Sugar Maple Books in Order

Sugar Maple is Barbara Bretton at her most playful. On the surface it is a postcard-pretty Vermont town with a knit shop, a main street, and the usual small-town routines. Underneath, it is a hidden community of witches, vampires, sprites, trolls, werewolves, and other beings who live in plain sight as long as the town's secrets stay protected.

At the center of the series is Chloe Hobbs, owner of the Sticks & String knitting shop. Chloe is half human, half magick, and for a long time she lives with one foot in each world. That split matters. She loves her town, but she is never fully at ease inside it, and much of the series grows out of her trying to understand her powers, her family history, and what she owes to the place that raised her.

Then Luke MacKenzie arrives.

Luke is a very human cop, and his relationship with Chloe gives the books their main emotional engine. Bretton gets a lot of mileage out of that contrast, magical town and skeptical outsider, hidden rules and real-world instincts, while also letting the romance deepen over several books. Their story does not reset from one novel to the next. It builds, which is a big part of the fun.

The series also has a cozy mystery streak. There are murders, disappearances, old feuds, secret bargains, hostile Fae, and magical threats that put the whole town at risk. But the tone is not grim. Even when the stakes rise, the books keep their warmth, their humor, and their affection for the oddball people who make Sugar Maple what it is.

Knitting is woven right into the series identity, too. Chloe's shop is not just a cute backdrop. It is the social center of the town, the place where gossip travels, friendships form, and trouble has a way of showing up at the front door. That everyday texture is what keeps the fantasy from floating away. Bretton makes Sugar Maple feel lived in.

If you like paranormal romance that still feels domestic in the best sense, homey, funny, and rooted in community, this series is a good bet. The books offer love stories, magical suspense, recurring characters, and the steady pleasure of returning to a place where almost anything can happen, but the people still worry about family, loyalty, work, and whether the world they love can survive one more disaster.