Union Street Bakery (Mary Burton) Books in Order

The Union Street Bakery series (Mary Burton writing as Mary Ellen Taylor) is a small two-book story that blends family drama with a gentle historical mystery. It’s set in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, where a long-running neighborhood bakery carries the weight of generations, not just in recipes, but in the secrets tucked into its walls.

At the center is Daisy McCrae, a financial analyst whose life unravels fast. After losing both a job and a relationship, she heads home to the attic apartment above the family bakery. Daisy was left there as a toddler and later adopted, so even in the place that raised her she can feel slightly off-balance, like she’s always one step outside the family photo. She brings practical skills to the business side of the shop, but spreadsheets can’t fix grief, resentment, or the exhaustion of keeping an old place running.

The ovens are hot, and so is the past.

In The Union Street Bakery, Daisy tries to help keep the business alive while reconnecting with her sisters, Rachel and Margaret, who are carrying their own grief and responsibilities. A journal from the 1850s lands in Daisy’s hands, written by Susie, an enslaved girl with ties to the building. As Daisy reads, the present-day problems of money, loyalty, and belonging start to echo against a much older story of survival, loss, and a voice that history tried to erase. There are hints of ghosts and curses, but the story stays focused on family, community, and what it means to claim a place as home.

Sweet Expectations keeps the focus on the sisters and the shop, but raises the stakes with a renovation that threatens to break the business before it saves it. Delays, contractor chaos, and new personal decisions test Daisy’s sense of what she wants, and what she’s willing to risk for the family she chose and the family she was born into. Another set of discoveries, this time letters and recipes connected to World War II, opens a different window into the bakery’s past and offers a new kind of guidance.

Across both books, expect warm food-filled scenes, a vivid sense of Alexandria’s streets and waterfront, and mysteries that unfold through keepsakes rather than crime-scene tape. The tone is hopeful and grounded, with the emotional focus on sisters learning how to be a team again. Start with The Union Street Bakery and follow with Sweet Expectations for the cleanest arc, and the most satisfying payoff of the past meeting the present. Readers who like women’s fiction with a strong sense of place, a dash of history, and just a hint of the uncanny will feel at home here.