The Red Books in Order

Under the banner of The Red, Tiffany Reisz tells the story of the Godwicks, an aristocratic English family whose lives are tangled up with art, ghosts, and very explicit desire. Each book features a different couple and can be read on its own, but together they sketch out a haunted family tree.

The series opens with The Red, where gallery owner Mona Lisa St. James is drowning in debt and desperate to save her late mother's small erotica themed gallery. When a sophisticated stranger offers to rescue the business in exchange for a year of complete sexual surrender, Mona enters a sequence of encounters that feel like stepping into living paintings.

In The Rose, recent graduate Lia receives a two thousand year old wine cup as a celebration gift. Collector August Bowman insists the kylix was used in rituals to the god of erotic love and can make fantasies physically real. Skeptical but intrigued, Lia drinks, tumbles into vivid mythic scenes, and has to decide whether the cup is a miracle, a curse, or both.

The Pearl follows Lord Arthur Godwick, who tries to fix yet another of his younger brother's disasters when a priceless family painting is traded to mysterious widow Regan Ferry, owner of the Pearl Hotel. To reclaim it, Arthur agrees to spend ten nights meeting Regan's every demand, only to realize he is also caught in a long running game of revenge and restless spirits.

Where the Original Sinners books braid sex with religion, the Godwicks novels braid it with art and legend. Scenes often echo specific paintings or myths, the settings are lush hotels and old estates, and the erotic play can be tender, cruel, or surreal, sometimes all at once.

New readers can safely start with whichever premise intrigues them most. Beginning with The Red lets you experience the family in roughly publication order, then move into the Greek echoing dreamscapes of The Rose and the moody seaside decadence of The Pearl.