Raintree Books in Order

Raintree is Linda Howard's move into modern paranormal romance, and it opens with a big premise. The world is built around two ancient supernatural clans, the Raintrees and the Ansaras, whose long conflict is starting to flare up again after generations of uneasy distance. Howard's book, Inferno, is the opening move, so it has the job of introducing both the romance and the larger magical struggle.

That bigger conflict matters right away.

At the center of Inferno is Dante Raintree, head of his clan, owner of a Reno casino, and a man whose power is tied to fire. When gambler Lorna Clay catches his attention through an impossible winning streak, what starts as suspicion turns into a much stranger confrontation. Dante thinks she may be connected to the enemy. Lorna is drawn into a world she barely understands. Then a casino fire and a surge of old threats make it clear that neither of them is dealing with an ordinary attraction story.

What makes the series background distinctive is the way Howard drops the supernatural into a recognizably modern setting. The Raintrees have powers, old titles, and long memories, but they also live in the present world. They run businesses, move through cities, and try to keep their secrets hidden in plain sight. That gives the story a nice split feeling, half paranormal bloodline drama, half contemporary romantic suspense.

There is also a lot of built-in tension around loyalty. Because Inferno opens a larger trilogy world, the romance is never only about whether Dante and Lorna want each other. It is also about whether they can trust each other when history says they probably should not. Clan duty, magical ability, and personal desire are all tangled together from the start.

If you are coming to Raintree for Howard specifically, it helps to know that her contribution lays the groundwork. The series page is really about the world as much as any single couple. You come here for supernatural family politics, dangerous gifts, and romance wrapped around an old feud that is waking up again.

So while Raintree is not a long Howard-only series, it is an interesting corner of her catalog. It lets her use her usual strengths, suspicion, chemistry, danger, and highly charged confrontation, inside a paranormal setup that feels larger, stranger, and more openly mythic than most of her other work.