How To (ME Clayton) Books in Order

The How To series is one of M.E. Clayton's lighter and funnier contemporary romance worlds. The setup follows three brothers who are used to handling life just fine until three women arrive and make everything far more complicated than any of them expected. If you want Clayton without the prep-school cruelty or mafia violence, this is a good lane.

The books start with How To Stay Out Of Prison, where a misunderstanding kicks everything off with a nice shot of chaos. From there, How To Keep Your Job and How To Maintain Your Sanity keep leaning into playful conflict, family interference, and the kind of romantic setups that sound simple until the characters get involved and make them messy.

These books know they are funny.

That does not mean there are no real problems underneath. Workplace stress, harassment, meddling parents, social pressure, and fake arrangements that stop feeling fake all show up across the series. But the tone stays lighter, with more banter and more room for the characters to be ridiculous in ways that feel intentional rather than grim.

The St. James brothers carry a lot of the appeal. They are confident, sometimes pushy, and not especially graceful when love gets involved, which makes them fit nicely into Clayton's larger catalog of strong-willed heroes. The women push right back, though, and that balance keeps the series from feeling one-note.

Overall, How To is best for readers who like contemporary romance with humor, family meddling, and connected books that can still be read quickly. It is breezy compared with some of Clayton's darker work, but it still has her usual taste for chemistry, stubborn people, and relationships that start in total confusion.