The Malory Family in Order: A Reader's Family Tree

The family, in one page

At the top are four brothers. Jason is the eldest and holds the marquessate; he raised the rest of them and never stops managing everyone. Edward is the respectable one — banking, investments, a great many children. Then come Anthony and James, the two youngest, who spent their twenties duelling, gambling and being thrown out of respectable houses, and who are the reason anyone reads this series at all.

Below them is the next generation. Regina is their niece, orphaned young and raised by all four uncles in rotation, which explains why she is simultaneously delightful and terrifying. Derek is Jason's son. Amy is one of Edward's many daughters. Jeremy is James's son, produced from James's disreputable past and absorbed into the family without much ceremony.

And then there are the Andersons — five American brothers in the shipping trade whose sister Georgina marries into the family in book three. They arrive as antagonists, stay as in-laws, and take over a good chunk of the later series. Hence the name you will see on lists: the Malory-Anderson family.

The core run, in order

1. Love Only Once (1985) — Regina is abducted by mistake and compromised by Nicholas Eden, and four uncles decide what happens next. The introduction to everyone.
2. Tender Rebel (1988) — Anthony Malory, cornered at last by a Scottish heiress shopping for a husband who will not want her money.
3. Gentle Rogue (1990) — Georgina Anderson disguises herself as a cabin boy on a ship captained by James Malory. It is the fan favourite by a wide margin and the book that fuses the two families.
4. The Magic of You (1993) — Amy Malory decides she wants Warren Anderson, the angriest of the American brothers, and sets about acquiring him.
5. Say You Love Me (1996) — Kelsey Langton is sold at auction to pay her family's debts, and Derek Malory buys her to stop someone worse doing it. The series' most divisive premise and one of its most-searched titles.
6. The Present (1998) — a Christmas novel that doubles as the family's origin story, opening up Jason's past and the secret behind the brothers' upbringing.
7. A Loving Scoundrel (2004) — Jeremy Malory and a street thief called Danny. Charming, light, and a good indicator of where the later books sit tonally.
8. Captive of My Desires (2006) — Drew Anderson and a pirate's daughter. The series goes back to sea.
9. No Choice But Seduction (2008) — Boyd Anderson, the last of the American brothers, and a woman with no interest in being courted.

The later books

After 2008, Lindsey returned to the family every few years rather than annually, and the numbering on retailer sites disagrees with itself because several later titles sit alongside her other series. The dependable way to read them is by generation rather than by number: once you have finished the core run above, pick up That Perfect Someone, Stormy Persuasion and Beautiful Tempest, which follow the children of the couples you already know — James and Georgina's daughter Jacqueline chief among them. They read comfortably in publication order and none of them will confuse you once the family tree is fixed in your head.

Where to start, honestly

Two defensible answers. Love Only Once if you want the family assembled properly in front of you — it is the shortest route to understanding who is whose uncle. Gentle Rogue if you want to know within fifty pages whether this series is for you, because it is the purest distillation of what Lindsey does: a heroine in disguise, a hero with no scruples whatsoever, a ship, and a great deal of shouting. Readers who start there almost always go back for books one and two afterwards.

A note on tone

These are eighties and nineties romances and they read like it. The heroes are high-handed, the consent norms are of their period, and Say You Love Me in particular opens with a slave-market premise that modern readers should know about in advance. Plenty of people love the series precisely for its unreconstructed energy; others find the early books hard going. Either reaction is reasonable — better to know before you start than three chapters in.