Mariana Zapata Books in Order
This page gathers Mariana Zapata books in order, with slow burn romance summaries, reading order guidance, and tips on where to start with her standalone novels.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Publication Order
14 books
Lingus
by Mariana Zapata
2012
Elementary teacher Kat Berger secretly loves porn but never planned on visiting an adult film convention. Dragged there by her best friend, she meets Tristan, a surprisingly down to earth porn star, and a slow, funny friendship forces her to rethink desire, judgment, and what love can look like.
Under Locke
by Mariana Zapata
2014
Iris Taylor moves to Austin broke and exhausted, taking a receptionist job at tattoo artist Dex Locke's rough edged shop to start over. Between the biker world around the shop, trouble tied to her family, and Dex's gruff protectiveness, a wary working relationship slowly turns into something far more dangerous to her heart.
Kulti
by Mariana Zapata
2015
Pro soccer forward Sal Casillas has worshipped German legend Reiner Kulti since childhood, so his arrival as her team's new assistant coach should be a dream. Instead his silence and prickliness derail her focus, until long practices and hard truths chip away at the distance between hero and former fangirl.
Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin
by Mariana Zapata
2015
Stuck at home with no job, Gaby Barreto reluctantly joins her twin brother's rock band on a three continent tour as their merch girl. Life on the road means cramped buses, loud shows, and constant chaos, plus the impossible pull of frontman Sacha Malykhin, whose easy charm turns banter into something real.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me
by Mariana Zapata
2016
After years as personal assistant to football superstar Aiden Graves, Vanessa Mazur finally quits to chase her own goals. Aiden shows up at her doorstep asking for a huge favor that would tie their lives together, forcing Vanessa to weigh her hard won independence against a risky, slow building partnership.
Wait for It
by Mariana Zapata
2016
Single guardian Diana Casillas is rebuilding life in a new Austin neighborhood with her two young nephews and a mountain of quiet grief. Her grumpy neighbor Dallas Walker, who also coaches her nephew's baseball team, slowly shifts from standoffish stranger to steady friend, then to the kind of love that makes a house feel like home.
Dear Aaron
by Mariana Zapata
2017
Ruby Santos signs up to write weekly emails to a deployed soldier, expecting a simple pen pal project. Her awkward, funny messages to staff sergeant Aaron Hall turn into an intimate lifeline for them both, and when deployment ends, they have to decide if the connection built in letters can survive real life.
From Lukov with Love
by Mariana Zapata
2018
After seventeen years of brutal training, figure skater Jasmine Santos is almost out of chances when world champion Ivan Lukov offers her a one year pairs partnership. Sharing the ice with her longtime rival means long practices, bruised egos, and relentless banter that slowly melts into trust and something much riskier.
Luna and the Lie
by Mariana Zapata
2018
Luna Allen loves her job painting custom trucks at a Houston body shop and the loud, loyal crew that comes with it. Her towering boss Ripley Lawson is all scowls and silence, but when trouble from Luna's past shows up, the man she thought barely tolerated her becomes her fiercest protector.
The Best Thing
by Mariana Zapata
2019
Former judo standout Lenny DeMaio now runs her family's gym and raises her little girl with help from her grandfather, determined never to think about the rugby player who ghosted her again. When Jonah Collins walks back into the gym ready to meet the daughter he never knew about, Lenny must decide if she can forgive him enough to let him close.
Hands Down
by Mariana Zapata
2020
Years ago, Bianca Brannen walked away from her closest friend, skinny, sweet Zac Travis, and the crush she never admitted. Now Zac is a famous quarterback known as Big Texas, and a family emergency throws them back together, giving them one last chance to untangle old hurts and see what has been waiting between them all along.
All Rhodes Lead Here
by Mariana Zapata
2021
Aurora De La Torre retreats to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, hoping mountain air and quiet hikes will help her mend a broken heart and reconnect with memories of her mother. Renting a garage apartment from gruff single dad Tobias Rhodes, she slowly builds a new life where shared trails, late night talks, and a prickly landlord start to look like home.
When Gracie Met the Grump
by Mariana Zapata
2022
Gracie Castro is hiding out in a remote rental, keeping her head down and her past a secret, when an injured, half naked superbeing crashes into her yard. Sheltering the grouchy hero drags her into a world of capes, conspiracies, and impossible choices, including whether to risk her heart on someone who might fly away.
The Things We Water
by Mariana Zapata
2025
On the road in an aging RV, Nina Popoca is barely scraping by when her not quite normal puppy Duncan starts breathing fire from his tail. A desperate search for help leads her to a hidden Colorado ranch full of magical beings and its wary werewolf leader Henri Blackrock, where a fragile, found family forms around a girl, a grump, and their extraordinary dog.
Where should I start?
If you want her classic sports slow burns: The Wall of Winnipeg and Me → Kulti → From Lukov with Love.
If you love found family and small towns: Wait for It → The Best Thing → All Rhodes Lead Here.
If you prefer edgier contemporary romance: Under Locke → Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin → Luna and the Lie.
If you want a touch of magic and superheroes: When Gracie Met the Grump → The Things We Water.
Author bio
Mariana Zapata is a native Texan who has been making up love stories since she was a kid scratching them out by hand. Long before she was published, she was sneaking paperbacks off a relative's shelves and falling for every happily ever after she could find.
As a teenager she moved from princess stories to boy band fanfiction and message board serials, teaching herself how to hook readers one chapter at a time. In her twenties she picked up writing again while devouring paranormal romances and urban fantasy, mixing that voice with the grounded families and friendships she knew in real life.
By 2010 she was working in customer service and feeling drained, so with a nudge from her partner she decided to try releasing her own work. She self-published her first novel, Lingus, in 2012 and slowly built an audience one ebook at a time, learning the nuts and bolts of indie publishing as she went.
Those early books turned into a full time career.
Zapata is now best known for long, character driven slow burn romances that feel more like slipping into someone's everyday life than watching a set piece plot. Her stories leave room for awkward jokes, grocery runs, late night texts, and all the tiny details of work and family that sit around the central love story.
Her readers often say nothing much happens in her books until, quietly, everything does.
Sports romance helped put her on the map. The Wall of Winnipeg and Me follows an overworked assistant and the football star who needs her more than he knows, and became a word of mouth favorite. In Kulti and From Lukov with Love she writes about elite athletes on the soccer field and the ice rink, giving both heroines and heroes the same competitive drive, bad knees, and big emotions.
Other books, like Wait for It, Luna and the Lie, Hands Down, and All Rhodes Lead Here, lean into found family, small towns, and workplaces where coworkers slowly turn into home. Across them all, readers tend to come for the grumpy heroes and sharp tongued heroines, and stay for the way friendships, siblings, and kids are given just as much weight as kissing scenes.
Over the years that combination has landed her on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, along with multiple spots on reader voted romance awards shortlists. She still keeps her life fairly quiet, living in Pagosa Springs, Colorado with her husband, musician Chris Letchford, and their two Great Danes, Dorian and Kaiser. When she is not drafting another doorstopper romance, she is usually reading science fiction or historical love stories, hiking in the mountains, or staying home and laughing with her family.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
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