Kristin Harmel Books in Order
Explore Kristin Harmel books in order, with summaries, series background, and where-to-start guidance across her historical fiction and lighter early novels.
Last updated: December 22, 2025
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Publication Order
18 books
All the Diamonds in Paris
by Kristin Harmel
2025
As a girl in occupied Paris, Colette Marceau learns to steal jewels with her mother to help the Resistance, a mission that ends in tragedy when her sister disappears along with a diamond bracelet. Seventy years later, the missing bracelet surfaces in a Boston museum, forcing Colette to confront old secrets and finally seek justice.
The Road Home
by Kristin Harmel
2023
In this World War II short story, a grieving French woman who has lost her son takes in a young Jewish girl whose parents have been arrested. As years pass and the two form a deep bond, the woman must face the heartbreak of letting the child return to her surviving family.
The Paris Daughter
by Kristin Harmel
2023
In 1939 Paris, artists Elise LeClair and Juliette Foulon bond as young mothers and best friends on the brink of war. When Elise must go into hiding, she leaves her little girl with Juliette, a choice that leads to unspeakable loss and a wrenching search for truth and forgiveness years later in New York.
The Forest of Vanishing Stars
by Kristin Harmel
2021
Stolen from her German parents and raised deep in the forests of Eastern Europe, Yona grows up knowing only the wilderness and the eccentric woman who abducted her. When she encounters Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, she teaches them how to survive in hiding, even as revelations about her own past threaten the fragile community.
The Book of Lost Names
by Kristin Harmel
2020
In 1942, aspiring scholar Eva Traube flees Paris after her father’s arrest and begins forging identity papers for Jewish children escaping to Switzerland. To preserve their true identities, she and a fellow forger hide their real names in a coded book that, decades later, may be the key to reuniting families.
The Winemaker's Wife
by Kristin Harmel
2019
In the champagne region of France in 1940, young bride Inès Chauveau and Jewish vineyard worker Céline are pulled into the Resistance as the Germans close in on their winery. Decades later, heartbroken New Yorker Liv Kent is whisked to Champagne by her enigmatic grandmother, where buried wartime betrayals finally come to light.
The Room on Rue Amélie
by Kristin Harmel
2018
American newlywed Ruby Benoit arrives in Paris dreaming of romance, only to face a collapsing marriage and the Nazi occupation. Drawn into the Resistance, she turns her apartment into a safe house for downed Allied pilots and a Jewish girl from upstairs, discovering unexpected courage as danger closes in.
When We Meet Again
by Kristin Harmel
2016
Newly laid‑off journalist Emily Emerson feels unmoored until a painting of a young woman in a Florida sugarcane field arrives from Germany with a note about a love that never ended. Tracing the mystery back to World War II prisoner‑of‑war camps, Emily uncovers family secrets that upend everything she thought she knew.
How to Save a Life
by Kristin Harmel
2016
A dedicated pediatric oncology nurse receives a devastating diagnosis and learns she has only weeks to live. When a young patient shares a strange secret about reliving the same day, she is given the chance to repeat one perfect day again and again, revisiting old regrets and redefining what a full life means.
The Life Intended
by Kristin Harmel
2014
Twelve years after her husband’s sudden death, music therapist Kate Waithman is engaged to a kind, sensible man and trying to move forward. Vivid dreams begin showing her an alternate life in which her first husband survived, leading Kate to question her choices and search for the future she truly wants.
The Sweetness of Forgetting
by Kristin Harmel
2012
Hope McKenna‑Smith is a weary Cape Cod baker caring for her ailing grandmother when a rare lucid moment reveals a list of names and a hidden wartime past. Following the trail to Paris, Hope uncovers Holocaust‑era secrets that could save her family’s bakery and finally make sense of her own life.
The Snow Globe
by Kristin Harmel
2012
On Christmas Eve 1942, a Jewish teenager pauses beneath the statue of Liberty in Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg despite the danger of curfew. A brief, snow‑dusted encounter with a girl named Rose and the gift of a cherished snow globe kindle a love and hope that war cannot easily erase.
After
by Kristin Harmel
2010
High school junior Lacey feels responsible for the car accident that killed her father and shattered her family. While her mother drifts and her older brother acts out, Lacey channels her guilt into starting a support group for grieving teens, discovering that sharing sorrow may be the first step toward healing.
Italian for Beginners
by Kristin Harmel
2009
Cautious New York accountant Cat Connelly has always colored inside the lines, until her younger sister’s wedding leaves her questioning the safe life she has built. A spontaneous trip to Rome and a reunion with an old flame push Cat into unexpected friendships, risky choices, and a chance to reinvent herself.
