The Joplin Chronicles Books in Order

The Joplin Chronicles brings readers to Joplin, Missouri, in 1898, when the mining boom has made the town busy, rough-edged, and full of people looking for a break. Money moves quickly. So do rumors. It is a place where a person can reinvent themselves, but secrets have a way of following them into town.

The three novels are connected by family and community rather than one continuing romance. Each book gives a new heroine and hero a problem that is both practical and personal, then lets the surrounding town complicate it. The tone is playful and adventurous, but the stakes can include crime, corruption, work, family expectations, and the limited choices available to women who want something beyond the usual path.

Courting Misfortune begins the series with Calista York, a Pinkerton operative trying to secure her position with one more successful case. She is sent to Joplin to find Lila Seaton, the kidnapped daughter of a Chicago mob boss. Calista needs to keep her identity hidden, which gets harder when Matthew Cook, a new pastor determined to fight the town's corruption, repeatedly crosses her path. Their goals overlap, but neither is eager to trust the other.

In Proposing Mischief, Maisie Kentworth is lying low on her family's ranch after a painful romantic mistake. Her explorations of an abandoned mine lead her to Boone Bragg, who is struggling to manage the family mining business and avoid an unwanted match. When Maisie discovers a crystal cavern that stretches onto her family's property, the two make a business proposal that should solve their separate troubles. Instead, it stirs up chaos across Joplin.

Engaging Deception follows Maisie's cousin Olive Kentworth, a self-taught architect who has spent years hiding how much she wants to design buildings. Because she knows men will be taken more seriously, Olive works through a male cousin while taking a nanny position in the home of Maxfield Scott, Joplin's leading architect. Their growing connection is tested when their competing building plans put Olive's secret ambitions at risk.

Work matters in these books. Calista investigates. Maisie explores and negotiates. Olive designs. The heroes have responsibilities of their own, whether in ministry, mining, or architecture. Jennings lets attraction grow alongside arguments about what is right, possible, and worth risking.

Start with Courting Misfortune. It introduces Joplin's lively, troubled atmosphere and several of the people who shape the later books. The novels can work independently, but reading in order gives the strongest sense of how the Kentworth family and the town itself keep changing.