Scarlett Dunn Books in Order

If you want her frontier romance at its core: Promises Kept → Finding Promise → Last Promise
If you like connected family sagas: Whispering Pines → Return to Whispering Pines → Christmas in Whispering Pines
If you want a holiday western: Christmas at Dove Creek
If you want her Kentucky-set mystery side: Murder on the Bluegrass Bourbon Train

Scarlett Dunn was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Bluegrass State has stayed close to her writing life. She grew up in Kentucky with horses around her and a strong interest in the past, especially the pioneers and cowboys of the American West. That mix of local roots and western curiosity helps explain why so many of her novels feel both homespun and wide open.

The West got to her early.

Before publishing fiction, Dunn spent years in corporate work, then turned back toward creative writing. She has described herself as a lifelong, hungry reader, and when she began writing seriously, she moved toward the stories she clearly loved most: historical romance, frontier danger, and people trying to build a decent life under pressure.

Her early books lean into inspirational western romance. The McBride Brothers trilogy, beginning with Promises Kept, brings together ranch country, hidden pasts, and women looking for a fresh start. In that first book, Victoria Eastman heads to Wyoming as a mail-order bride and finds her intended husband dead. Finding Promise widens the canvas with a wagon-train attack, memory loss, and a dangerous cattle drive, while Last Promise follows English heiress Mary Ann Hardwicke as she heads west to escape an arranged marriage and make a life on her own.

Dunn returned to similar territory in the Langtry Sisters novels, starting with Whispering Pines. Those books follow three sisters coming home to Colorado and finding that old grudges, outlaw trouble, and family strain have not settled down in their absence. Readers often come to these stories for the romance, but part of the appeal is the busy frontier world around it: ranch work, rough weather, church life, lawmen, and the feeling that one bad decision can shake a whole town.

She likes women who can ride, work, argue, and still keep hoping.

That shows up again in Christmas at Dove Creek, a winter trail romance built around Lily Starr and wounded rancher Thorpe Turlow. Later, Dunn brought her fiction closer to home with Murder on the Bluegrass Bourbon Train, her first cozy mystery. The setting changed from frontier trails to modern bourbon country, but some of her favorite ingredients stayed the same: a capable central woman, a close-knit community, local color, and danger arriving just when life seems ready to calm down.

Across her books, Dunn keeps returning to second chances, found family, redemption, and the pull between independence and belonging. Her heroes are often ranchers, lawmen, or other steady men who need to relearn trust. Her heroines are practical and resilient, whether they are facing rustlers, a hard trail, or a murder case in Bardstown.

She still lives in Kentucky and has said that many ideas come to her on long walks she calls God walks. She has also been based in Simpsonville, where she enjoys outdoor life and time with family. It suits a writer whose stories so often begin with motion, weather, open land, and the hope of finding home.