When You Wish
by Kristin Harmel
2008
Teen pop sensation Star Beck is famous, exhausted, and starting to wonder who she is offstage. After learning the truth about the father she has never known, she slips away in disguise to small‑town Florida, where first love, new friends, and ordinary life might change everything she thought she wanted.
The Blonde Theory
by Kristin Harmel
2007
Harper Roberts is a smart, successful Manhattan attorney who cannot seem to keep a man once he learns she is more than a fun, pretty blonde. When a magazine editor friend dares her to play the ditzy blonde for a feature, Harper’s dating experiment forces her to question how she judges others and herself.
The Art of French Kissing
by Kristin Harmel
2007
Publicist Emma Sullivan thinks a posting in Paris will be glamorous, until she finds herself wrangling an out‑of‑control rock star and dodging scandals. As she spars with Gabriel, a stubborn French journalist who smells a bigger story, Emma has to decide who she wants to be in love and in life.
How to Sleep with a Movie Star
by Kristin Harmel
2006
Claire Reilly is a young celebrity reporter who prides herself on staying professional, even as her own love life falls apart. One hazy night after interviewing Hollywood’s hottest actor leaves her waking up in his bed, the tabloids explode and she must fight to salvage both her career and her heart.
Where should I start?
If you want her WWII historicals: The Sweetness of Forgetting → The Room on Rue Amélie → The Winemaker's Wife → The Book of Lost Names → The Forest of Vanishing Stars → The Paris Daughter → All the Diamonds in Paris.
If you prefer emotional contemporary stories: The Life Intended → When We Meet Again → How to Save a Life → The Road Home.
If you enjoy light, funny romance: How to Sleep with a Movie Star → The Blonde Theory → The Art of French Kissing → Italian for Beginners.
For teen and young adult readers: When You Wish → After.
If you like short, quick reads: The Snow Globe → How to Save a Life → The Road Home.
Author bio
Kristin Harmel was born just outside Boston in 1979 and grew up moving between Massachusetts, Ohio, and Florida. As a teenager in St. Petersburg she discovered that telling stories could also be a job, and at sixteen she began working as a sportswriter, covering Major League Baseball and NHL hockey for local publications while she was still in high school.
Journalism would shape the first chapter of her adult life.
After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism and a minor in Spanish, Harmel launched a magazine career that spanned more than a decade. She reported and wrote for a wide range of national titles and spent many years as a reporter for People magazine, interviewing actors, musicians, athletes, and ordinary people whose stories stayed with her long after the assignment ended.
Television work followed. As a regular contributor to the nationally syndicated morning show The Daily Buzz, she flew around the world for travel and lifestyle segments, including multiple trips to London to cover the cast of the Harry Potter films. Those assignments sharpened her sense of place and detail, skills that later became central to the way she builds scenes on the page.
Fiction, though, had always been the goal, and in 2006 her debut novel How to Sleep with a Movie Star introduced readers to her blend of humor, heart, and contemporary romance. She followed it with city‑set comedies like The Blonde Theory, The Art of French Kissing, and Italian for Beginners, as well as young adult novels such as When You Wish and After, which explore celebrity, grief, and the messy edges of adolescence.
Over time her focus shifted toward historical and multigenerational stories. The Sweetness of Forgetting bridges present‑day Cape Cod and wartime Paris as a woman uncovers her grandmother’s Holocaust‑era secrets; The Life Intended follows a young widow whose vivid dreams suggest the life she might have lived; and When We Meet Again links a modern journalist’s broken family history to German prisoners of war once held in Florida.
Again and again, she returns to the question of how people find light in the darkest hours.
Her later World War II novels have made her a familiar name to fans of historical fiction. In books like The Room on Rue Amélie, The Winemaker’s Wife, The Book of Lost Names, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Paris Daughter, and All the Diamonds in Paris, she writes about resistance networks, hidden children, and ordinary people pushed into acts of quiet bravery. Her novels have appeared on major bestseller lists, been translated into more than thirty languages, and earned honors including award nominations for The Book of Lost Names. Several, including The Life Intended and The Winemaker’s Wife, have been optioned for film and television.
Community is another through‑line in her career. Harmel is a co‑founder and co‑host of Friends & Fiction, a weekly web show and podcast where she and fellow novelists talk with other writers and readers about books, creativity, and the publishing life. In 2022 she was diagnosed with early‑stage breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation while continuing to write, an experience she has since shared openly with readers.
She has lived in Paris and Los Angeles, but now makes her home in Orlando, Florida, with her husband and son. She still travels frequently to France to research her novels, often returning to the streets, forests, and bakeries that have become the emotional terrain of her fiction, and her work invites readers into vivid settings where the past and present are always in quiet conversation.
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