Katherine V Forrest Books in Order
Explore Katherine V Forrest books in order, from Kate Delafield to Coral Dawn, with short summaries, series guides, and help deciding where to start.
Last updated: July 6, 2026
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Publication Order
18 books
Curious Wine
by Katherine V Forrest
1983
At a Lake Tahoe cabin during a ski weekend, Diana Holland and Lane Christianson are surprised by the force of their connection. Forrest turns that meeting into a tender, tense story of desire, fear, and first recognition.
Amateur City
by Katherine V Forrest
1984
LAPD detective Kate Delafield investigates the murder of a powerful executive in a high-rise office building. The key witness, Ellen O'Neil, pulls Kate into a case that grows more dangerous, and more personal, by the day.
Daughters of a Coral Dawn
by Katherine V Forrest
1984
In the late twenty-second century, Megan leads thousands of women to the planet Maternas, hoping to build a life beyond Earth's violence. Their new world is tested when outsiders arrive and survival starts to clash with principle.
An Emergence of Green
by Katherine V Forrest
1986
Carolyn Blake is stuck in a controlling marriage until friendship with her neighbor, artist Val Hunter, changes the shape of her world. Their growing bond brings hope, but it also draws violent resistance from the man Carolyn is trying to leave.
Dreams And Swords
by Katherine V Forrest
1987
This collection shows Forrest working across mystery, science fiction, horror, and erotic fiction. It includes Kate Delafield stories, Coral Dawn connections, and the novella O Captain, My Captain.
Murder at the Nightwood Bar
by Katherine V Forrest
1987
A nineteen-year-old woman is found murdered outside a lesbian bar, and Kate Delafield is sent into a community that does not trust police. As witnesses close ranks, Kate faces painful secrets and an unexpected attraction of her own.
The Beverly Malibu
by Katherine V Forrest
1989
When a loathed old Hollywood director is found murdered, Kate Delafield steps into a world still haunted by blacklist-era betrayals. The suspects are many, the grudges are old, and Aimee Grant complicates everything.
Murder by Tradition
by Katherine V Forrest
1991
Kate Delafield thinks she has caught the killer of young Teddie Crawford, but the courtroom battle is only beginning. A claim of self-defense and the threat of being outed turn the case into a fight over justice and truth.
Flashpoint
by Katherine V Forrest
1994
Over one tense California weekend, four people with shared history wait for a political decision that could change gay and lesbian life. Old betrayals, unfinished love, and public stakes collide inside one mountain cabin.
Liberty Square
by Katherine V Forrest
1996
In Washington, D.C., for a Vietnam reunion, Kate is pulled back into memories she would rather leave buried. When a fellow veteran is killed, the past becomes the key to a fresh and dangerous mystery.
Apparition Alley
by Katherine V Forrest
1997
Recovering from a shooting and under pressure from Internal Affairs, Kate agrees to help a cop accused of a bad killing. The deeper she digs, the more she has to question the department, the case, and herself.
Sleeping Bones
by Katherine V Forrest
1999
A brutal murder at the La Brea Tar Pits leads Kate into a strange case involving ancient bones, ambitious scientists, and CIA interference. What looks like an odd homicide turns into a knot of history, secrecy, and danger.
Daughters of an Amber Noon
by Katherine V Forrest
2002
Back on a ruined, tightly controlled Earth, hidden members of the Unity struggle to protect women from dictator Theo Zedera. Africa Contrera must face her history with Zed while helping imagine a safer future.
Hancock Park
by Katherine V Forrest
2004
A refined Hancock Park mother is executed in her own home, and the obvious suspect may be the wrong one. As the case heads toward trial, Kate Delafield uncovers a family's polished surface and the damage hiding underneath.
Daughters of an Emerald Dusk
by Katherine V Forrest
2005
Fifty-five years after Maternas was settled, the first generation born there begins challenging the founders' beliefs. Joss and Emerald are drawn into a bitter divide that could reshape the colony's future.
High Desert
by Katherine V Forrest
2013
Forced into retirement and coming apart at the seams, Kate is asked to quietly find her missing former partner, Joe Cameron. The search becomes both a mystery and a reckoning with grief, addiction, and who she is without the badge.
O Captain, My Captain
by Katherine V Forrest
2013
Harper heads into a dangerous asteroid zone on a salvage mission with the enigmatic Captain Drake. Desire grows alongside suspicion as Harper realizes the captain is hiding secrets that could cost far more than her heart.
Delafield
by Katherine V Forrest
2022
Four years after retirement, Kate faces renewed threats tied to an old homophobic murder case and a mistake she has carried for decades. This time the danger is intimate, relentless, and impossible to outrun.
Where should I start?
If you want the landmark mystery series: Amateur City → Murder at the Nightwood Bar → The Beverly Malibu
If you want Kate at her most personal: High Desert → Delafield
If you want feminist science fiction: Daughters of a Coral Dawn → Daughters of an Amber Noon → Daughters of an Emerald Dusk
If you want relationship-driven fiction: Curious Wine → An Emergence of Green
Author bio
Katherine V. Forrest was born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1939, and later built her working life in the United States. She became a central figure in lesbian popular fiction by moving easily between romance, mystery, and science fiction, while also spending years as an editor helping shape other writers' books.
She wrote the kinds of stories many readers had been waiting a long time to find.
Before and alongside her fiction, Forrest worked in publishing and editing. She spent about a decade as a fiction editor at Naiad Press, later served as supervising editor at Spinsters Ink, and also worked as an editor-at-large for Bella Books. That editorial life matters because her novels are tightly built, clear on the page, and very aware of how genre can carry real emotional weight.
For many readers, Curious Wine was the first Katherine V. Forrest book that truly landed. Set around a Lake Tahoe getaway, it follows Diana Holland and Lane Christianson as attraction turns into something neither can easily explain away. Readers still come to it for its emotional directness, its sense of risk, and the simple fact that it gave two women a serious love story at a time when that was still rare in commercial fiction.
Then she took that same clarity and turned it toward crime.
With Amateur City, Forrest introduced LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield, a former Marine and one of the first lesbian police detectives in fiction. The series grew through books like Murder at the Nightwood Bar, The Beverly Malibu, Sleeping Bones, High Desert, and Delafield. What keeps readers coming back is not just the mystery plot. It is Kate herself, careful, private, stubborn, and often forced to do her job inside institutions that are never fully safe for her.
Forrest's range shows up just as strongly outside crime. Daughters of a Coral Dawn, followed by Daughters of an Amber Noon and Daughters of an Emerald Dusk, uses science fiction to ask what kind of world women might build for themselves, and what compromises would still follow them there. An Emergence of Green and Flashpoint stay closer to contemporary life, but they work with many of the same concerns: desire, power, fear, loyalty, and the cost of living honestly when the culture around you pushes the other way.
That variety matters. One book might move through Los Angeles offices and courtrooms, another through a mountain cabin or an alien colony, but Forrest keeps returning to women making hard choices under pressure. Her characters are often competent on the surface and shaken underneath. They fall in love, do their jobs, keep secrets, and try to hold onto some private code of honor.
She has also been important behind the scenes. Forrest edited anthologies, mentored other writers, and helped lesbian publishing grow during years when that work took stubbornness as much as talent. The awards followed, including Lambda honors, the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award, the Alice B Readers Award, the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society. But the larger story is simpler than that.
Her books gave readers detectives, lovers, veterans, professionals, and survivors who felt like full people.
Forrest lives in Palm Springs, California, with her wife, Jo Hercus. She has kept writing, editing, and speaking up for LGBTQ literature, and her backlist still feels alive because the questions at its core have not gone away.
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