the source being used. Still, multiple major listings place Magic within Rainbow Chasers, and it is commonly treated as the closing book in the sequence.
Seen from the wider perspective of Hoag’s bibliography, Rainbow Chasers is useful because it captures a writer in an earlier, more openly romantic register. The intensity that later serves her so well in suspense is already present here, but it is directed toward attraction, emotional conflict, and the unstable hope of personal transformation. Readers who know Hoag mainly from Night Sins, A Thin Dark Line, or the Kovac and Liska novels may be surprised by how different these books feel in atmosphere, yet the underlying instinct for strong feeling and narrative drive is already firmly in place.
Taken as a whole, Rainbow Chasers is best understood as an early Tami Hoag romance sequence rather than a bridge to her later suspense universe. Its pleasures are different: lighter on menace, stronger on emotional pursuit, and rooted in the kind of fast, character-centered romantic storytelling that helped launch her career. For readers moving through her work in order, the series offers a clear look at where she began and how much of her later force was already visible, even before the shadows deepened.