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Patricia Scanlan Books in Order

Browse Patricia Scanlan’s books in order, with reading guides, story summaries, series overviews, and tips on where to start with her warm Irish family dramas.

Last updated: December 19, 2025

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26 books

City Girls Forever

by Patricia Scanlan

2025

As City Girl, Devlin Delaney’s iconic Dublin gym and spa, prepares for a milestone anniversary, Devlin, Caroline and Maggie hope one big party will drown out their worries. Instead, past secrets, family dramas and midlife crossroads push the City Girls to redefine what happiness looks like.

A Family Reunion

by Patricia Scanlan

2021

An Irish convent’s retirement celebration brings Reverend Mother Brigid, her nieces and her great‑niece together under one roof for the first time in years. As jealousies flare and a shocking confession shatters old stories, the women must decide whether shared history will divide or heal them.

The Liberation of Brigid Dunne

by Patricia Scanlan

2020

Laid‑off and heartbroken in Toronto, Marie‑Claire flies home to Ireland for her great‑aunt Brigid’s retirement and eightieth birthday. When her grandmother Imelda lets slip a devastating secret, four generations of women are forced to revisit old hurts and rethink the lives they’ve chosen.

Orange Blossom Days

by Patricia Scanlan

2017

At La Joya de Andalucia, a luxury apartment complex on Spain’s south coast, new owners arrive seeking sunshine and escape. Retired couple Anna and Austen, Texan Sally‑Ann, rigid Eduardo and long‑suffering Consuela soon learn that family baggage travels with you—and neighbours see everything.

A Time for Friends

by Patricia Scanlan

2015

Hilary Hammond has always smoothed things over between glamorous childhood friend Colette and irrepressible colleague Jonathan. As careers, marriages and loyalties tangle over the years, she’s forced to ask when friendship becomes one‑sided—and when it’s time to put herself first.

A Gift for You

by Patricia Scanlan

2015

A Gift for You is a collection of warm, stand‑alone short stories that circle Christmas, Valentine’s Day, birthdays and ordinary hard days, following characters who find small moments of courage, reconciliation and joy when they least expect it.

Coming Home for Christmas

by Patricia Scanlan

2014

High‑flying banker Alison has lost her New York job and can barely pay the rent, but she can’t admit failure to her Irish family. Her sister Olivia is juggling kids, work and a surprise seventieth‑birthday party. A Christmas reunion forces both to rediscover each other.

With All My Love

by Patricia Scanlan

2013

Briony McAllister’s life in Spain is upended when she discovers a long‑hidden letter from the grandmother she was told had rejected her. As buried family secrets surface, three generations of mothers and daughters must confront betrayal, sacrifice and the possibility of forgiveness.

Love and Marriage

by Patricia Scanlan

2011

Barry and Aimee’s marriage is buckling under money worries, a surprise pregnancy and a teenage daughter with serious problems. Debbie’s own relationship is in trouble, and ex‑wife Marianna is stirring the pot. Love and Marriage brings the Adams family saga to an emotional climax.

Happy Ever After

by Patricia Scanlan

2009

Newly married Debbie is drowning in debt while her husband clings to a champagne lifestyle. Her father Barry’s second wife Aimee is unexpectedly pregnant, and Connie has met someone new. Happy Ever After asks whether this tangled family can really change.

Fair-Weather Friend

by Patricia Scanlan

2009

Quiet, loyal Sophie has always orbited glamorous Melissa, doing the giving while her best friend takes. On a budget trip to Spain, Melissa dumps her for a handsome local, leaving Sophie furious—and free to discover her own strength and unexpected new connections.

Coming Home

by Patricia Scanlan

2009

Alison’s glossy New York life collapses when the financial crisis costs her job and her boyfriend proves unreliable. Back in Ireland, her sister Olivia is overwhelmed by work, kids and their mother’s seventieth. A fraught Christmas homecoming forces both women to face what truly matters.

Forgive and Forget

by Patricia Scanlan

2008

Connie Adams just wants her daughter Debbie’s wedding to go smoothly. Instead, battle lines are drawn when Debbie bans her father Barry, his glamorous second wife Aimee and their teenage daughter. As the families clash, long‑suppressed feelings explode.

Winter Blessings

by Patricia Scanlan

2006

A small gift book of seasonal reflections, memories and prayers, Winter Blessings gathers thoughts and poems about love, loss and gratitude, offering gentle comfort and hope for long winter evenings and the Christmas season.

Divided Loyalties

by Patricia Scanlan

2006

Shauna longs for another baby; her husband Greg dreads the idea and her freeloading in‑laws drive her mad. Her sister Carrie is exhausted caring for their father. When the family gathers again at Christmas, simmering resentments finally demand a reckoning.

Double Wedding

by Patricia Scanlan

2004

Best friends Jessica and Carol are both engaged, but Carol insists on a double wedding to calm her nerves. As feuding parents, a wild younger sister and one very reluctant groom stir the pot, the two women risk losing far more than a shared big day.

Two For Joy

by Patricia Scanlan

2001

Oliver Flynn’s grand wedding should be the highlight of small‑town Kilronan, but jealous relatives and uneasy guests leave a trail of resentment behind. Over the following year, Noreen, Lorna and Heather discover that one day’s choices can upend entire lives.

Francesca's Party

by Patricia Scanlan

2001

Francesca Kirwan thinks she’s the contented wife of a successful banker—until she spots her husband passionately kissing a colleague at the airport. Reeling, she throws him out, rebuilds her life and plans a party that might just rewrite everyone’s future.

