Doors To The Past (Allison Pittman) Books in Order

Allison Pittman's Doors to the Past books are not a classic series with one continuing cast. They are two standalone, dual-time novels inside a larger line built around real places and the secrets attached to them. What links them is the shape of the story, a woman in the present tugging at an old mystery, while the past slowly reveals what really happened.

In The Lady in Residence, the key setting is San Antonio's Menger Hotel. The historical storyline follows Hedda Krause, a young widow who arrives in 1915 hoping to secure a safer future, only to find herself tangled in a theft, a haunting rumor, and public suspicion. In the modern thread, Dini Blackstone, a magician and ghost-tour guide, cannot shake her fascination with Hedda's story. When new clues appear, the old legend starts to look less like entertainment and more like a real woman's life gone badly off course.

Then Laura's Shadow moves to De Smet, South Dakota, with roots in Laura Ingalls Wilder country. The older storyline follows Mariah Patterson in 1890, a woman living close to a beloved literary world but experiencing it from a much tougher angle. The later thread, set in the 1970s, follows Trixie Gowan, a cartoonist pulled back toward home by her great-grandmother's decline and the family secret that begins to slip out piece by piece.

That shared setup is the real appeal here. Pittman likes the collision between local legend and buried family truth. A hotel, a prairie farmhouse, or a famous town is never just a backdrop. The setting carries memory, rumor, shame, and unfinished business. The present-day heroines are not simply solving puzzles. They are also trying to understand what kind of inheritance they have received, and what it might cost to look at it honestly.

The tone sits somewhere between historical romance, family mystery, and lightly gothic suspense. There are ghost stories, missing facts, half-kept promises, and the steady feeling that the past is still pressing on the present. At the same time, these are character stories first. Hedda, Dini, Mariah, and Trixie are all given room to be stubborn, funny, wrong, wounded, or brave.

Faith is present, but it works through the characters' choices rather than speeches. Grace, truth, and second chances matter, especially when old stories have been twisted by gossip or wishful thinking.

If you like dual-time fiction that cares as much about women and family secrets as it does about plot, this is a good fit. Expect real places, emotional mess, and truth arriving one careful piece at a time.