City Woman

by Patricia Scanlan

1999

In this sequel to City Girl, Devlin’s City Girl health club is booming, but success threatens her closest relationships. Caroline struggles with the fallout from her husband’s secrets, while Maggie juggles motherhood and work, wondering when it will finally be her turn.

City Lives

by Patricia Scanlan

1999

Now in their prime, Devlin, Caroline and Maggie seem to have it all—careers, marriages and money. Then betrayal, loss and hard choices crash in. City Lives follows the City Girls as their decades‑long friendship is pushed to the very edge.

Promises, Promises

by Patricia Scanlan

1997

In the village of Glenree, the Munroe women—social‑climbing Emma, hard‑working Miriam, proud matriarch Sheila and her daughter Ellen—are all changed by one charming philanderer. Over a turbulent decade, broken vows and second chances reshape the whole family.

Mirror, Mirror

by Patricia Scanlan

1997

Charismatic charmer Chris Wallace thinks he can juggle a wife, a mistress and the truth forever. Suzy and Ellen have different ideas. When the two women compare notes, years of lies erupt into a battle for self‑respect, justice and a fresh start.

Foreign Affairs

by Patricia Scanlan

1994

Four Irish women escape to a luxurious villa on a Greek island, hoping for sun and distraction. Instead, career crises, marital shocks and long‑buried fears surface, forcing each friend to rethink what she wants from love and from herself.

Finishing Touches

by Patricia Scanlan

1992

Once the sensible sister who always put family first, Cassie Jordan finally launches her dream interior design business, Finishing Touches. As old school friends rally round and resentful relatives circle, she must decide whose promises she can really trust.

City Girl

by Patricia Scanlan

1992

Devlin, Caroline and Maggie share a Dublin house, a City Girl gym membership and a promise that friendship comes first. Ambition, marriage and messy love affairs test them, but the club—and their bond—becomes a refuge through upheaval and heartache.

Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

1991

Artist Liz Lacey is selling Dublin’s most coveted apartment, and a parade of hopeful buyers arrive with big dreams and hidden agendas. As Lainey, Claire, Dominic and others compete for Apartment 3B, old wounds and new loyalties collide.

Where should I start?

If you want to meet the City Girls: City GirlCity WomanCity LivesCity Girls Forever
If you enjoy big Dublin dramas: Apartment 3BFinishing TouchesForeign Affairs
If you like tangled weddings and family fallouts: Forgive and ForgetHappy Ever AfterLove and Marriage
If you’re in the mood for a Christmas read: Coming HomeComing Home for ChristmasWinter BlessingsA Gift for You
If you prefer multi‑generation family sagas: With All My LoveOrange Blossom DaysThe Liberation of Brigid DunneA Family Reunion

Author bio

Patricia Scanlan grew up in Dublin and has spent most of her life there, drawing stories from the streets, suburbs and seaside communities she knows best. She’s become one of Ireland’s most widely read novelists, best known for warm, contemporary stories about friendship, families and the messy, everyday choices that shape a life.

As a child she devoured books and found a second home in the local library. That attachment to reading led her into a job as a Dublin City librarian, a role she held for seventeen years. Day after day she watched people fall in love with stories, from slim romances to hefty sagas.

Money was tight, and in her twenties she hit a point where the car was falling apart and the bills weren’t getting any smaller. Watching library users stack their arms with romance novels, she decided to try writing one herself. The result, a manuscript called Surgeon’s Conquest, was never published, but it lit the fuse.

Taking the old advice to write what you know, she turned instead to the lives of young Irish women in the late 1980s. The book that emerged, City Girl, about three Dublin housemates and the health club they build together, became a runaway bestseller and introduced readers to Devlin, Caroline and Maggie, the friends at the heart of her City Girls novels.

Scanlan followed those characters through City Woman and City Lives, and many years later returned to them again in City Girls Forever, catching up with the trio in midlife. Alongside that series she has written a long line of stand‑alone novels, including Apartment 3B, Promises, Promises, Francesca’s Party and Divided Loyalties, each circling around ordinary people under emotional pressure.

Readers often point to books like With All My Love, a story of mothers, daughters and a letter that tears a family open, and A Time for Friends, which asks how far loyalty should stretch when a friendship turns one‑sided. Others are drawn to the sun‑soaked, multi‑strand drama of Orange Blossom Days, set in a Spanish apartment complex, or to the three‑generation saga in The Liberation of Brigid Dunne and A Family Reunion, where long‑buried secrets finally come to the surface.

While her novels climbed the charts, Scanlan stayed closely involved with literacy work. Remembering adults who had quietly confessed their struggles with reading at the library desk, she helped create the Open Door series of short, accessible books written especially for new adult readers. She has continued to edit and contribute to that line, and has also taught creative writing to secondary‑school students.

Her fiction usually starts with a knotty domestic situation—a broken marriage, a fraught wedding, a family reunion no one really wants to attend—and then slowly widens out. Scanlan favours multiple viewpoints, small concrete details and the rhythms of everyday Irish life, whether her characters are in a Dublin suburb, a village in North County Dublin or an apartment block on the Costa del Sol.

Scanlan still lives and writes in Dublin, close to the sea, and her books have sold in many countries and languages. Long‑time fans come back for the same things that first hooked them in City Girl: believable women, complicated families, and the quiet hope that even after upheaval, life can be rebuilt.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 26 Patricia Scanlan Books in Order (Complete List 2026)